Recommandation for smart heating devices (valves + thermostat + heater control)

Hardware
,
1

Hi there,

Some short background: last year, I purchased a full Netamo kit (Smart valves + thermostat that control the Heater) but “it didn’t meet my expectations” (inexistant support and not doing the job it was meant for) so as I heard a lot of good things about, I decided to go with HA as I can host everything at home and not rely on an external service.

Today I purchased the HA Yellow with POE and a PI4 compute board somewhere else so we will be looking at Zigbee and Matter protocols.

I work in IT so there is plenty of things that I will not be afraid of, but I really have no clue about purchasing the right devices to achieve my goal which is primary have a smart heating system.

I’m looking for:

  • a smart thermostat with or without an heater controller. My heater is an old De Dietrich gas heater with command on/off (I was able to install Netamo without issue)
  • a heater control if Thermostat doesn’t have one
  • smart radiator valves (0.5 degree precision would be nice and of course, something that actually work)

I would say for me the most important is that I can control everything from HA and everything works together but as I also start with HA, there is a lot of things I still need to learn.

Thanks in advance for you help! :wink:

2

No suggestion at all?

3

I find it imperative that my heating system can run standalone, without any home made hard-and software. Totally cool proof. This is also because I am renting out rooms.

So, ESP devices for me are a no-go (for heating. I have tens of them)

What I settled for in the end is something like this (I found one for half the price, need to search for the link if interested): WiFi controlled thermostat

It basically switches a relais, but can be controlled by HA via WiFi.

6 of them will be used in a floor system.
If you have a standard home with a single thermostat it can directly control your boiler.
There are multiple variants, also for electric (floor) heating.

4

I use a SONOFF 4-channel smart switch, which uses SONOFF firmware and the SONOFF Home Assistant Integration, not ESPHome. SONOFF uses local LAN control.

For hot water I make a generic thermostat with a temperature sensor on the hot water cylinder and the appropriate zone valve.

For heating (hot water radiator) I have TRVs, a heat demand template sensor for each, and an automation to switch the zone control valve when there is demand.

All of these are controlled by Heating X2: Schedule Thermostats with Calendars

You have a different kind of heating, I know, but the logic is the same. If your thermostats map to the climate domain then you should be able to use Heating X2

5

Why don’t you use a software thermostat? Home Assistant has it’s own native Generic Thermostat (Generic Thermostat - Home Assistant). If you do not like that, you could use a PID thermostat. There is a thread here: Thermostat with PID controller - #324 by anonverburg. I do not know what type of heater system you have. If it’s a floor heater, our ControlBox might be interesting for you: ControlBox | Crowd Supply