Im working on fully migrating everything from my old smartthings over to HA. Got my Z-wave done, working on zigbee stuff now, lights have gone well but running into some issues with my Keen Vents being able to be properly controlled. When configuring it runs into issues on the following: LevelControl, PollControl, and TemperatureMeasurement:
Is there something I am overlooking on this setup? I have a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 and ZHA configured for the HA installation. Also it seems it cannot report the battery status? Within smartthings I was able to get Temperature, % open, Pressure, and battery status. Im still learning my way around Home Assistant, so im not sure how I can modify the entity to represent all the data the device has?
Thanks for any help!
Edit: To add I could not find much info on searching, Every thread seemed to reference it working as a smart vent, and not just an on/off like mine appears to be doing. Apologies if i missed a thread covering this.
Every thread seemed to reference it working as a smart vent, and not just an on/off like mine appears to be doing.
The vent opens & closes. It can report pressure, temperature, position, & battery level (though I’ve never been sure it’s reporting the battery level accurately). If you’re in HA Devices, find your vent, open it & you’ll see the attributes except position. To see that click on the left side of the control & you’ll find position. That’s what a “smart” vent does. (I’m using it with the same dongle, but I’ve got it connected through Zigbee2MQRTT.) You have to control it with HA. You can easily create an automation to open or close it fully or partially depending on the temperature.
Never been happy with my keen vents. First and foremost, they chew batteries like candy corn. I have 3 of them and have to change the batteries every 3 months or so. Secondly the sensors are unreliable. I have one that reports a temperature of 145 degrees, another that is sub 70 at all times. They also whistle when closed more than 0-10% like crazy, which makes closing them all the way untenable.
I don’t know of a replacement, but I’d buy it if I find it.
Yeah–I agree: unfortunately there’s nothing out there that I know of & Keen hasn’t updated its product for 4-5 years at least. I don’t use it’s sensors in my automations, just open & close it. Mine doesn’t whistle.
Your device seems to be battery powered as far as I understand it, so when you reconfigure some of the commands may not be received by the device.
You can use zha-toolkit’s binds_get and conf_report_read to check if the bindings were actually made and also check the report configuration. Make sure you set “tries” to a high number which makes the requests succeed eventually (even if battery powered).
You could then choose to use conf_report and/or bind_ieee to finish the configuration, or repeat the “device reconfiguration” multiple times until each “tickbox” became green at least once, and check the configuration (again) afterwards.
It is my understanding that you can get them to open by percent, which I had under ST, I am only getting an open or closed option. It doesnt seem to provide a way to go with a partial setting and i guess thats where my question is. All the threads I found in search reference it working as that already, havent found a way to have it go partial. If that makes sense?
I will say mine whistle at ~0-15% as well, which is the main reason I want to have a level control, as pure closed whistles like crazy (Very close to my air handler, so even the manual one it replaced whistled at low open %).
For what it’s worth I tried using a slider love-lace card, which works fine for lights, but for this, no variable for the level is available there either (as I would have guessed since I can’t see it anywhere else).
Binding and reporting configures the device to report changes to your home assistant setup when you use remotes or local buttons for instance.
It does not change the ability to have a level control.
Sorry for the delayed follow-up… Been a heck of a weekend.
Anyhow, Friday I got home to troubleshoot some more and the Zigbee network was non-responsive (Just the vent, a light, and the coordinator), setting it to “add new devices” for about 10 min or so (Found this on a search FWIW), it repaired itself … After that the slider shows up in both automation and on the card itself (It did not before to answer that question). Not really sure what the issue was but working now with no issues (outside of the battery, but that appears to be a common issue from what I have seen).
What model are your Keen vents? According to the Blakadder site, ZHA only supports SV-02 vents, not the older SV-01 vents. I use a mix of both models, so I use Z2M to connect to them. It works pretty well. Or as well as the vents themselves will work… (Deconz is also compatible with both models, according to links below.)
You may also want to add some Zigbee repeaters in your network if you don’t have any already. Usually smart plugs will have repeater functionality. This will make your mesh stronger and (hopefully) help the vents better communicate with HA.
Is there any way to stop the yellow light from blinking?
On the Ken website the yellow light is meant to tell you when the vent is too far from the bridge. Now that I’m only controlling these through home assistant I don’t have a need to the bridge but I can figure out how to get the vents to stop blinking, which already adds to the crappy battery life.
Do you have any Zigbee router devices to help with coverage? If not, adding some smart plugs should help. As much of a pain as these vents can be, they do move around with router devices like they are supposed to do.
The only way I have found to resolve a blinking yellow light is to pull the batteries, then reinstall them. It usually causes the vent to reconnect to the Zigbee network and work properly.
Could you give me a review of the vents? Do they not work well? i have a room that’s 9 degrees warmer than others… i’d love something like this and it’s way cheaper than zoning - but don’t want to frustrate the family with AC woes in Florida. What are your thoughts if you were to start today?
I’ve been using Keen vents for quite some time. I have 8 of them and use them to change the airflow to specific rooms at different times of the day for both heating and cooling automations.
I don’t pay any attention to the temperature and pressure sensors, but they look close. The vents seem to eat less batteries now that I have a bunch of Ikea zigbee repeaters scattered across the house. But, every so often, a vent will simply show as unavailable in HA. If the batteries are okay, I just push the black pairing button on the vent 5 or 6 times and then re-add them to ZHA. Takes less than a minute, but I probably have to do this about every 3 months for at least one unit.
I wish that were better wireless vent options but for existing builds, these are about the best option right now.
@drknow - I have a 3500 sqft, 2 story house with one HVAC unit, and I also have one room that tends to be warmer in the summer and cooler in the winter than the other rooms. I was hoping these vents would help, so I purchased 14 of them from eBay and Keen. Overall, the vents work as designed, but they aren’t perfect.
In order to get the one room to be closer to the temps in the other rooms, you need to put vents everywhere. This way you can close the vents for the other rooms, forcing more air into the room that needs it. You will also need temperature sensors in all of the rooms, and an automation to open/close vents based on the thermostat and room temperature.
In concept, the vents are a great idea, but the implementation from Keen has some issues. First, the battery compartment is directly in the airflow, so they tend to get hot when the heater is on, and get cold when the AC is on, which could lead to condensation forming. Second, the battery life leaves a lot to be desired. Each vent uses 4 AA batteries, and they tend to last anywhere from a couple months to a year or more; each vent’s battery life is different. Thank goodness for Costco and affordable batteries! I have even tried some lithium batteries from Amazon, and they don’t seem to last much longer (admittedly, I have not tried major-brand lithium batteries, like Energizer, since they are so much more expensive).
I have 6 Zigbee smart plugs spread throughout the house, but I’m not sure whether more would be helpful or not. Other Zigbee devices seem to do OK with the existing mesh.
I use Z2M since some of the vents I bought on eBay are the first gen model (SV01), and ZHA does not appear to support those, according to the Blakadder database (link below).
If I would have known a few years ago what I know now, I likely would have hired a handyman to add a fan to the one duct, or relocate the duct in that room to be more effective. For what I’ve spent on this solution, the handyman would have probably been about the same price, and it would be a more permanent solution.
Keen Vents chew batteries like bubble gum. They also fall off the network on the regular. But compared to Flair (I have those too), their functionality/feature set is superior despite not having the larger sized vents and requiring an adapter.
The fact that Flair can’t do anything but closed, 50% and open is obscenely short sighted on their part.
