Experiences with smart thermostats / TRVs

That is not what a TRV is as a “TRV” are just a “Thermostatic Radiator Valve” which controls flow control for individual radiators in a hot-water heating-system where that TRV is located (“Radiator Valve” being the keywords as each radiator needs its own TRV as they all have their own valve), so they are only used for controlling the temperature in a single room instead of the whole house. So a TRV is not a device that controls your boiler directly, instead, they only control the physical valve located on each radiator which means that they need to be installed directly on the radiators themselves.

Wikipedia article on TRV → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermostatic_radiator_valve

verses

Wikipedia article on Thermostat → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermostat

I recommend combining a smart house thermostat (such as for example the Nest Thermostat) with many TRVs which are installed on each individual radiator in your house, as that way you get the best of both worlds with a smart house thermostat which controls the general temperature in your whole house and then each TRV control the temperature in just the room it is in. That way you can have a hotter or colder temperature set on individual radiators located in different rooms like for example hallways, bedrooms, home office, and launch-room. Note though that in such a house thermostat + multiple TRV combination setup the main smart house thermostat (such as for example the Nest Thermostat for the central heating system + some kind of TVRs for all radiators) does not know anything about the TRVs or vice versa, so there is no communication between them whatsoever, but they still compliment each other anyway.

Personally, I am currently combining a cloud-based smart thermostat for the whole house t(Ngenic Tune) and a total of 15 individual TVRs (Eurotronic Spirit Z-Wave Plus) that I have installed on the valve of each individual radiator in our home in order to control the temperature in each room separately as well as set a general temperature in the house.

For a TVR example that used Zigbee see example these:

Aqara Radiator Thermostat E1 → https://www.aqara.com/eu/product/radiator-thermostat-e1

Moes ZigBee TRV (BRT-100-TRV) is another → Using Moes ZigBee TRV (BRT-100-TRV) in my old heating system - NotEnoughTech

An alternative to a Nest Thermostat is a Zigbee thermostat like example this → A budget ZigBee thermostat? - NotEnoughTech

If you instead want all-in-one smart solution (usually meaning cloud-based) that is not a DIY setup then Zigbee is probably not for you, and instead, check out other non-Zigbee solutions such as Tado or Netatmo which also have both TRVs as well as smart house thermostats.

Check out this discussion posted on the blog which specifically brings up TRV as a concept and mentions some specific products → Short-term solutions on how to use smart home tech to save energy and money in Europe - Home Assistant