The problem there, at least with my system, is zone valve open does not equate to the boiler friing. The boiler may be off because of the boiler return thermostat.
In fact zone valve open will/should equate directly with wiser heating hours in the integration.
Re PS 600 Sorry yes I should have said you can remove the clamp and use you own.
If your boiler is wired to a normal plug you can plug it into a wiser smart plug and use the power monitor to see it firing. Mine at least takes virtually no power when idle. I had hope I would be able to tell when just the water pump is running to cool the heat exchange but I cant easily.
That’s funny, Mine did too!
Just had to press the Setup button twice to get it to try connecting again, then it was fine.
Thanks. Yes, I had found the manual and am now thinking the same. Might even be able to buy some sort of 22mm clip from a plumbing store.
Somthing like this might be an option, if the thermometer will fit inside the recess. Could always use a file or Dremel to make it larger if needed.
This looks like it could also do the flow return temp at half the price of the option above.
See this thread Good and simple way to monitor temperature on hot pipes in central wood boiler heating system? - #3 by Mahko_Mahko
I can’t see a way to purchase it or the price?
Here for 20 EUR. Forget it tho, looks like EU only shipping. Vive la Brexit
The SP 600 sensor is 15 mm long and roughly square cross section about 2 mm per side. one face is concave to fit the pipe surface.
Thanks. That’s a pity.
Thanks. I have ordered two. I’m thinking I can keep it simple and just place them under some pipe insulation and then cable tie that in place.
According to the Zigbee2MQTT supported devices database, it only exposes temperature and no battery information. How are you integrating it into Home Assistant and do you get the battery levels exposed/reported?
Off topic, but whilst we’re talking about sensors, does anyone have a good/simple (preferrably not DIY) solution for measuring how much hot water there is in a hot water tank?
As mentioned in one of my previous posts, I want to be able to boost the hot water after someone has taken a bath and I was thinking of using a humidity sensor i.e. when the humidy in the bathroom has increased 20% above the ambient humidity of the house, someone has either taken a shower or had a bath.
Ideally, I’d like to be able to tell how much hot water is left and boost based on that though.
I know you can buy smart hot water tanks e.g. Mixergy, which is fine (although still expensive compared to a regular tank) if you need to replace your tank, but not if you don’t.
Temperature sensors/probes aren’t really a solution either as my tank is encased in integrated insulation, so no way to attach a sensor to it without compromising the insulating shell.
I use Froggit DP1500 Wifi gateway and sensor DP30 (max 60 Celsius),
and plenty other sensors (DP35, DP50, DP70).
HACS: Ecowitt Weather Station
(gateway possible sam es Ecowitt GW1000/1100/1104, Sensor DP 30 = WN30)
https://www.froggit.de/?cat=c40_Raumklima-und-Luftqualitaet—IP-Wettersysteme-dp-serie.html
I admit that sometimes gateway stops…need Wifi gateway to repower.
Not sure what happened to @Creagan and I have been holding off sharing this as I didn’t want to steal his thunder for the ingenious solution he messaged me about, which I have only just got round to trying out and have adapted slightly, but all credit to him for coming up with it.
To mimic the shaded area under the temperature in the built-in History Graph Card for when a room is heating in the Mini Graph Card or History Explorer Card, create template sensors as follows:
- binary_sensor:
# Living Room Heating binary sensor
- name: Living Room Heating
icon: >-
{%- if is_state('binary_sensor.living_room_heating', 'on') -%}
mdi:radiator
{%- else -%}
mdi:radiator-disabled
{%- endif -%}
state: "{{ state_attr('climate.living_room_climate', 'is_heating') }}"
- sensor:
# Living Room Heating Graph sensor
- name: Living Room Heating Graph
icon: >-
{%- if is_state('binary_sensor.living_room_heating', 'on') -%}
mdi:radiator
{%- else -%}
mdi:radiator-disabled
{%- endif -%}
state: >-
{%- if is_state('binary_sensor.living_room_heating', 'on') -%}
{{ states('sensor.living_room_climate_temperature') }}
{%- else -%}
undefined
{%- endif -%}
You can probably just reference the is_heating
attribute of the climate sensor directly rather than creating the binary sensor as well, but I have not tested that.
