Own homeassistant linked to Signum

Hey everyone,

I’ve made good progress figuring out the APIs and connection settings for the Signum, and I can now trigger actions through the APIs (still in the early stages, but it seems to be working). However, I’m noticing a significant delay – sometimes up to 30 seconds – when controlling blinds or lights, which isn’t ideal.

I’m moving to my own Home Assistant server, as the Signum seems underpowered for my automation needs and struggles with performance.

Has anyone else tackled this issue or found a way to reduce the response delay?

Hi Dreetn, and welcome!

First off… I have to confess that I don’t use HomeAssistant. No doubt someone who does (there are plenty on the forum) will be along here shortly. But I am a software developer, and I am curious about what might be going on.

30 seconds certainly seems a very long time.

I note that Signum is a Raspberry Pi-3 Compute Module (CM3) internally.
HomeAssistant web site says, “neither the Raspberry Pi 3 Model A nor Model B have enough RAM to be stable”.
If this is causing the CM3 to page memory (to SD card… not great) in order to run then that will slow HA hugely and will eventually wear out the SD card (as SD cards wear they become slower and eventually fail altogether).

You should be able to run everything you need, and more, on a Pi4 or Pi5 with more memory. What particular features of the Signum do you need?

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Just as @EvAndy says.

I use the Odroid C4 devices, we’ve sold hundreds of them to run openHAB etc

Recently I tried installing HomeAssistant from the software menu.
It takes its sweet time to fully deploy, but so far… It’s running very well.

Best week… I’ll be leaving one on site for a BBC show… With a local chap being left to manage it for the end user… I’m not allowed to give any more details

I run Openhab as well as Home Assistant… I tried the C4’s as well as RPi 4 and RPi5’s for HA…
My C4 with OpenHab runs the Velbus Server and the HA connects to that… only when I reboot the Velbus Server without rebooting HA, do I get the lag stuff (or disconnected completely)… it seems it cant handle that properly…

OpenHab on the C4 is awesome… my scripts run flawlessly without any delay for Velbus or even 3rd party (I switch on Ikea LED"s with Velbus buttons, as well as radio control)

For the underpowered stuff with HA… I tried the RPi4 and when loaded with only velbus its quick… but as soon as other items are added (plugins, dashboards, etc) - it becomes slow fast…
I upgraded to the RPi5 which made it faster, until I went full on with dashboarding and logging… The RPi5 used an NVME drive which was not stable enough… sometimes the system would loose connection to the storage and things started to fail… I’ve moved HA now to an Intel CPU (one of those mini’s) with 32GB of RAM and 512GB Storage… and its now blazingly fast… and way more stable… (so far)…

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I’ve recently set aside some time to revisit my Velbus setup, but I’m running into mounting frustration.

The Signum module currently shows 429 devices and 1,416 entities, including all buttons, sensors, etc. In contrast, my Home Assistant setup only displays 58 devices and 16 entities. When I reload the integration, it sometimes adds a few more—or even removes some.

For context: I’m running Home Assistant on a Proxmox server, connected to the Velbus Signum via TCP (I don’t have the USB cable yet, but I plan to get one soon to see if that improves the situation).

At this point, I’m starting to wonder if I’m doing something fundamentally wrong—or if I made a mistake investing in the Signum module. As someone who relies heavily on Home Assistant, it’s beginning to feel like the Signum may not be the best fit and might’ve been a waste of money.

Any guidance or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Hi @Dreetn

Thanks for your feedback and detailed thoughts regarding the Signum and Home Assistant integration.

At Velbus, we strive to offer a stable, secure, and reliable automation system, while also giving users the flexibility to customize and extend their setups. As you’ve noted, this balance is not always easy to maintain, especially when dealing with platforms as versatile as Home Assistant.

Signum Models and Performance

Currently, there are two Signum models:

  • VMBSIG-V1 (white housing): 1 GB RAM
  • VMBSIG-20 (black housing): 2 GB RAM

These come preloaded with a custom, lightweight version of Home Assistant, specially optimized for the Velbus ecosystem. This version is stripped down to ensure maximum reliability and performance within the hardware limitations. The integrated Velbus system works seamlessly in this environment, as do several third-party integrations.

Advanced Mode: Flexibility with a Trade-Off

For users seeking deeper customization, we’ve introduced an “Advanced Mode”. This mode unlocks:

  • Access to configuration.yaml
  • Installation of HACS
  • Use of the Code Server
  • Ability to add custom integrations

While powerful, this mode is use at your own risk. Enabling it could impact the system’s stability and void your Velbus warranty. You can, however, disable it again to restore the default configuration and warranty.

We understand that some users need more from Home Assistant—perhaps more integrations, voice assistants (which are not yet supported due to security concerns), or experimental features. For those cases, running a full installation of Home Assistant on your own hardware (e.g. a Raspberry Pi or NUC) is an excellent option. You can then use the Velbus community plug-in, developed and supported by the community.

