Weinzierl BAOS 777 Review

Feb 5, 2022

The Weinzierl BAOS 777 is an advanced KNX Network gateway. Its claimed functionality is not unique but certainly more advanced than most KNX to IP gateways.

Why I am writing this review

About a year ago, I installed one Weinzierl BAOS 777 for a small KNX system. After this time, I have some mixed feelings about this device. I did not find any other particularly useful information about the Weinzierl BAOS 777, other than from the manufacturer itself, on the internet. This made my buying decision a bit of a gamble, and I am not sure if I have won by deciding to buy this device.

Also, I would like to disclose that I ordered and used it at the company I work. I did not spend my own money or time on it. However, I am spending my personal free time writing this review.

Visualization

Technically, I like the idea of having a small, low-power, and low-maintenance device providing a simple and friendly GUI for some basic functions and states. Unfortunately, the Weinzierl BAOS 777 is extremely limited in that regard. For me, at the moment, it basically provides no real value.

Data Logging

Unfortunately, the data logging function seems to be unusable. I had it turned on for some room sensors, but the device was always crashing after some time. The only way to recover afterward was a full factory reset.
Also, data access and viewing are very limited. Data can only be accessed grouped into predefined pages. The load times are long, and the user interface on the web page is generally unfriendly. My recommendation would be that if you are interested in data logging, use a propper time-series database on a real server. Trying to log and access data on a small device like this will probably always be a bad experience.

Timer

I use a couple of timers to control simple functions like light automation. So far, the timers are working flawlessly. The setup is easy. The timer function on the Weinzierl BAOS 777 provides a good alternative to a dedicated timer switch.

E-Mail Notification

The E-Mail notifications are a bit more difficult to understand than the timers. It took me some time to figure out what all the different triggering options exactly do, but overall I think it's well implemented.
I also had issues configuring my E-Mail server because the web interface would not accept my e-mail server URL as valid. Fortunately, a workaround was quickly provided by customer support.
However, I have stopped using the e-mail notification feature. After I had to do the second factory reset on the device, I simply could not be bothered anymore to set it up.

User Account

Currently, it seems that it is not possible to add multiple user accounts. Not to mention different permission levels. This makes the Weinzierl BAOS 777, in my opinion, completely unusable as a dashboard device in a corporate setting. Even in a private installation, it is questionable if every person that just wants to know the room temperature or adjust the thermostat should also have access to the SMTP settings.

I hope the option is provided in a future firmware release. At least two different types of accounts, Administrator and User, should be the minimum.

REST API

The REST API was the main reason why I was originally interested in this device. It seemed to be an easy way to provide an interface between the building installation and some higher-level software, providing a layer of abstraction away from raw KNX addresses and data.

This function has been working quite well and is constantly used in my installation. The API itself is not perfect, but it is functional enough.

Other Features

The Weinzierl BAOS 777 can also be used as a programming interface and for KNX IP-Tunneling. I will not discuss those functions further since they are so basic that it is just expected that they work flawlessly. And they, in fact, are.

The Price

The price is my biggest criticism of this product. At the time of purchase, it was about 550CHF (approx 550$). I understand the complexity of this product, but at this price point, I expect something just to work flawlessly. Unfortunately, the Weinzierl BAOS 777 was not able to meet this expectation.
In my personal opinion, an appropriate price would be about half of that. But even then, I could just recommend it as a REST API gateway and forget about the other functionality.

Customer support

So far, I have had to contact customer support on two occasions. Both times there was objectively a software problem with the device itself.
Both times, a workaround has been provided within one or two days. The answers were very technical, and it seemed to me that maybe even one of the developers itself was directly responding.

However, I contacted the support in german. I don' k know how your experience would be in any other language.

Conclusion

Now you may be wondering if you should buy the Weinzierl BAOS 777 for your KNX installation. Honestly, I probably would not buy it again. Not because it is a particularly bad product, but because for me, the price is just too high for what it delivers. Many of the advanced features, like the Web GUI, data logging, or E-Mail notifications, are not implemented in a way where they are actually useful to me. If you are just looking for a REST API for your KNX system and don't care about all the other functions, this might be the right product for you.

Alternatives

As already stated above, my biggest criticism of the Weinzierl BAOS 777 is the high asking price. For the same price, I could buy a much cheaper KNX to IP or KNX to USB gateway and a small industrial computer. I personally have started to use Node-Red for creating a dashboard. For data logging, I can recommend InfluxDB.
This solution may not be as low in maintenance, but if you are at the point where you are using the REST API of the Weinzierl BAOS 777 you will anyway already have at least one server that needs maintenance.

 

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