I’m sure many people have their own favourites but of course not all are a fit. My boiler management system here in the UK is a Drayton. It comprises of a manual digital time and a wall mounter 4-wire twits thermostat in another room.
I spoke with Drayton and they do offer a wifi replacement at £240.00 Erm, Nope!
I have never been a fan of wifi but I’m OK with Zigbee. As I see it I only need to replace the thermostat bit as I can set the existing timer to ‘always on’ and control the relevant functions from HA.
So with that back story has anyone performed this kind of upgrade and would you have any advice (if I am not thinking in the right direction) or a recommendation for a suitable Zigbee device that will play nicely with ZHA and absolutely no cloud service?
Thanks in advance
Skutter aka John.
Make and model of thermostat as well as the model of your Drayton would be nice to work out what protocol it uses to talk with your Drayton. How many of the four wires are actually connected? Any photos?
Some boilers just use a simple open/close to turn on the boiler across two wires, while others use a chatty, custom protocol.
seems like an ‘on/off’ switch only to me. I would almost think you can attach any switch you want and create a proper scheduling/temperature control in HA
To be save, just measure the voltage on pin 3 in ‘on’ state.
Part of the challenge is that the thermostat is inaccurate and only turns the heating on if the temperature is set to 28-30deg. Even if the room temperature where the thermostat is situated is 12deg. I setup a simple nodemcu with a ahtsensor to measure the comparison. So a replacement is required anyway. If it were just a matter of setting a timer then the stock timer could do that anyway.
But I appreciate your input.
If you already have temperature sensor that is integrated in HA then, as said above, you just need the relay.
When you get the relay you connect that either where the thermostat used to be or where the wires end up and set up a generic thermostat in HA to use the sensor and control the relay.
Not wife friendly unfortunately. So I am looking for an off the shelf tidy option instead of running more cables about the house. I enjoy the maker route and have done it many times, but on this occasion I am looking for a recommendation of a suitable Zigbee replacement for the currently installed thermostat.
please consider the ‘parralell’ solution. You would keep your current device and put a HA controller next to it so you can better control when you need it.
You don’t need to run any wires. You can place both (temp sensor and relay) where the thermostat is. And most of zigbee temp sensors work with battery anyway…
Hi,
I have and it is not what I am looking for but thanks.
‘I am looking for a recommendation of a suitable Zigbee replacement for the currently installed thermostat!’
I appreciate your input but the maker option is not what I am looking to do. In my garage the heater is run the maker way and only when the space is occupied.
So come on guys. Please understand that no matter what you say…
well the recommendation spun off after looking for what would you need technically. The current device is nothing but an on off switch, not something you would find on thermostats these days. (to me it seems its switching 220v) Thermostats offer 10v on/off switching, which might not work for your system. So hence the suggestions, now with more background.
I’ll leave it to you ofcourse, but dont get us wrong trying to prevent a x,y problem solution. The advice is free and without predujice and i hope you get a WAF solutoin anyway.
Your actual thermostat has non-dry contact 230V 1A relay. So virtually any mains powered thermostat with relay output can be used to substitute it.
I cant recommend anything though, because I wouldn’t take some cheap “touch-screen thermostat” even for free.
Thank you! All of your comments have been taken on board. as far as I am concerned this post is now closed. Although I may update it with the solution I actually decide upon.
