I was looking for a way to monitor my mazout (oil) consumption of my Viessmann Vitoladens 300 oil burner. However the system above does not have an option to link it to home assistant.
Since I suspect it uses a reed sensor, I started experimenting myself but so far I’m not getting the expected results.
I opened up an Aqara door sensor, desoldered the reed sensor from the pcb and added an extension wire and soldered the sensor back on the wire:
So I thought: success! Well…, not really. The problem I’m seeing is that the reed sensor often “sticks”, the valve shuts off and the sensor still reads “closed” (it works inverted since a closed door = magnetic field is sensed). Anyway, so it sticks in it’s “closed” position for quite some time before it suddenly goes back to “opened” or I can force it by actually holding a magnet next to the sensor/valve and that also triggers it to “open” the contact again.
So I thought, just a bad reed switch for this project, so I went on amazon and bought a set of “normally closed” reed switches (so it actually reads “open” when the valve is open). But this one has the same problem. It also activates fine but after the valve closes, it still reads “open”.
Anyone that knows what I could try next? The home assistant part of things is ready and I have working helpers that calculate my consumption in liters, kilo, time burner active and consumption in kWh…
So all that is left is getting the hardware side of things to work properly… Any help is appreciated!
I use a relay. The coil is powered by the circuit which powers the burner motor. The contacts are wired to an ESP8266’s GPIO pins.
Interestingly, I started out with a door sensor with the reed sensor removed and replaced by wires leading to the contacts of that same relay. This got the on/off data into HA wirelessly. It was pretty reliable, but eventually I wanted to add other sensors, including temperature sensors, so the ESP8266 running ESPHome took over.
I’m not familiar with your burner, or whether or not you have access to a controller or other way to feed the relay coil from the burner power supply, but if so you might find the relay a good option.
I was also thinking to ditch the magnet idea since I will never be 100% sure of not having false contacts. However I do not check how to wire it other than cutting the wires to the coil (which I do not want to do unless there is no other way). I would need to check where I can find the control board and if i can find some schematics. Its a Viessmann Vitoladens 300. I was hoping of a “quick” way to have the burner time available in Home assistant but I guess I will need to go back to the drawing board
Edit: I also found out that it is controlled by a Vitotronic 200 kw2 and it does not look like a unit that can be taken apart easily to have access to the internal connections etc. But I would need to do some extra research. Viessmann offers a “smart module” called “Vitoconnect 100” but as far as I can tell it would not output things like consumption. The API is also limited to 120 calls a day so even if “burner on” would be something I can see in home assistant It would also not be precise enough
I use Dallas temperature sensors. I’m running five of these, and also reading five GPIO pins for the on/off status of each of four heating zones, plus the status of the boiler’s burner (again, just an on/off from the relay.)
This all runs nicely on one ESP8266, even though I also have the ESPHome web server and a WiFi signal strength sensor on there. I fully expected this to be too much for a poor little 8266, and I’d have to go to an ESP32. But it’s been running fine so I’ve left it alone.
As for your burner on/off sensor, another option would be use a CT Clamp to measure the current. But I’d be very surprised if there’s not a terminal block somewhere in your system which terminates the wires to the burner motor. Admittedly, I’m not at all familiar with that make or model, so I’m only guessing.
