I’m new to this smart home stuff, but thinking about getting a Green with smart switches and temp sensors to control plugged in 120V electric heaters. Can HA let me configure a schedule such that a certain temperature will be maintained in each zone? Seems like this should be a simpler use of this platform, but would hate to buy it all to learn this is not possible. I’m a software dev so can usually figure this kind of stuff out but don’t want this any more complicated than it needs to be. Thanks!
Welcome to Winter! Most of the Northern Hemisphere has either asked, or at least thought of the same issue in the last month or so.
Black Friday looms. Lots of exciting gadgets at ($x plus n, with x-y discounts, where y is often less than n in hindsight) to tempt you. All the latest Matter devices, ready to talk to Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung and other infospheres, complete with overseas cloud monitoring and endless advertising for eternity. All controlled by apps on your phone that control the device but not others. Your phone is full of apps. Your thumb is worn out from scrolling. Just don’t expect all the infospheres to talk politely to each other, just begrudgingly. This is where HomeAssistant cuts across the artificial barriers, as long as the integrations exist for your gadget. It is a very fast paced update cycle, with new versions and devices added on weekly and monthly cycles. Even AI cannot keep up, offering you outdated solutions that were cutting edge only a short time ago.
HomeAssistant empowers you to control devices how you want, when you want, using most of the commonly available controllable devices out there, without becoming trapped in walled garden ecospheres by certain vendors. It gives you access to the underlying data and ypu can choose what to do with it.
It enticingly tempts you, appealing to your desire to control, to tinker.
Yes, you can go out on a purchasing spree and do that, or do a bit of deeper research and choose some strategies with a view of the bigger picture, of full home automation, with fine control over consumption costs while enjoying the benefits of a warm cosy home.
Short answer for the gimme crowd, yes.
Long answer for the world dominion crowd is yes too!
Go on do a bit more RTFM…
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Home Assistant is capable of what you require with the following provisos.
- Your hardware (plugs, temperature sensors) are supported
- You are willing to
a. write some automations to schedule the heating
b. create some generic thermostats to control the temperatures
c. or install a scheduling component (Custom integration)
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One caveat, make sure the smart switches/plugs are rated to handle the current draw. Electric heaters can be pigs, especially on 120, and not all smart plugs and switches will be rated for that kind of load.
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@cissor
Yes absolutely this is one of the most common and straightforward uses of Home Assistant.Use the built-in Generic Thermostat integration pair a temp sensor with a smart switch/plug controlling the heater it maintains your target temp perfectly and you can add weekly schedules via the UI scheduler or automations. Super reliable for plugged in electric heaters go for it
Look at what is out there.
The old way was to have a thermostat on the wall. It connected to a boiler, heater, or other source of heat. You turned the knob and it kept to that setting until you turned it off. One sensor, one valve.
Later a timer was used. Clock spring, or electrical motor with contacts that were made and broken on a 24 hour cycle, and even later push button controllers with daily, weekly, season, and holiday cycles.
Behind the scenes the heat producing equipment technology stayed the same, or only gradually improved. It was just the user interface that was heavily promoted, the bits the public see.
Along came reverse cycle air conditioning, heat pumps, solar, and other forms of heat generation. The familiar controllers stayed the same. The valves and switching gear had stood the test of time and still worked.
Then along came the cost of living, rudely intruding into our lives, along with marketing and endless advertising. Everything had to be new, exciting, cheaper, and better than what the Jones’s had up the road. It had to be connected, and driven off the Internetz.
Now we want a centralised controller, to see the whole picture, to collect the data, analyse it, and make suitable choices. You don’t want waste, where devices were left on because it was inconvenient to turn them off, or not possible. You have access to atomic clocks, accurate to a nanosecond in a million years. Your temperature, set to a warm sunny day by the teenagers so they can walk around inside in winter with only a T-Shirt on, stays the same until you notice and turn it down, envoking howls of outrage, but you pay the exorbitant bills. You leave the heater on when you leave so the house is warm when you get home later that day, or evening.
You want to be master of your universe. A maid or butler takes care of it for the well-to-do. You want an electronic maid.
Enter HomeAssistant.
Carefully examine what you already have installed. How did you survive last winter?