:wrench: While Velbus doesn’t provide official support for the community plugin or external installations, we do closely collaborate with the developers behind it. If you notice certain Velbus modules or features are missing, please let us know via https://help.velbus.eu so we can help prioritize updates.

Summary

  • Use Signum for reliability with built-in Velbus integration and a stable subset of HA features.
  • Enable Advanced Mode if you’re comfortable with more responsibility and want access to full Home Assistant flexibility.
  • Use your own hardware for a fully custom experience—though this means managing your own updates and plugins.

Warm regards,
The Velbus Team

Thanks for your reply.

I’m currently using a dedicated Home Assistant server, separate from the Signum device. The integration generally works, but I’m encountering two key issues:

Not all modules are detected
Several lights and modules are missing entirely from the entity list. While most modules show up, some devices or channels (like dimmers or relays) are not discovered at all. This makes it difficult to manage the full Velbus setup from Home Assistant.

Delayed response time

There’s a noticeable lag of 1–3 seconds when turning lights or relays on or off through Home Assistant. The delay is consistent and affects multiple devices across the installation.

Connection Methods Tried

I tested both possible methods to interface with the Velbus network:

  • TCP/IP (via Signum):
    Works, but with limited module/entity discovery and the delay issue mentioned above.
  • USB (directly to the Home Assistant server):
    Fails completely — no devices or entities are detected at all.
  • VELSRV: I see HA is attempting to connect but it goes into timeout when loading modules from Velbus, such as heating, … but further than that no more info.

I understand this is a community-developed plugin, but I’m not convinced the issue lies within the plugin itself. It seems more likely to be related to how data is being sent or received through the Signum.

Thanks in advance for any insights or guidance you can provide.

Example:

On the signum: 429 devices, 1416 entities
On the HA server: 59 devices and 61 entities.

I’ve been seeing this issue of not all modules being detected with the community/HA-maintained add-on come up on this forum relatively frequently. Unfortunately, it also has been a pretty long-standing problem at this point, and it does not look like it is getting addressed (not sure if its because doing so is difficult or just because the maintainers of the addon solved their problems and don’t actively contribute to the addon anymore.)

A relevant thread to read through for some more details is at Velbus Home Assistant missing module instances. Here’s another: Home Assistant does not find all my modules. There are also some relevant-looking issues in the repository by @cereal’s velbus-aio library that this integration is using: Velbus in Home Assistant not detecting all modules · Issue #118 · cereal2nd/velbus-aio · GitHub.

As you can gleam from these references the reasons can be multifaceted: anything from the way scanning is implemented to possibly limited support of certain modules, especially the newer ones.

Another reason why H-A side of things should be suspected is that usually people report not having similar problems with the other ecosystems in their systems. OpenHAB is known to have a very stable Velbus support, there are people integrating velbus into their NodeRED workflows with no issues either. I’m not sure if anybody is using Velbus in some of the more obscure home automation systems, but in my time lurking around this forum, I haven’t heard any relevant complaints about those either.

That said, I have some suggestions of things to try and bits of knowledge that may be useful.

It is important to understand that this delay is almost definitely not on the part of the Velbus bus itself. If the message ends up on the bus, modules will react to it pretty promptly (like, up-to 1ms range.) The only reason why components (e.g. signum or a VMBUSB*) might hold off on sending a message out to the bus is if the bus itself is already very contended, but in that case you would also see a similar delay when operating the velbus system by pressing buttons on your panels. Which doesn’t sound like an issue you have.

That means the delay you’re seeing is introduced by the components leading up to your connection to the Velbus bus. There are some tools that can help you to diagnose where the delay might be occurring, but they might not be particularly friendly to people not used to administering UNIX systems or just those without some networking knowledge. An example of such tooling would be tcpdump or wireshark which would allow you to inspect the network messages between H-A and Signum or Velserv. I believe wireshark should be able to also inspect USB/serial port traffic, so you’d be able to see when the message gets sent out to the bus when connected over USB. Finally a good place to look at might be some logs from H-A itself (ref).

Is more likely than not closely related to the delayed operation when operating velbus from H-A. Module scanning in Velbus relies on timing of responses: if a response to a module “ping” is not received within a couple hundred milliseconds, the address (and thus the module) is generally considered unused. This is how module scanning works in all velbus integrations, including Velbus Link. In principle if there are no communication timing issues introduced somewhere along the line, all scanning implementations should work roughly similarly. If putting said ping on the bus takes a full second in the first place, then it is quite natural that the response to the ping won’t be back within couple hundred ms.

A big benefit of Velbus Link here is that it also has a bus log that you can monitor to see what’s going on in terms of bus communication. So for example when you say that HA is not able to discover anything at all, when connecting over USB or velserv, velbuslink connected to the bus at the same time is a great way to check if the module scanning messages are making it onto the link at all. This can be much more approachable than wireshark or similar tools I mentioned above. If you end up not seeing anything in the Velbus Link communication logs, then its a great indicator to check if your connection configuration is correct at all.

