How do I switch it
I am not planning on getting any single baseboard heater that draws more than 1500 watts. All my circuits are 120V / 20A, in some cases 2 heaters will be on the same circuit, which naturally means they must be lower wattage. Everything is being planned based on total circuit draw / room heating needs. I have wired a house before based on my own circuit design and understand how to avoid overloading the breakers. It’s smart home that I’m new to. Unless there’s an advantage to Bluetooth over ZigBee I think I will try the Sonoff switches & sensors first. Thanks again.
bluetooth is more of a point to point, from the device to the bt adapter (but there are bluetooth proxies).
zigbee is a mesh network.
in my experience, you get more details and control with zigbee devices, but it is granted a bit more complicated and possibly more expensive.
Your baseband heaters draw 1500watts, and the SONOFF S31 is rated for 1800watts, so it should be ok to use to switch one heater per S31 per 20Amp circuit with a small margin for safety. Be aware the S31 talks WiFi, not ZigBee protocol.
The Xiaomi Thermometer LYWSD03MMC is a battery powered BlueTooth device that can be coaxed into being a ZigBee device (I posted both the firmware tweaks earlier to get there), hence compatible with the newly announced ZBT-2, and the custom firmware also frees you from the possibly unwanted chinese cloud connection. Battery life about one year. The built-in display shows temperature, humidity, and battery level, configurable through the custom firmware for how often it updates, which affects battery life. A little bit of fiddling to wrangle it to the final device you want.
The SNZB-02P speaks ZigBee and has a battery life of about 4 years. No onboard display, but that is not needed. You will need a ZigBee hub however.
There are many other temperature sensors, some mains powered, some battery powered. Putting one in each room where there is a heater gives you the flexibility to individually control that room temperature,.something most older systems do not do, having only one thermostat for the whole HVAC system. The secret is decoupling the sensor from the switch. Put each where it works best - the temperature sensor on the wall away from windows and doors to accurately measure, and the switch at the wall outlet where the heater is plugged in.
Try one room and see how you go. Don’t like the temperature sensor? Swap it for a different model and the flexibility of HomeAssisant shines with just a small update to the entities and all your thermostat and climate integrations continue to work. Once you have got everything working, move onto the next room and you will find it much easier. Before you know it, the house is full of smarts, all chatting amongst themselves.
Newer devices arrive on the market with added functionality? See a great Black Friday deal on some other ZigBee device you looked at? Want to use the power monitoring functionality on your S31 for monitoring when your washing machine or clothes dryer finishes instead - no problem - just reconfigure HomeAssistant - that is the power you can harness to make your life smarter and easier. Tire of your Xiaomi gadget as a thermometer? Reflash it to be a BlueTooth tracker tag and use it as a presence sensor to detect when you get home. All in software/firmware - no soldering.
Of course adding timers and room presence sensors, and remote control so you don’t waste power but can have the room warm for when you get home from a long trip is just icing on the cake.
Take the plunge. Best wishes - a lot of people do this. Let us know how you go.
I have several zigbee INSPELNING smart plug (E2206), they are fairly cheap, available at your local ikea and very reliable in my experience, although I don’t know off hand what they are rated for, I assume similar to the s31 (which I also have a couple of).
Having both, I prefer the inspelning/zigbee over the s31/wifi, given the option I choose to avoid iot over wifi whenever possible.
INSPELNING plug smart
Type: E2206
Input: 220-240 Vac, 50/60 Hz
Max output power: 3680 W / 16 A Resistive load
Max 300W motor load
INSPELNING plug smart
Type: E2220
Input: 120 Vac, 50/60Hz
Resistive: max. 1800 W 15.0 A
Motor: max. 300 W
Both ZigBee with energy monitoring.
For US 110Volts, maybe use the E2220 model. Similar power rating to the Sonoff S31.
Both supported by HomeAssistant.
Thanks for the info. Sonoff appears to make 2 different S31s, a ‘Lite’ that is Wi-Fi and one that is for Zigbee. They don’t make this very clear, I almost ordered the wrong thing.
Oh my! Point me to the place on their web page where it makes that clear? It doesn’t! Even in the user manual it shows both models (always together as S31/S31 LITE) and WiFi only is mentioned. Quite misleading. Shows how careful you have to do your planning, and even vendor web pages can be misleading.
You actually have to search out the Zigbee version (the S31 lite ->zb<- [as opposed to S31 LITE] which doesn’t have power monitoring and costs slightly more)
Most likely the zb model came along later, and they haven’t gone back to update the original web page or user documentation for the S31/S31 LITE.
Yikes.