Do you have separate heaters in each room? Recirculating water through the whole house, with individual valves to each room heat emitter? Heated flooring? Ducted heating (and cooling), with or without zones? A wood stove, with or without forced fan heat circulation? A boiler, consuming vast amounts of hydrocarbons, gas, coal, wood, oil, or even kitchen scraps and cooking oil, belching nasty carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? Is the solution you currently have the best for you, both in ongoing running costs and replacement cost? Ate you worried about climate change?
How is the temperature currently measured?
How is it currently being controlled? Is it manual or automated? Poorly or done well?
Each point can probably be controlled, or what is there automated, some by direct connection, some by replacement, and some by adding sensors. These then are added to HomeAssistant as entities and you can monitor and control them, based on values.
Of course your trained and experienced HVAC technician already knows all this, and is willing to do this analysis and install something that will fit the bill, at a cost.
The cost looks high and you reckon you know better and can do it cheaper.
Welcome to the world of endless futzing! Your time is free if you are tinkering. Each puzzle solved brings a rush of dopamine - the runners’ high.
Your HVAC expert only offers one or two options, based on experience and deep knowledge of reliability and suitability. Few think to consult and discuss, to flesh out what you NEED, not what you want, and work as a team to get you the best solution, as you are now paying by the hour.
Confused, you ask AI, listen to the commercials, and post on some anonymous forum, asking anonymous strangers for advice.
Welcome!
Yes, walk before you run. Pick a small problem and solve it. Get the sense of achievement to embolden yourself. Eat that enormous chocolate elephant, a small nibble at a time.
We will gently hold your hand if you thoughtfully document what you are trying to do and what you have done already. Nobody likes a lazy self entitled crybaby, but everybody is willing to offer a helping hand if you are trying and struggling.
Your challenge in your first post is common, the solutions elegant, and the rewards are worth it. As already evidenced, we will steer you away from pitfalls, mostly from our own mistakes, experience, and observation.
Don’t be afraid to ask. Stand on the shoulders of giants. Remember that not everybody has your best interest at heart, marketing and sales people are ruthless with their own agenda over-riding yours, and everybody is motivated by money, spent or saved.
The skills of those that respond in these forums varies widely. They are volunteers and you have no control over their time or intellectual abilities AI struggles to keep up in the home automation area, embarrassingly so.
Be generous, paying it forward and share your own experience for the benefit of others.
There are simple how-to guides on the HomeAssistant website, easy to follow. A deep understanding of these will go a long way to getting you started, and guide your choices.
The house has had no central heat for the last few years (and has never had A/C nor needs it). In our particular part of the SF Bay Area this is not a big deal as the outdoor temperature is between 45-75 deg. 90% of the time, all seasons, day and night. After several of our coldest days, the lowest I’ve ever measured indoors is 59, having added no heat (outside of trivial sources like the fridge). This will be even better once we replace the single-pane windows and finish insulating the hollow walls. We’ve used standalone electric space heaters turned on/off mostly manually and that works ok, but now want them on the wall out of the way, and with something closer to a real thermostat that can measure somewhere in the zone, not necessarily on the heater itself. I will undertake a learning exercise and proof of concept with a HA Green, HA ZBT-2, SONOFF S31 Smart Plug and SONOFF SNZB-02P sensor, to control an existing heater, then based on the outcome decide on next steps. Thanks so much for your insights.
Good you are looking at insulation efficiency first. The best way to save money.
Before you go down the Sonoff Zigbee route, why not get the Green and a cheap $10 on eBay Xiaomi Thermometer LYWSD03MM and apply the custom firmware at GitHub - pvvx/ATC_MiThermometer: Custom firmware for the Xiaomi Thermometers and Telink Flasher to get an accurate temperature and humidity input into HomeAssistant, move it around a bit to find the most reliable reading, and then work your way up to the big guns? Note once you have got bored with it on Bluetooth, you can download even newer firmware to make it talk ZigBee with the Sonoffs, if you decide to go down that path.
The process of getting the Green configured and talking to the sensor will prepare you for going down the ZigBee path. Little steps.
