I bought a used Thermorossi Ecotherm 1000 to use in our vacation cabin up in the north of sweden and ofc. I’m looking into ways I can control it remotely so it will be warm and cozy when we arrive!
The pellet heater has 2x 3.5mm ports for controlling it, one chronoterm and one for ambient temperature.
Ok just so I understand it correctly, this jack can’t start the pellet heater but it can control the output of it. If the connection is closed it goes to idle and if the connection is open it starts heating. So a relay turning on and off based on temperature would handle it?
And this is where I think it looks confusing but I have no exact idea what a chronothermostat does besides giving me an option to specify times and weekdays when it’s supposed to be on. (a lafayette CSD-7 was included)
But how I think the jack works is that when the contacts closes it starts up and lights the pellets, not sure if it just goes full power or not but atleast it starts it up. When the contacts open it shuts down…
Ok so that’s the background info that I have and if you’ve made it this far I’m impressed!
My thoughts is to use the ESPHome thermostat component with a dual channel relay. One for powering on the heater and one for “simulating” the thermostat and turning the heat on or off where they connect to one 3.5mm jack each?
End goal and extreme bonus would be to have something like this but instead of switching between cool and heat just be able to set the heat and turn it on and off with the rotary button once there.
Could you just plug it into a smart plug or similar?
I know it sounds like an overly simple suggestion.
But maybe:
smart plug controls mains power
has power monitoring for some state detection
Is certified so you’re not mucking around with wiring too much. Simple, safe.
Then possibly a secondary esp to control one of the ports and for sensors and displays etc.
Just an idea. Dunno really if this is a good set-up, I’m not so experienced with these types of devices.
I actually do something similar with one of my devices. Smart plug managing the higher voltage side of things and then a seperate esp doing lower voltage things.
I guess I was wondering if you could run it a little like how I run my dumb coffee machine.
It’s “always switched on” on the actual device and at the wall, and therefore just needs the smartplug to turn on for it to turn on and start it’s thermostat routines.
I’m trying to do the same thing, because I have a similar Thermorossi pellet heater.
I will use two Shelly plus 1: one for the “cronothermostat” that should turn on and off the heater and and the other for the “thermostat “, that should select the “minimum pellet consumption mode” when the temperature has been reached. At least, this seems to be my understanding of the manual.
I’m not sure that I’d like to have it turn on and off completely every time that the temperature has been reached… because it already happened to me that with a couple manual on-off cycles it didn’t turn on on and just filled the whole burner with unlit pellet and stopped.
I have used the Shelly Plus 1 on the Chronotermostat input and it worked flawlessly. I can now reliably turn on my heater remotely
I haven’t tried the thermostat input, but I will in the near future. I’m not in a hurry with this because I have their remote and it already sets the amount of pellet trying to reach a temperature setpoint. It works, but it’s not so reliable (their wireless connection fails often…)
Wow that sounds really awsome! I’ll make sure to buy a shelly plus 1 before heading to the cabin in a few weeks!
You just connected L & N as usual and a male 3.5mm contact to the O/I contacts?
Have you checked if it’s possible to connect to both ports on the backside? Using a shelly to start it and having a room thermostat in the other?
I havn’t started mine yet but I don’t think it has a automatic thermostat built in, just different “fire mode” and “fan mode”
I’m doing it in these days, I just got a new thermostat to test it. I think that it would work… I’m just not sure what happens when the thermostat tells the system to stop heating: I guess that it would stay on, but at minimum heat.
Hey, I just connected a thermostat… it works as expected!
This is what I did:
I’ve connected a Shelly Plus 1 to the chronothermostat input, to turn it on and off remotely. The contact here is Normally Open, therefore when the shelly closes it the system turns on immediately. When it opens it, the system stop delivering pellets and starts the safe shutdown procedure.
I’ve connected a Btcino thermostat (but any would work) with the contact Normally Closed on the thermostat input. This will set fan and pellet to minimum when the temperature has been reached, otherwise it stays at the last manual setting of fan and pellet.
A few things to remember:
use pin 1 and 2 of the jack
don’t set the remote to “auto”, otherwise the thermostat input will be ignored
the thermostat input has to be driven by a NC contact, while the chronothermostat (shut down and turn on) works with NO input. I set my thermostat wrong in the first test and nothing worked
I put my thermostat as far away from the heater as possible, to avoid erratic “full speed to lowest speed” conditions, and as far as I tested it, it seems fine.
I will update you if I find issues or something else.
