For some years, I’ve been using radiator valves with built in sensors - ie. they’re not connected or “smart” but still more active than oldschool, manual valves.
Recently, I started building a Home Assistant setup and I had planned to replace the valves with Tado X but my gut feeling is not that great. It seems to me that they have been doing some pretty sketchy things, testing out paid features and that several features still makes me have to use their app and/or hub as well.
I would prefer to find some TRVs that are just good old Zigbee where I can handle everything (time schedule, location triggers etc.) 100% from within Home Assistant, not sharing my data / location etc. with the company/brand and not having to fear sudden changes to paid features in the future.
Is this possible - and if so, what brand should I take a look at ?
So either a normal relay or a smart plug but then you need to put a mains plug on it.
Then you just add a temperature sensor in the room and add the switch and sensor to a generic thermostat.
Just keep in mind, these are on/off, nothing in between.
But it has worked very nicely here.
Since the radiators hold some heat when it’s turned off the time they are actually cold is not very often. At least not in winter. Now when it’s spring-ish weather then they are cold more often.
I have these: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007518901765.html . The only thing I don’t like about them is they have some internal scheduler. You set it up via zigbee, from HA, andit has the benefit that it works according to schedule even if HA is down. But I’d prefer to have something with zigbee, but “dumb” - all the logic in HA, not in the valve itself.
The main reason why I chose to go with Tado X at first, is that they have this three level “cascading” system / reaction built-it.
By that, I mean … let’s take my livingroom with 4 radiators:
I can run each valve separately
If I add a temp sensor, Tado will automatically use this to “smooth out” the 4 different radiators in that room. Like going “okay, you want 20 degrees at the sofa? Then radiator one needs a target of 22, radiator 2 and 3 needs a target of 21 and radiator 4 needs a target of 20 to - overall - hit 20 degrees at the sofa”.
If I add a boiler sensor, it will control the temperature of the boiler
I would anticipate that you can build something similar yourself but I don’t see how (yet!), but it depends how complex you want it to be, compared to, say, the Tado setup.
Well, first my personal choice would be wifi valves, but i’m not sure this is doable when running valves from a battery… all my devices are wifi, not a single zigbee yet. I’m not like a zigbee fan…
But what i want is to have a temperature sensor at the other side of the room, thus achieving correct room temperature( i already have it: it’s famous xiaomi temp/humiditiy ble sensor). No valve can regulate properly if temp. sensor is located 5-10cm from heating element…
I must look these tado’s…
I agree.
Having built in temp sensors is not good.
It will always be wrong.
When the radiator is on then the temperature is to high, when it’s off then it gets cold air from window vents.
That is why I say external temp sensor and mains powered actuator.
Yeah, i agree, but mains powered part is problematic… i don’t have any mains near my radiator, that’s why battery-powered is my only option. If battery-powered actuators are available it would be the win situation…
Regarding problems with sonoff - many people have problems with zigbee, so that could be the cause… sadly i didn’t see that sonoff have wifi valves. I did find no-name valves on aliexpress, but who knows if they work or not…
I guess i could draw a wire somehow, built my own circuit with esp32 and i’m a winner.
I’m looking some of actuators on aliexpress, and some are even 24V, which is kinda safer, i guess. But what means NC or NO…?
Ahhh… sure, thanks.
Although it seems a good idea, i don’t like the fact that radiator is either fully closed or fully open.
I’m reading a bit about sonoff valve, and i found that one guy managed to improve it with some automations in HA - he made “fully open” state changeable, so it seems interesting idea. The down side is that in his case whole thing is heavily HA dependant, so if HA connection dies all goes to a halt. Ok, my HA is being quite rock solid untuk now, but…
Now i’m exploring the difference between P and E usb hub. e is newer, supposedly had some problems at the beginning, but they should be solved by now.
