I have two of these devices from Amazon.de. I’ve managed to replace my old analog thermostat with it, even the NTC sensor was compatible with the old one. However, I can’t setup the Wifi connection. I’m able to enable Wifi on the device (fast blinking Wifi symbol). Unfortunately, the Chinese Room Heat app linked on the QR code on the instruction paper is not available for download in Finland. >_< I got the apk file and installed that instead. The app doesn’t ever seem to find any devices, though. Did any of you have any issues with this?
I’m assuming that the thermostat provides a hidden Wifi AP which the phone is supposed to connect. At least I can’t figure any other way how the connection setup would work. But the phone never tries to switch the Wifi network. Do you have any idea how the Wifi configuration works under the hood?
Strange, I had issues giving my 2.4ghz wireless network name and password when my phone was connected to my 5ghz (different names for each) apart from that it worked fine.
I was thinking I’d have more issues as I have a custom rooted ROM and don’t have much luck with things ‘just working’
If you have a spare phone, try setting that one up as UK English and see if that helps? Normally these Chinese brands support Chinese and English end of… with support for only those characters sets.
I actually got them working. Just decided to try with the other thermostat, and after a few attempts I just accidentally noticed the Wifi icon was steady. The same thing with the other one: I was about to give up and then noticed that the setup had succeeded.
As for the app availability, my phone is actually in English (I just prefer my gadgets that way). But, now that I searched for “Room Heat” in Play Store, I found “Room Heat(eu)” which seems to be the same thing. Didn’t try it yet because I’m at work.
Still, I’d much rather just bypass that horrible app altogether.
As a completely unrelated side note, the default temperature hysteresis of the thermostats is super-high. I just happened to find out that the “dif” setting in the native configuration allows you to change it. The lowest setting is 1°C which still is quite high but far better than the default ±2°C around the set-point.
Yes it’s mad !
But as mine sits in a warm hallway it’s next to useless for me. I just tell Hass to set it to heat, and the temperature to 30. Forcing it on
I’m getting close.
When I get happy with my Node-RED flows and bits in HASS i’ll do a github dump for people, with some pics and link i here to help future me, when i forget how i did it all.
That’s what my nodered does. I have 4 Bruh sensors around the flat, that I mean average and then smooth, tho the smoothing means the temperature can over shoot abit.
But how is it different from some kind of Wifi controlled relay if you don’t use any of the functions of the thermostat? I would like to automate everything through HA, but still want to override it manually through the buttons on the thermostat. But then it will use the unreliable temperature, right?
There’s not much of a difference…
I wanted a plain WiFi dry relay to work with my boiler. I have several Broadlink SC1 that I love : native integration into HA, really inexpensive, easy to plug… I wish Broadlink did a dry relay version. They don’t.
Then I came across this component that made the Beok thermostat my choice : still native, really inexpensive and, as a Broadlink-based device, expected reliable.
Now that it’s installed, I like some features :
the temperature sensor, even not so precise, is still an information I can use in my automation
in case of a HA/network failure, the thermostat will still work as a standalone. Of course, with limited precision, but as a backup, better than nothing.
if needed, it’s still easy to turn the heating on on this device. For over 1 month now, I never needed to, neither did my wife (which is a better test !!)
If you have instead gone with SonOff and the MQTT/Tasmota integration, the Sonoff SV is for you.
The fact it looked like a thermostat and behaved like one, whether HASS was controling it, or the app was or everything was down and it was just using its schedule saves in it’s self (ha beat that nest and hive, if the internet goes down it follows it’s locally saved schedule !)
Sorry rant over
BUT. Neither of them is really maintained any longer and it’s unlikely you will get any help if you encounter issues. My strong recommendation is that you should turn around and walk away, slowly. Once you’ve taken 20 steps, start running. Those devices are not worth your time - they’re absolutely horrible and unreliable. Get yourself some nice Zigbee thermostats or one of those Tuya ones that can be flashed with ESPHome. Really.
So 99 times out of a 100 calls my thermostat answers the call. But every so often it doesn’t or returns an error.
This then causes an error in my flow which can lead to the heating not working all night…
Ask me how I know, on the coldest uk date this year…
For me its not a huge problem as our new build only gets cold enough to need heat when its not sunny and below 5c outside.
If I had to get something again I would either get a sonoff (as my system just senses voltage and doesn’t draw current on the switched wire) or buy off the shelf proper WiFi thermostat