Heads up: Take note of the voltage, current and wattage values your heater draws, and allow a comfortable margin for any switching devices to allow for reliable long life. If it pulls 10amps, get a 16amps rating, if 20amps get a 25amps rated controller switch, etc. The ratings on the switch are maximum ratings and sometimes people forget that.
If you like, post a photo of the label on the side of the heater that has this along with the make and model and we can confirm.
You can use HA to control appliances in your home, as has been said, so long as they are supported. And you can do a lot better with HA than with commercial options.
But do not assume that you will just get it up and running and that it will do what you want and be perfect. There is a learning curve. Most people start with simple automations and work their way through. And connectivity technologies, hardware issues, and other aspects are not always evident from product descriptions or documentation; and they can be unique to your specific setting.
If what you want is a thermostat and that’s it and you just want it to work and be done with it–then I don’t think that HA is the right approach. There are great commercial thermostats out there.
If you want to use HA for a thermostat, get an HA system first and start with something other than using it as a thermostat. So that you know what the strenghts and weaknesses are.
I offer this caution because of the posture of your post: you said you’re just looking to buy for this application.
I appreciate the thoughts – in fact I started looking more in the field of thermostats but didn’t seem to be making progress finding any products that would control an electric heater without being hardwired to it. Some heater manufacturers provide a proprietary app to control thermostats built into their units, but it seems they all make larger panel heaters, and not all my rooms have the free wallspace for such, so I started looking at baseboard heaters, which seem to be generally not set up with more modern controls. This is all to say… if you are aware of specific thermostats that can be controlled by an app and in turn control an electric baseboard heater wirelessly, I would be very interested to know.
I’m not sure I understand the advantage you’re citing for the Xiaomi – you say it’s cheap at $10 but that’s the same price as the Sonoff. Is the custom firmware something that makes it work directly with Home Assistant without Zigbee? I’m willing to spend a bit more to skip some lower level steps like custom firmware. I’m not aiming to become a master of smart home tech, or dive into details unless it promises a big payback for the effort – if the basic setup I described came ready to use in a box, I’d have already purchased it. For some reason baseboard electric just seems really behind the curve of controls and automation, so it seems I’ll need to assemble my own. All day at work I have to dive deep into technical minutae, I’m not looking for more at home except the bare minimum to run these baseboards.
You posted an abstract question, and it’s definitely one that’s appropriate for this forum. You got a lot of responses, which is a reflection of this forum’s vibrance and enthusiasm.
Please mind that your question was very abstract, though. People’s comments reflect their own experiences, and I recommend that you view those as personal experiences, not predictions about how particular decisions will impact you.
You asked about a very general systemic question, and as I noted in an earlier response, this solution might work for you but it won’t be a matter of people telling you yes or no.
Rather than asking people which sensors are worth the money or which sensors work well, I strongly recommend that you get a Home Assistant system going and try simple things, like door sensors, or a few lights. And then you’ll actually know your own priorities.
I wish you fun and satisfaction in this pursuit.
If you are talking hard-wired, then the current draw will probably require a hefty switch/relay/contactor (different terms for the same thing).
These can be switched with a HomeAssistant compatible device, but it probably won’t be the $10 one.
Post a picture of the label with the make and model of the heater and the ratings.
Battery powered with a cute display. Tiny but functional. No wiring. Bluetooth out of the box. You can use it straight out of the box with the Xiaomi integration, working off the chinese cloud, but the exercise of flashing it so it doesn’t will prepare you for the exciting path ahead with HomeAssistant and that ecosystem.
This is the sensor only. You still need the switching part. Post the pic.
Update: The Green doesn’t have built-in in bluetooth. You will need a USB bluetooth dongle hanging off a USB lead for best performance (not plugged in directly to the onboard port, but hanging off the end off something like a two foot USB cable) to use it.
The SONOFF S31 only supports a maximum of 15Amps or 1800watts at 110Volts, so may not have enough oomph for your panel heater.
The SNZB-02P speaks ZigBee hence needs to have something like the new ZBT-2 to chat with as the Green doesn’t have ZigBee either.
Lets get back to the basics. Post the panel heater label pic so we can work out how much needs to be switched, before we work out what devices to purchase.
Find out what the rating is of the panel heater so you can work out a suitable device to switch it.
what rating and panel? im confused IOT7712, tell me more?