People are using some HA device to read light which flashes after some amount of gas is used on dumb meters. Similar approach could be used to track some indicator on boiler itself when it’s running - mine has green light when gas is firing.
Other option is to use clamp on meter on electrical cable going into boiler - this is less accurate measurement as pump sometimes run even though boiler stopped heating (overheated and cooling down or heating off called and it will still cycle for a bit.). When you would count time of higher electricity usage this way discounting stand-by time.
I managed to brake my HA installation so i reinstalled it and restored from backup. Now the only integration which doesnt work is Wiser’s. There is only this message in the log:
Connection error trying to communicate with Wiser Hub 192.168.1.43 for url http://{}:{}/data/v2/domain/. Error is Cannot connect to host 192.168.1.43:80 ssl:default [Connect call failed (‘192.168.1.43’, 80)]
The HubR is working and has the same IP. I can control it from the Wiser's app.
Yesm ad these grapsh are pretty much useless, because it ruins the scale.
Is there a way to filter out invalid data?
Thank you that is helpful. Our oil boiler is quite old (grant Euroflame 50/70) so no lights or indicator on it that I can use. Good point about the clamp on meter for the mains cable and pump run on etc. That might be accurate enough - certainly better than nothing.
Those are very cool cards. Thanks for discovering them to me. Just installed them and will set them up.
May I ask what entities are you using to differentiate between Heating, Boiler, Room and TRV? That’s super useful and I want that same breakdown.
Do you think maybe it could be that the algorithm has determined, based on the heat loss of your room, that going above the set point by .5 of a degree means that you room will stay within range of the target temperature for longer, thus needing to call for heat less?
That kind of is the type of behaviour I would expect from a smart hearing system.
You could track electric consumption Delta. If you know exactly how mamy W your boiler requires, you can track the change through your electricity consumption, assuming you do track you electrical energy consumption of course.
Hi Tommy
I have 2 Salus PS600 Smart Wireless Temperature Sensor, They work on Zigbee and were automatically configured by ZHA. They have a metal senor unit on the end of a 20cm lead and clip to hold it to 15mm pipe. They are not cheep. I paid just under £40 each on eBay. I had a problem with one. There is a very small micro switch under the mounting bracket. The pcb it was mounted on was slightly so it move not the switch. This stopped it reporting the temp. Given what they are telling me about my system they were well worth the price.
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Very interested into this as have just changed boiler which now has a dedicated light for when the burner is firing. Are you aware of any battery powered devices that could read the LED?
I have a spare room thermostat and for the last few days it has been sitting on a bookshelf level with the top of the radiator and about 18 inches from the side where the TRV is. The TRV is mounted horizontally and about 5 inches from a very cold floor. The attached history graph shows the two temperatures over 24 hours. The curve seems to me to make perfect sense. Generally the higher thermostat returns a reading about 1.5 deg higher, except when radiator has just started heating when the TRV registers the local higher temperature before the heat spreads to the rest of the room.
Which value is right. A mouse on the floor would probably feel that even the TRV value was too high. Whereas a Spider on the ceiling nearly three metres above would say “you’ve gotta be kidding it’s far hotter than that”.
Using a temperature sensor a few inches from the floor to control the temperature in a room occupied by adult humans sensing the temperature four or five feet from the floor is likely to be a compromise. It can be a better compromise than a badly placed room thermostat. I stuck 1 thermostat to my kitchen wall which turned out to be so cold it cooled the thermostat by about four degrees.
I have some rooms where the location the radiator and hence the TRV is such that it not getting a representative sample of the temperature. The bedroom radiator used to snuggle behind the door under the wife’s dressing gown in is own micro climate. These rooms need a room stat.
In other rooms like the lounge the TRV seems to work well even it at “our height” the temp is slightly offset from the value read by the TRV. Given how subjective the human perception of temperature is, we should get over worried about small temperature offsets.
If I go into a room that feels cold its usually because the Eco mode is doing something crazy but that’s another topic
I have 4 room with room stats and 4 working with just the TRVs.
