I have been looking at ways to control my under floor heating system through HA. I have two manifolds next to each other, each connected to 8 heating loops. So in total there are 16 loops controlling about 12 zones.
I will have Xiaomi temperature sensors that report the temperature of every zone to HA. I then need to find a way to control the motoric valves.
First I looked at ready solutions like Homematic IP but found that too expensive.
Next I researched arduino boards and ways to open and close the valves using ESP32/8266 and relay boards but I’m just starting tipping my toes into the home automation world so I’m afraid that is going to be too complex (I am an engineer with some programming background).
Now I am wondering if it is possible to use the Sonoff 4 Channel R2 switch or the Shelly 4 Pro. I would then connect 4 and 4 valves to each switch, which means I would end up with 3 or 4 switches. Then I would let HA tell the switches when to send power to the valves depending on the output from the temperature sensors.
So I ask you, is this solution the easiest “cheap” way to accomplish my goal or am I overlooking something?
And if I decide to go with e.g. the Sonoff 4 channel switch, do I need to flash it with Tasmota and use ESPHome or can I just use it straight out of the box?
I decided to stick with the solution I mentioned with the Sonoff 4ch relay boxes. In the meantime I found out that there is a new Sonoff component in HA that let’s you connect to sonoff relays and easily control them without having to flash it with tasmota or esphome, which is a relief as I was not to excited to have to flash the relays. See here a post from Dr. Zzs on that topic: https://drzzs.com/sonofflan/
I’m very interested by your project. I have a floor heating system totally dumb.
In parallel I was playing with a sonoff with the sonofflan custom_component. It works quite well. At the end, I had to flash my sonoff device with ESPHome due to a bug with the refresh of power consumtion. The data was not always refreshed and I need to have it in real time for my project (pool pump controler).
Interesting to hear about the refresh issue with the sonofflan custom component. I will have my setup up and running within the next two weeks and I will see if I experience similar issues. Will report back with how it goes.
I am interrested in your progress, please tell us more.
how do you control your electrovalves with sonoff or Shelly relay? not all or nothing, but let say 30% or x%. ?
thank you for your help