So they rather have you rollback instead of fixing their issues?
What a shit show…
And even if that worked the OTAs would only be for the zigbee version.
I returned / sold all 6 of mine as this whole company seems to be a dead end.
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I’ve been using the Spirit valves for a while now. I’m actually controlling them using openHAB but everything I have to say is relevant here.
I am controlling them using direct control mode (valve opening percentage) using a PID controller that uses a room sensor as an input.
The system is working very well in general - I am getting good temperature stabilisation, but I am getting a similar issue to many of the comments above. After a few days, even with the valve position set to 0% I am noticing that the TRVs are still allowing water to flow, and are therefore (over)heating the room. Performing a manual re-calibration (remove batteries & perform ‘INS’) fixes this, but only for a short while.
I see that there is a suggestion above the the Spirit does not cope very well with small control changes around the 0% area and it effectively loses its calibration. There is also a suggestion that performing a regular OFF-BOOST-OFF cycle might be a workaround for this. I am controlling the valve percentage directly so it seems that a 0%-100%-0% cycle might be equivalent to this cycle. Or is there something specific about the OFF-BOOST-OFF cycle that would be different to a 0%-100%-0% cycle?
The only problem I had with the TRVs that without placing repeaters (I use those Ikea USB wall-plugs) the TRVs lost signal. I am running Shedy with some basic script (far from perfect) switching TRVs on/off based on time and temperature.
I do notice from time to time though that the TRV is in an “OFF”-mode and sends wrong status to MQTT - only worarkound is to up temperature and then it works fine again for a few days.
Certainly a lot of fiddling every few days and not a fire-and-forget product. Upside is that it is still better than the manually controlled thermostats I used to have. Redoing our heating just to automate it is financially not viable and I will stick it out with those TRVS for now - with COVID I am at home all the time anyhow 
Hello Morgan. I have a number of z-wave Spirit valves, using Homeseer… and Homeseer suggests you have direct control over the valve… but in reality the Spirit doesn’t respond to this at all. I read somewhere above that I am not the only one experiencing this. How did you get tot this ‘direct control mode’ as you are saying?
Thanks!
Hi All, I have several of these devices (Z-Wave variant) installed throughout the house for a few years now and they have aways been temperamental.
Does anyone know what the latest firmware for them is, and if it’s possible to update it yourself?
Also, has anyone tried them with ZWaveJS? any better?
I found the answer (finally) to my question about the direct valve control in Homeseer (and works perhaps for other controllers as well, I am talking about the zwave version):
Many thanks to Michelob there!
seen the original date of this post,… today i applied this way as a working around automation on my spirit and works well:
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automation action: “change HVAC mode” to heat, desired t° => thermostat setpoint in zwave-JS conf (setpoint 1).
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automation action: “change preset on” to energy heat, desired t° => thermostat setpoint in zwave-JS conf (setpoint 11).
both triggers are “time” based!
The problem with the overshooting really seems to be dependet if your heater runs 24/7 or if you stop your heater over night.
Looks like this thermostat tries to be more “smart” than I thought.
It tries to calculate how slow a room heats up and how much energy it needs to hold the temperature.
Most likely looking at the data of the past few yours, or the last day that it internally collects.
If you now shut down your heater over night, and the room temperature drops a little bit over the time, the thermostat will start to open the valve more and more.
But as the room temperature drops more instead of the room warming up, the internal calculation of the thermostat goes mad.
When the heater starts again, the thermostat will calculate the needed heat completely wrong and the room temperature will overshoot by a lot.
How much depends on the room size and the actual flow temperature in your heating system.
Long story short:
If you have times where your heater is stopped, create an automation that will reduce the target temperature for the thermostats for that time.
Better do NOT use the “off” state instead of reducing the target temperature (which would be easier as you wouldn’t have to save the real target temperature value somewhere):
There’s a bug in the firmware as described a few times in this thread, so the thermostats often start to heat again after a few minutes even that they still report an “off” state over the Zwave network.
I’m now really happy with the thermostats, since I made these changes.
EDIT:
Oh and one more hint:
Like with every smart thermostat, using a better placed external room temperature sensor helps a lot to keep the temperature stable. The larger the room, the bigger is the benefit.
You will see a way more stable room temperature and a lot less jumpiness in the valve control.
Which results in a more comfortable feeling.
There are two ways to do this:
- Use the official external sensor feature of the thermostats by settings temperature offset to -128
- Calculate the offset yourself and write that as offset compensation into the thermostat.
For both are solutions in this thread:
The first way is the official supported and is most likely easier to set up.
I use the second one, as it still uses the internal sensor, just with a little shifting.
So if Home-Assistant (or the external sensor) dies, the thermostat will still be able to detect room temperature changes.
It will heat the room a little bit to much or too less, but it won’t freak out completely because of missing room temperature updates.
Hi Thyraz,
Thank you for detailed explanation.
I think you are right.
In my case to overcome these issues I turn on the boiler when one of the valves opens more than 18 % and turn it off it when all of them go below.
I also use external sensors (MCP9808 and Netatmo CO2 sensor) is some rooms.
It works fine. but, still, from time to time I find radiator at 70C with closed valve.
To overcome it I made an automation to turn thermostats to full power once a day without turning on the boiler.
It looks like full power calibrates Thermostat but turning it to 100% and then to 0%
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