FAQ - Animus Home

Animus Heart is a multi-protocol controller developed by the company Animus Home. The controller connects your smart home devices to one system. By having an Animus Heart you can control and automate lighting, sensors, cameras, speakers and more from one interface. The smart products can come from different brands and work on different protocols.

A Wi-Fi network and the Animus Heart controller connected to a power source is required. To make your home smart with Animus Heart, you need to have smart devices that are compatible with Animus Heart.

Note: Wi-Fi network doesn’t mean you need internet connection to your home.

No. You can have Animus Heart work through Wi-Fi directly. Here is a guide on how to set-up Animus Heart to work through Wi-Fi.

If your Wi-Fi connection is bad it is recommended to connect the Heart controller through LAN instead.

Since Animus Heart can communicate with different protocols and technologies, it depends on the type of device.

• Z-Wave supports mesh so that the signal “jumps” from one Z-Wave device to another, extending its range. However, this is only possible with Z-Wave devices that has continuous power source. Direct range from Animus Heart to a single Z-Wave node in free sight is around 35-40m.

• Wi-Fi devices depend on your Wi-Fi signal.

• Product range on the 433MHz frequency vary if Animus Heart is receiving or transmitting. For transmitting (e.g. power plugs), the range can go up to 80m in free sight. However, when receiving (e.g. sensors), the device should not be further than 10m from Animus Heart. 433MHz doesn’t support mesh.

If you don’t find Animus Heart in any electronics store in your country you can always purchase it from the Animus Home online store.

Deliveries are made to customers in EU countries.

As long as we have Animus Heart in stock, we normally send them the same day. If you choose our express delivery, we will ship with a courier that delivers the day after it has left our warehouse.

Our online store is hosted on Shopify and the payment is handled by Stripe. The Stripe payment gateway doesn't store any credit card details. Instead, all card numbers are encrypted on disk with AES-256 encryption standard.

Animus Home apps are available for Android and iOS devices. You can also access Animus Heart from a web browser and operate it from there. See Desktop View.

Multiple users can access the same Heart, however, no restrictions can be set to users.

The Animus Home app will notify you when an update is available and ask if you want to update. You can also manually check for new updates in the app, go to Settings → Update.

You can still control any local smart products and your Automations will continue to operate even with lost internet connection. However, you need to be at home to control them manually.

Things that stops working are online services that operate online (on cloud), such as voice control. Also, you will not be able to access your Animus Heart when being outside of your home.

New devices are added through the Devices-page in the Animus Home app or the desktop view. Click on the + icon on this page and choose the device you wish to add. Different devices have different steps, so make sure to follow the steps on the screen carefully.

Z-Wave devices are listed in the device-group called “Z-Wave Devices”. From there you can choose to add your device Automatically or a Guided setup. Either way, an inclusion process will start which will require some physical step on the device that you are adding. This often means clicking three times on a push-button.

You can also read about how to add and remove a device from your app in this article.

Yes you can. The Animus Home platform offers an open API. Here is how you get started: Coming soon

You can get help and discuss your solution on the Animus Talk forum.

Your email can’t be used as a username when logging in locally. Usually users forgets this and tries to log in to their Animus Heart with their email. If you have forgotten the username, send yourself a “Forgot my password”-email and look for your username in the received mail.

Note 1: This does not apply to the cloud-account login.
Note 2: The login-process is being improved to avoid any confusions in the future.

Animus Heart supports Z-Wave Plus with S2 security, Wi-Fi, protocols on the 433MHz frequency. It also supports Bluetooth but is not yet activated in our OS.

Animus Heart does not support the Zigbee protocol natively. However, the most popular Zigbee devices are supported via our Philips Hue bridge support.

Animus Heart supports the Philips Hue Bridge. If you have a Hue-bridge, then you can add Philips Hue lights, IKEA Trådfri, Innr lights and Trust lights through the Animus Home app.

Animus Heart supports cameras on the RTSP protocol. You can add the video stream and show it on your Animus Home app.

Note: In Automations you can also take camera snapshots and send them to your e-mail.

We have created a list of smart devices that we support, click here to see the list. There are devices not in the list that actually are supported, often they are cameras, Z-Wave or 433MHz devices.

We want to integrate as many smart home products as possible. Please suggest which devices you wish us to integrate here.

Animus Home provides a powerful tool where you can easily automate your smart home. It follows 3 simple steps:

WHEN: This is where you set the trigger. For example a specific time during the day or a specific event from a smart device.
AND: This is where you add conditions that has to be met for the automation to work. For example, it has to be a Saturday or Sunday.
THEN: This is where all the actions happens. For example, turn ON all evening lights.

To read the full article covering Automations, click here.

Yes. When you add the action you want in your automation, you can also choose a timer for how long it should last.

Yes. It is possible to schedule events in Automations. When you set a trigger, you can decide to trigger on a certain day, a specific time and also repeat the trigger.

Yes. With Automations, you can send push notifications to your phone or e-mail messages to any e-mail address. E-mail messages can also be tagged with variables like sensor data or camera snapshots.

Yes. It’s possible to automate your lights to turn on every sunset. When you enter your WHEN-trigger you can choose Sunset/Sunrise. Sunset-time will automatically adapt depending on day of the year and your location.

No, at the moment it is not possible.

Yes. Animus Heart works with all three platforms.

Your voice assistant will not work together with Animus Heart without internet connection. Your Animus Heart on the other hand continues to handle your other smart home devices even without internet connection.

It’s not a must. However, it may enhance your smart home experience. Our integrations with the leading voice assistances lets you control devices on Z-Wave and 433MHz with voice.

When you add a new device in your Animus Home app, choose Google Assistant. Then follow the guide there.

You can also see this tutorial.

When you add a new device in your Animus Home app, choose HomeKit. Then follow the guide there.

You can also see this tutorial.

Yes. As long as you have internet access on your smartphone and home.

Note, remote access also needs to be enabled manually in your Animus Home app before this can be possible. Here is a link on how to enable remote access.

Yes. When enabling remote access on Animus Heart, you are linking your Animus cloud account with your local Animus Heart. This means that when you log in with your web account outside of your home, the Animus Web Portal points you to your home and creates a direct tunnel with you and your local Animus Heart only. It’s like being there without being there. Learn more here.