I’m intending trying to emulate Tado-type room by room radiator control using smart TRVs, with code to force a single zone thermostat to call heat when any of the individual rooms are reading under their set temps, as well as standby set by presence sensors.
To now I’ve dabbled with a Moes tuya zigbee trv https://a.aliexpress.com/_Ezim8o1. I’m using zigbee over ZHA via a sonoff stick. Experience has been disappointing, exposure to zha lacks basic functions (temp calibration for one), battery level reporting doesn’t move from 100%, UI on the device itself is horrible.
For my next try I’m intending going the HACS ‘better thermostat’ route to allow pairing and override of room temp by a wall thermometer or thermostat. I want to keep things in Zigbee / ZHA, i really don’t want to rebuild in z2mqtt.
Can anyone recommend a smart trv that works and has good exposure on ZHA?
Related, can anyone recommend a wireless wall thermostat that would allow a desired temperature to be set? I can’t find a room thermometer that has that option, and any thermostats that I’ve seen are intended for hard wiring to the heating system which isn’t an option.
I’m using the Drayton Wiser Zigbee TRVs and a Wireless room thermostat/humidistat. However at this moment in time I’m also using them with the Drayton controller integrated into HA through their local API. I have previously, briefly tested using the TRVs directly through ZHA and on my ZB network (Sonoff Controller) but it has been a while and I cannot remember if 100% of functionality is supported with ZHA.
I do, ultimately, intend to go back to using these directly instead of using the Drayton controller (multiple reasons) but right this minute since I need a heating controller anyway I’m being lazy about it. I’m probably not going to mess with a working setup in the depths of Winter anyway.
I’ve had zero issues with the Drayton TRVs or Thermostat, but their heating controller can be a bit flaky with wifi connectivity.
If you can wait, I will try to find time over the next few days to pair one of the TRVs and the Thermostat/Humidistat with ZHA to get a complete list of the entities exposed and features available - including whether temperature calibration is possible (it’s not exposed through the Drayton API AFAIK).
For what it’s worth, you can ‘calibrate’ (adjust) sensor values through a template in HA instead. I know this isn’t what you asked and maybe you’ve already decided against that approach, I only mention it because others are going to do so anyway.
P.S. The Drayton Wiser kit isn’t the cheapest, I bought mine in either Black Friday or New Years sales a couple a year ago at a major reduction in price. You can sometimes snag a deal.
OK, my own curiosity got the better of me and I just borrowed one of the TRVs to test.
Yes, as previously mentioned it can be paired directly through ZHA. Battery levels report correctly through ZHA. The device is recognised as an HVAC controller - technically meaning that out of the box it allows for setting min/max temps instead of just the min values. This can be quickly fixed in HA though by putting it into ‘Heat’ mode. The entities exposed are limited - Battery, State, Local Temp/Set Temp. The physical controls on the TRV to increase/decrease the set temperature work.
There are a lot of endpoints and attributes exposed, I’ll try to get a full listing later. One of these is local_temperature_calibration - however I’m not sure if it works, I tried writing values to the attribute but this didn’t seem to affect the reported temperature values. Again, I’ll play more with this later and see if there are any other likely attributes to adjust the output values.
I’m assuming for now that the Wall Thermostat using the exact same chipset and similar firmware so should work just the same.
Quick update - Should you think the Drayton Wiser TRV fits your requirement, here in the UK Amazon are currently doing a ‘limited time deal’ on 3x packs with a 27% discount. Still twice the current price of the Tuya you initially tried however.