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I think what people are most unhappy with is inconsistency. It’s obvious that TRV has micro climate, but it is inconsistent even in same room when demand for higher temperature or temperature changes outside.
With thermostat you can put in desired location none of this micro management is required.
The simple option would be to allow adding temperature sensors. Even if it’s getting existing zigbee ones made in China, rebranding and selling for double the price - £25 would still be better than £50-£70 for thermostat.
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Thanks for the info. We have 22mm pipes coming from our boiler. Would it clip to those?
I am using this, it might not be 100% accurate but it’s good enough for me to see trends etc etc
- platform: template
sensors:
wiser_boiler:
value_template: >-
{%- if states('sensor.wiser_hot_water') == "On" or states('sensor.wiser_heating') == "On" -%}
{{ "On" }}
{%- else -%}
{{ "Off" }}
{% endif %}
- platform: history_stats
name: Boiler Today
entity_id: sensor.wiser_boiler
state: 'On'
type: time
start: '{{ now().replace(hour=0).replace(minute=0).replace(second=0) }}'
end: '{{ now() }}'
- platform: history_stats
name: Boiler Yesterday
entity_id: sensor.wiser_boiler
state: 'On'
type: time
end: '{{ now().replace(hour=0).replace(minute=0).replace(second=0) }}'
duration:
hours: 24
- platform: history_stats
name: Boiler Month
entity_id: sensor.wiser_boiler
state: 'On'
type: time
start: "{{ now().replace(day=1, hour=0, minute=0, second=0, microsecond=0 ) }}"
end: "{{ now() }}"
1 Like
It depends on your boiler and gas meter and if you’re interested in gas consumption in general or only the boiler. AISI the options are:
At the meter:
- On newish meters, count LED pulses.
- On old R5 meters (e.g. schlumberger) that often have an RJ11 (4C6P?) socket, count pulses on the wire.
At the boiler:
- Count LED pulses (is that a thing?).
- I have an old boiler and watched for the flame with a camera on a Pi. It worked but I did not bother integrating it with anything.
- Pipe clamp sensor on flow pipe.
Everything above, other than the last option, should be a good fit with the esphome pulse_counter or pulse_meter sensors.
Mark Parker posted about a gas meter sensor a while back. There are also some discussed on the esphome forum.
I’m content to use the demand stats, similar to @Crankshaft (post 1711).
Hi,
Does this integration support the wiser smart plug, and if so how do i discover one thats been added to the wiser network?
Thanks @crankshaft - that’s similar to what I have currently setup for the Wiser integration, which covers most of the usage. It just doesn’t give me the info on the boiler firing up due to the Frost Stat reaching the trigger temperatue, as that isn’t anything to do with the Wiser hub. If I could somehow measure when the Frost Stat switches state, that would (should) tell me all other times that the boiler is firing.
@darcey - thank you. Having an oil boiler which is pretty industrial looking, there are no lights. I’ll double check the burner and see if there is a viewing glass to check for flame but I don’t recall seeing one. I think the ‘Pipe clamp sensor on flow pipe’ would probably be the next best option with some sort of trend sensor watching for a temp increase - which isn’t triggered by the Wiser Hub.
I wonder if it would be possible to use a current clamp meter to determine when the boiler is firing/running? Gas boilers have a substantial electric fan. I’m guessing oil boilers do too.
Assuming the pump is integral to the oil burner, you will see the energy usage go up. The only slight issue is pumps usually overrun a small amount after the call for heat. You probably do want to measure that anyway as the burner will go off when flow/return temps are within tolerance during the heat cycles, but the pump will continue to run.
If the pump is not integral, you still might be able to do it if the whole set up is off the same fused spur and you can get to the wire.
I think you best approach is to use this method and measure on/off by a wire clamp
Yes, the smart plugs are supported. They should turn up automatically a short time after being added to the Wiser network, using the name you give them in the Wiser app. If they don’t turn up in a reasonable time, try reloading the Wiser integration in HA.
Thanks. It’s been over 12 hours. I assume if i reload the integration, i will need to start my set up from scratch again?