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i know i’m lacking behind in the support of the modules in velbusaio, but remember i’m one person trying to get this thing to work correctly for all velbus modules …

In ha you can enable this ‘bus log’ if you enable the debug log of the integration you will see every message send and received on the bus.

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you cna not compare the number of devices in the signum vs core-home-assistant, the integration is completely different

Hi Cereal, oh no worries I’m absolutely not throwing any rocks. I’m just trying to figure out what is happening and how I can fix this. I’m no good in python, but I am definitively up to learning it to help you maintain this.

This is honestly the purpose of why I’m investing in Velbus. I want to learn the ecosystem and help support people with it. Although, I first need to do the learning.

Tell me how I can help, what I can do and I’m glad to help. I was even thinking about opening a Discord for Velbus. :slight_smile:

Kr

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I am now booting up an RPI 4 with freshly installed HA, to see if this works better or not.

My HA is run on PROXMOX, so perhaps this is messing up. Will update afterwards with results.

The issue about the missing modules and / or slow detection of modules is indeed a long-standing problem. In earlier posts the reasons and compromises about speed and reliability are already explained as well as the different approach of the VelbusLink software.

Although the current implementation is very slow, especially on first scan, it now seems pretty reliable. Still preliminary aborts of first scan or an unreliable or busy canBus can cause problem (among some other vulnerabilities).

I am happy to announce that in next release of velbus-aio this problem is finally fully addressed and … the result is super-fast and 100% reliable. The solution is found in completely abandoning the bus scan in favor of using the Velbus project file (vlp) as source. Although the current real time scan procedure is slightly improved (and will still be available for compatibly reasons), the preferred method will be the VelbusLink project file mapping.

Thie new approach is already implemented and tested but still work has to be done. UI support for uploading the vlp file to the HA platform is required and still some modules need new specs definitions. Implementing this, together with plenty of new modules takes time and relies entirely on @cereal2nd (much appreciated).

For problem solving on canBus I totally agree with @nagisa that VelbusLink logging is a great tool. Together with velserv it’s very easy to spy on the canBus (I use it all the time :blush:)

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Thanks for the update — I’m really looking forward to seeing it in action!
Yesterday, I somehow managed to successfully map out all my devices. I tried several things, so I can’t say for sure what did the trick, but I suspect that changing the module addresses to lower numbers made the difference.

If you ever need someone for testing or help in any way, don’t hesitate to reach out — happy to see how I can contribute.
For now, I’m back to working around the house, so Velbus is temporarily on hold until I finish insulating the roof.
They say renovations can eventually be finished, but the work around them never really stops. :slightly_smiling_face:

Thanks again for the extra tips, everyone!

yes, raspberries use sd cards and they are very sensitive to interference, and also wear out quickly. But I also read here that you should use a four or five instead of a raspberry 3, but then of course the question is: how do you exchange the raspberry 3 for a 5? yes hardware-wise (I don’t have anything from Velbus yet so I don’t know if you can just open the Signum) Then you would also need the software package to make that Signum yourself, I don’t think the developer will do that (although something like that already exists for Homebridge where you pay something for the software package).

If we’re talking hardware choices, I would genuinely recommend a decomissioned ssf (keyword: tinyminimicro) PC instead of a raspberry. Something from Lenovo, Dell, HP or Fujitsu Esprimo. They are cheap 2nd hand, often cheaper than a modern raspberry are relatively super power efficient (my Esprimo Q558 is sipping like 3~4W) and are based on the usual PC hardware setups (i.e. SATA/M.2 disks instead of a memcard, swappable SODIMM memory, a proper power supply without having to worry about whether you got a correct USB brick, a proper cooling setup out of the box…)

The only reason I’d consider a Raspberry for this (or a similar) application is if I was extremely space constrained or had very specific need for something that Raspberry ecosystem provides (e.g. PoE hat.)

The suggestion is for a machine to host a separate H-A instance, separately from whatever Signum runs. One shouldn’t be opening Signum for the most part. If nothing else that voids warranty of the module.

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I want to add something that might be obvious, but should be addressed, especially if it is regarding ‘missing modules’.

A great tool to debug your installation is also to disconnect partial pieces of it and piece by piece see if the modules are recognized. First in Velbuslink, afterwards in Home Assistant.

Before linking your Velbus installation on Home Assistant, it is essential that the bus is correctly wired and all modules work flawlessly in Velbuslink. If some modules are not recognized, double check your wiring first. And, as always, have a look at the troubleshooting guide: https://cdn.velleman.eu/downloads/velbus/00_general/velbus-troubleshooting-guide-en.pdf

If all modules are found in Velbuslink and you don’t see an obseen amount of traffic in the logger (indicating collisions or missing terminators), your hardware installation should be fine and stay fine for the remainder of you life ;-). That eliminates a lot of problems before diving into integrations and automations.

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