Best HA-compatible smart thermostat

Hardware
1

Hi,

I’m moving to a new house next year. I’ll start with a new HA setup there. One of the things I need is smart thermostats. In my current house, I have a MAX! eQ-3 system. It works okay, especially after flashing the control unit with a custom CUL firmware. However, the system will stay in the house when I sell it.

Requirements for a new smart heating system:

  • it should be able to couple valves so they will follow a single room thermostat
  • compatible with HA, preferably out of the box, without custom firmware etc.
  • local integration (no cloud)
  • affordable: I need a valve in every room, so especially the price of the valves shouldn’t be too high

Any recommendations and experiences will be highly appreciated!

2

Hi,
I’m using the thermostats from Homematic IP - basically, cloud based, but they can be used locally with seting up a CCU (can also be done as addon in HomeAssistant or as a seperate system)…

They can be integrated into HA without any further issues.

They can be used together with the door- / window sensors from the same company - which would allow a direct communication / direct link between the window-sensor and a thermostat, so the thermostat will also close the vent as soon as a Window will be opened when HA or the CCU system is off / not available.

in my opinion, that’s one of the big advantages of their system.
They are using their own “protocol” - so do not communicate over wifi, so you don’t flood your network with additional IP addresses.

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There are several different thermostats available from this vendor… some with pretty nice design - some others that do not allow local controll on the thermostat itself - and some other, pretty basic ones.

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3

That’s funny, it seems that Homematic IP is the successor of my MAX! eQ3 system. I see a lot of similarities indeed.

4

Homematic, and Homematic IP are also from EQ3 :wink:
Yes, I think the Homematic and then the Homematic IP devices are the successor of the older MAX brand… and I think, there was some kind of “cashback” in the past when you switched from MAX to the Homematic / IP … not sure if this is still available ^^

5
6

I can recommend Homematic IP devices, but I would suggest you invest in a RF device and run your own CCU.
I run HA supervised docker on a Debain 11 Linux installation and on the Debian I have installed Debmatic, but there are other solutions too, like RaspberryMatic.
The Debmatic page has a list of compatible RF devices and I think they all work for RaspberryMatic too.

7

Thanks for pointing that out. However, I need to leave my existing system in my current house, so I can’t trade them in for the Homematic ones.

What’s the benefit of that over buying the Homematic CCU3 and flashing it with RaspberryMatic?

8

And, if I use the stock CCU3 with original firmware, I guess I’d have to use the “Homematic Cloud” integration instead?

9

Hi,

The homematic IP system does come without a CCU.
They are using a “Hub” - that does connect to their Cloud… and afaik - it can’t be flashed.

But, instead of their cloud, you could just use a CCU3 - or RaspberryMatic, which is a CCU Clone - they are offline and only in your local network.

I’ve just switched from the Cloud to the Raspberry Matic… and it is working well so far :slight_smile:
Also, I would recommend to use the Custom Integration “Homematic(IP) local” instead of the outdated core integration for Homematic… since the team does no longer add new hardware to the core-integration.

10

So this is not a CCU? Then what is a CCU? Where can I buy one?

11

no, that’s their cloud based accesspoint… (which you have mentioned above- it should be local)…
I am not sure, if the CCU from the (older) Homematic System is still available - that was, before they started with the cloud-based “IP” devices.

The good thing here is:
Homematic IP is using the same protocoll etc. as the older Homematic devices, so they can be used in the local CCU environment, but not vice versa… (the homematic cannot be used in the cloud based IP environment)

The CCU looks similar to the Accesspoint - I think, it is bigger…?!

https://de.elv.com/smart-home-zentrale-ccu3-inklusive-aio-creator-neo-lizenz-ccu-plugin-151965?fs=3527400979&_gl=1*sk8mrp*_up*MQ..&gclid=CjwKCAiA7IGcBhA8EiwAFfUDsfySIlaO6zS8-iWTaGa0MxHngOjdbyodqSx0HDpYpNS1aMSwg5mV9RoC0xAQAvD_BwE
12

Oh, that’s quite an expensive unit, compared to that cloud AP. If I were to run HA addon that emulates a CCU, are there any ready made USB dongles that I can use for the radio part?

