Drayton Wiser Integrate or Link?

Hardware
#1

I have a Zigbee network with lots of lights (Ikea, Hue) and sensors.

I am looking at replacing the dumb TRVs on my radiators with Drayton Wiser ones. I am able to trigger the boiler programmatically and I just wondering what the pros / cons are of just integrating the TRVs into my existing setup vs putting in a whole Wiser system and linking to it via the HACS integration.

I can see a few advantages to just using the TRVs in my existing stuff

  • Cost ( :moneybag: :moneybag: :moneybag:) I would end up needing to effectively spend something like £120 on their controller and thermostat which I don’t really need.
  • I am not tied to Wiser and could integrate other TRVs / devices (although the Tuya based on I have been experimenting with is pretty poor)
  • I can extend my current automations to do things like turn off the heating if the external doors are open, no-one is home.
  • I keep a single Zigbee network and keep everything in HA

But the flip side sems to be

  • I will miss out on the smart features of the Drayton app (getting up to temp at the right time rather than bog standard scheduling the heating, taking outside temperatures into consideration)
  • OTA updates (It appears there is no way of doing OTA updates via Zigbee2MQTT but I guess there is very the app?)
  • The app looks to automatically override / link room thermostats so the radiators are controlled by the actual room temperature not the one recorded right at the radiator
  • The docs (Schneider Electric WV704R0A0902 control via MQTT | Zigbee2MQTT)suggest that sometimes commands do not get responded too and says to send them again) which would be a pain to deal with but I am guessing the app handles this

So I am struggling to decide which way to go and whether the extra cost is worth it to just install the system essentially stand alone and link to it or not.

Looking for experience of people who have Drayton Wiser kit and anything I may have missed

#2

Anyone using Drayton Wiser TRVs (either directly via Zigbee or via the HACS integration) ?

Just looking for experience of it. I have got a couple of thermostats but direct control via HS / Zigbee2MQTT seems very flaky. The docs do say that they sometimes don’t respond but I have had one a couple of meters away from controller refuse to update the heat value about 20 times in a row (annoyingly it did take the message when I sent 20 instead of 2000 so the heating is currently set to 0.2C…) Is this common? Is this solved when running through the Drayton app?

#3

I’ve had the HACS wiser integration and 5 of the wiser TRVs (along with thermostat, hub) for as long as it’s been available, haven’t had any issues with that setup, the TRVs seem to respond in the background to schedule changes and on demand heat etc with no issues. Not used them directly with zigbee so no comment there.

#4

I am now contemplating using Wiser TRV’s outside of the integration. The integration reports signal strength and from this data I made the decision to buy a couple of Wiser Range Extenders. The results are not what I hoped for, I think that my existing Zigbee network is clashing with the Wiser network. For this reason I am wondering if brining the Wiser devices into a Zigbee2MQTT network would be better. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

#5

Hi Mark, sorry not to be bringing you an answer, but can I ask how you got on please? I have just invested in the Wiser 2 hub and 11 x TRVs, and I have a couple of TRVs that are reporting out of range when operating with the Wiser App. I unplugged my homeassistant zigbee whilst enrolling the TRVs because the first one I tried was a bit of a battle and I came to the same potential conclusion as you.

Owing to some family ‘me first’ tom foolery I rolled out the problem devices in the wrong order (furthest first)… and had to go out tonight rather than tinkering… kinda hoped that the nearer device would realise it could talk to neighbours and it would all sort itself out but having just come home it hasn’t. So I’m just looking at installing the homeassistant integration, and tomorrow I might factory reset the TRVs and roll them out in a sensible order. If that fails, I’ll be looking TRVs straight to zigbee2mqtt… hence the follow up to see how you got on.

#6

Have subsequently, through research, realised that battery operated devices like the TRVs don’t route, so my theory about the out of range devices being down to the order I rolled them out in, was incorrect. I am still a bit stuck though with the hub2 out in my garage near the boiler… unable to reach all TRVs, and my homeassistant mqtt2zigbee setup able to reach all TRVs but I’ve not yet understood if I can have TRVs via Homeassistant and the hub get its TRV interactions via the LAN/wifi… or what I will lose by moving the whole setup onto ZHA in terms of any heating ‘smarts’ that are going on in the hub (I don’t have opentherm, so there’s no ambient temp being considered by the hub to my knowledge)