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KNX & ETS Academy

KNX Clarity assumes you already know what a group address is and why an .knxproj file matters. Not everyone does — building owners, new team members, and people inheriting an installation often meet KNX for the first time through this platform.

This Academy is the missing background. It explains the theory behind the things the rest of the documentation treats as given: what KNX actually is, how the bus works, what ETS does, and why the files KNX Clarity stores are shaped the way they are.

It is deliberately vendor-neutral and tool-agnostic. Nothing here is specific to KNX Clarity — it is the same KNX you would learn on a certified training course, written for someone who is technical but not yet a KNX expert.

Who this is for​

  • Building owners who want to understand the system they own without becoming an installer.
  • New integrators and technicians who need the mental model before the hands-on work makes sense.
  • Anyone inheriting a project through an escrow handover and wanting to read the ETS export with confidence.

How to read it​

The pages build on each other — read them in order the first time:

  1. What is KNX? — the standard, the history, and why "open" matters.
  2. The bus & topology — how devices are physically wired and addressed.
  3. Telegrams & group addresses — how devices actually talk to each other.
  4. Datapoint types — the "data types" of the KNX world.
  5. Devices: sensors & actuators — what is actually on the wire.
  6. What is ETS? — the tool every KNX project is built with.
  7. The ETS workflow — from empty project to commissioned building, and what ends up in the .knxproj.
  8. KNX Secure — encryption, keys, and what that means for handovers.
  9. Glossary — every term, in one place.
You don't have to memorise it

Treat the Glossary as a reference you come back to. The rest of the docs link into it whenever a term first appears.

The one-paragraph version​

KNX is an open, international standard for building automation. Lights, blinds, heating, metering, and access devices from hundreds of manufacturers share a single bus and talk to each other by sending small messages called telegrams to group addresses. There is no central controller — intelligence is distributed across the devices. A project is designed and commissioned with a single manufacturer-independent tool, ETS, which saves everything into a .knxproj file. KNX Clarity reads that file so the building's structure, devices, and history survive long after the laptop that created it is gone.