Hi,
I am looking for guidance on which TRVs to buy. I have HA set up in a VM on my Mac but with nothing set up yet. My first task is to enable simple on/off and temp controls on radiators. It’s a large cold house & many rooms rarely used so I want to control radiators to a schedule eg. heat bedroom from 10pm to 12pm then 7am to 9am, heat office 10am to 4pm Monday to Thursday etc… I just want to avoid any external dependencies (cloud) and also keep it simple. If I buy a Tado or Tuya Smart TRV for example can I connect direct to HA or do I need their “Internet Bridge” too ? I’m comfortable with all the techie side of things but I can’t seem to find answers to some very basic questions such as “What hardware does HA need to control your heating”
Would appreciate any recommendation for TRV’s that don’t need a bridge if such things exist.
Once I’ve done it I’ll write a how-to.
Honest.
There are wifi trv’s out there, but more common are zigbee ones, mainly because zigbee has lower power consumption than wifi, so batteries last longer. I use sonoff trv’s and sonoff usb zigbee gateway . Connection is local, without sonoff cloud or anything. Zigbee gateway is mandatory, since this is the link between trv and HA. It doesn’t have to be sonoff, others are ok, too, for example lan-based instead of usb…
Just to clarify here.
Zigbee is the main choice for many (Matter might be the future).
Both Zigbee and Matter over Thread requires a hub, but it is an open standard, so there are a lot to choose from.
HA have the functionality to work as a hub, but needs a radio device.
Sonoff and NabuCasa are some of the common choices (NabuCasa ZBT-2 is the HA hardware departements suggestion for such a device).
They can typically be flashed to run either Zigbee or Thread.
Zigbee and Thread are mesh networks, so the devices do often not have that powerful a radio, like f.ex. WiFi. Instead the network relay messages from one node to next and can therefore reach further than WiFI with enough nodes.
Only nodes that areains powered will Relay though, but some smart outlets and smart light bulbs can often be installed and give extra benefit besides just relaying.
So as per the original question if I buy some Zigbee TRV’s do I also need a Zigazig hub/bridge or does HA see these as WiFi devices and able to control them ?