Edit: Changed {%- else -%}0{%- endif -%}
to {%- else -%}undefined{%- endif -%}
on the recommendation of the developer of the History Explorer Card to allow it to automatically calculate the y-axis scale minimum value correctly.
Now, just add your Heating Graph sensor to your graph, making sure a fill underneath it specified as an option.
I have a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle running under the Zigbee home automation. I clicked the add device button on its info page and put the battery into the sensor. I get temp and LQI directly. battery shows as unknown but it the battery voltage is an attribute ( click on battery then info then attributes to see it).
Good luck, just watch out for that micro switch I described in the earlier post.
I put the cable tie round the pipe and sensor and pipe insulation over the top.
You might try putting on of the sp 600 sensors on the inlet of you hot water tank as close to the tank as you can get.
when someone runs hot water cold will be drawn in and the temperature the pipe will drop. The size or length of drop may even give some idea of how much water was drawn out.
Not sure if anyone else is interested in this, took m a while to figure out but it makes it easy to see which zones are on. It requires the card-mod integration.
- type: thermostat
entity: climate.bath
card_mod:
style: |
{% if state_attr(config.entity,'is_heating') %}
ha-card #slider-center #temperature > svg > text {
fill: red;
}
{% endif %}
Good idea that, thanks for sharing - makes it nice and clear when a zone is heating
I’m using the custom simple-thermostat card and have applied the same idea to that
type: custom:simple-thermostat
entity: climate.wiser_lounge
card_mod:
style: |
{% if state_attr(config.entity,'is_heating') %}
.sensor-value {
color: red;
}
{% endif %}
Nice! I modified this to use the precentage_demand
attribute and the matching orange #FF5722
colour used by the state-climate-heat-color
variable introduced in 2022.12.
card_mod:
style: >-
{%- if state_attr(config.entity,'percentage_demand') | float(0) > 0 -%}
ha-card #slider-center #temperature > svg > text { fill: #FF5722 }
{%- endif -%}
Which opens the question, what exactly is the difference between is_heating
and percentage_demand
? percentage_demand
above 0 seems to indicate more accurately whether the heating is on in a room than the is_heating
attribute. I don’t quite understand why is_heating
is not always true
when percentage_demand
is above 0 and the iTRVs do not seem to shut until percentage_demand
goes to 0. Therefore, I am generally using percentage_demand
to get a guage of when a radiator/heating in a room is on, even if it’s not actively calling for heat. Maybe that is the difference, is_heating
is actively calling for heat from the boiler and percentage_demand
above 0 means the TRV is open and the radiator is on?
As can be seen here:
The Living Room heating is on as percentage_demand
is 20% in this case, but the thermostat is indicating it’s idle.
Maybe this would be a better representation, where deep orange is used for is_heating
and amber for when percentage_demand
is above 0:
card_mod:
style: >-
{%- if state_attr(config.entity,'is_heating') -%}
ha-card #slider-center #temperature > svg > text { fill: #FF5722 }
{%- elif state_attr(config.entity,'percentage_demand') | float(0) > 0 -%}
ha-card #slider-center #temperature > svg > text { fill: #FFC107 }
{%- endif -%}
Which gives us this when percentage_demand
above 0:
And this, when is_heating
is true
:
Lastly, going back to my previous posts where I was talking about radiators being on over the setpoint, you will notice that this is a perfect example of that, where the Living Room percentage_demand
is 20% even though the temperature is 19.9C, the setpoint is 19.5C and is_heating
is false
.
Have you ever noticed is_heating
false when heating channel is on at the hub?