13 
https://de.elv.com/elv-homematic-ip-arr-bausatz-rf-usb-stick-fuer-alternative-steuerungsplattformen-hmip-rfusb-fuer-smart-home-hausautomation-152306?fs=3374190626&_gl=1*1naanif*_up*MQ..&gclid=CjwKCAiA7IGcBhA8EiwAFfUDsfySIlaO6zS8-iWTaGa0MxHngOjdbyodqSx0HDpYpNS1aMSwg5mV9RoC0xAQAvD_BwE

even if this is a kit, assembling it is pretty easy :wink:
just a very little bit of soldering is required.

Maybe, you can find this preassembled somewhere - I don’t know (maybe on amaz*** ?)

14

Hi,

I recently installed a Shelly TRV. Works great and out of the box with HA (no cloud or CCU needed).

I now run 59 Shelly and 5 ESP8266 devices over WiFi and no problem at all.

Good luck on your quest for the best device!

Kind regards,

Luuk

15

Yeah, their CCUs are expensive, but a RF device is cheap and the Debmatic os just their CCU firmware running on debian.
You just need device like this.

16

Thanks Luuk! While HomeMatic sounds interesting, it is good to hear about alternatives!

17

I would my experience with other systems have been so-so.
The reason for this is that you have to program some intelligence in HA and maybe NodeRed to actually get the different devices to work together.
In the HomematicIP ecosystem it all work together, because its designed like that.
The wall thermometers communicate with the thermostats and define a common temperature to act on and the window/door sensors send info to the thermostats when a window or door is opened.
A manual change of the temperature setting on a wall thermometer is reflected in the thermostat and vice-versa.

Trying to get this setup going in other systems can be hard and especially the common temperature to set the heating required is hard, because the thermostats often have their own logic builtin, that you can not easily circumvent.

If you do not go with a ecosystem that have this common temperature designed into it, then make sure that your chosen thermostats can be controlled directly at the valve without any builtin logic that takes over and be prepared to program a lot of the logic in HA and NodeRed or similar instead.

18

Thanks, @WallyR! That’s really insightful. Would love to hear about systems similar to HomeMatic. (Not that I don’t think HomeMatic is any good. But I’d like to have some options to choose from.)

19

of course, there are a lot of thermostats available - the devices from AVM (Fritz! Smarthome) for example - which are working with DECT… or just many of the other smart thermostats that are available on the market.

In terms of the eco-system, I still beleive, Homematic is one of the devices that would fit most of your requirements…

The AVM devices are also working locally - and can act as an DECT Repeater also (usefull if you have a cordless phone…)
But I don’t know, if there are other devices like window Sensors available…
Most other devices are working cloud based, as far as I know…

Then, there is another device from EQ3 - a Bluetooth based thermostat - but personally, I don’t think that this would be an option I would go for - at least, I haven’t tested any of these devices, so I don’t know how secure they are (pairing, etc.)

I also found another thermostat, which seems to work with Tuya / Zigbee… so it should also be possible to implement them into HomeAssistant - at least, by adding a local zigbee usb-stick to the server it should be possible to keep them local.

But again, I don’t know how this does work with other devices like window sensors, etc.

Here, WallyR has mentioned a valid Point.
If you are just going for a thermostat to controll temperature through home assistant, most of the devices should be OK.
But if you want to have some kind of logic behind your heating profiles, more work is required.
You need to create the automations in HomeAssistant or Node Red in order to close the vent when a WIndow is open.

This would require HomeAssistant to be available all the time - and your Automation should not stuck or break… etc.
HomeMatic in this case can even do this basic Job even if your HomeAssistant AND your CCU aren’t available right now…