Hive Smart Receiver without thermostat

Hardware
1

Hi all
I’m looking into adding smart control of my heating, I currently have home assistant running with ZigbeeMQTT.

Long term I’m looking to get smart TRVs in most rooms with separate temp sensors. However for these to work well I’ll need a way of switching my heating on/off at the boiler, my house uses a combi-boiler and currently has a (non smart) wireless Honeywell thermostat and receiver installed.

I’ve looked at a few solutions, such as Drayton wiser which seems to be well regarded here in the UK. However this is quite expensive and I don’t think I need the functionality of the actual thermostat itself since I’ll be using standalone temp sensors, and any adjustments to each rooms virtual thermostat will be made either automatically or off a dashboard manually.

With that in mind I have found some cheap hive smart link single channel receivers (V3) on eBay that I can pick up for about 1/4 the cost of an equivalent new system. What I want to know is whether I can integrate this unit standalone in home assistant to control my boiler, WITHOUT having the actual thermostat unit or the hive smart hub. All the info online seems to assume you have the fulls setup, but as far as I can tell the receiver uses zigbee so might work ok standalone?

Any other suggestions also welcome for solutions available in the UK. Thanks!

2

Often non-smart thermostat is just a relay from boiler point of view.
In this case just wire simple relay like Shelly 1 in parallel with the old thermostat relay and leave it there as backup.
In case yours has some bus communication, things are getting more complicated.

3

Ah thanks that seems like a great option. I had considered a relay but had written it off as I wasn’t sure how reliable it would be. But the option to wire in parallel seems like a good one.

My thermostat is just a simple on/off type so this should work fine. Thanks

4

Enough reliable, the original thermostat uses relay as well.
Just get some decent product, not $2 gadget from AE.