For the last few years I’ve been using Tado to control my home heating, but for many reasons, I want something better and have set up Home Assistant on a dedicated Orange PI 5 plus to handle this and everything else related to home automation.
So I need to utilise more controllable TRVs. Basically, I want to use HA to group TRVs into any required zones, read and control the temperature of each zone/room and obviously turn the boiler on and off as required.
My question is simply, what is the best TRV for complete integration and control in HA?
There is also the question of battery life (one of the reasons for dumping Tado) and this leads me to think the Shelly TRV (rechargeable batteries) is an ideal replacement. Also being WiFi is a huge advantage as I have great coverage throughout the house (something else Tado fails at) and as far as I can see, Shelly devices integrate VERY well in HA.
So currently it looks to me that Shelly TRVs are the best solution for my needs, but is there any other TRV that would be better?
It’s hard to say as trvs doesnt heat anything. Boiler or furnace does.
You probably have some tado device, some thermostat, that can control your boiler. Before dumping tado you will have to find a way how to integrate your boiler in home assistant.
When you solve that problem than you can choose trv.
Will trv be able to turn on or off boiler and adjust heating is not a trv issue. Its boiler integration.
Maybe you’re misunderstanding. I know EXACTLY what is required to do what and I’m just wanting the best TRV that can be integrated into HA. Tado devices and HomeMatic each use their own proprietary protocol which adds complication or makes it impossible to work within a HA setup, so they’re out.
From the vast experience of HA users here, what TRVs are the best to integrate into HA? I believe Shelly devices integrate well and their TRVs have other advantages, but are there any better TRVs to integrate into HA?
Once I have TRVs that can be fully integrated into HA, then I can work on the logic to control the temperatures as I want and switch the boiler as required. My understanding is that Shelly TRVs work well in HA, but is there something better of which I am unaware?
I completely fail to understand the sense of what you’re saying. Are you perhaps posting in the wrong thread as the above comment seems to be nonsense.
What can possibly be wrong with suggesting the use of TRVs in HA and something to switch the boiler on and off? Saying the logic is wrong makes about as much sense as saying the “logic is wrong” trying to use HA for any Home Automation purposes when that is EXACTLY what HA is for.
Are you saying that HA cannot read and control ANY TRVs? Or it cannot control a relay? Or HA cannot implement the logic to read and control hardware? I suggest none of those are true.
To be clear, I have installed and/or renovated entire central heating and electrical systems in my own homes over the years and I’ve been a software developer so am familiar with writing code (although I dislike YAML, but that’s another matter entirely). I do know EXACTLY what a TRV does and I know EXACTLY how to switch the boiler on and off and I can construct the logic required to do what I need and I’m pretty sure HA can be configured to operate on that logic. What am I missing?
I simply asked which TRVs can best be integrated into HA. Is that too much to ask? What logic is wrong?
So please, explain yourself. Your sweeping statement requires explanation.
We obviously have some misunderstanding and you could relax a bit.
What I want to say is that you need to integrate, first off all, you heating source in home assistant.
After that you can play around with trv because trv are just here to control your heating elements like radiators.
You are claiming other way around. First do trv and then work your way up to the heating source. But it is other way around.
As a guy who has integrated my heating source in home assistant and smart trv, I can say that this is how things works. And I dont use any cloud or property software for this to work. Everything is on a local control. And it doesnt use relay. My system is using pcb for furnace remote control and can do much more than turn on or off furnace.
As for trv goes I use zigbee ones and that suit my needs.
As long as you can get them into HA and control them, then all that is possible.
I use HomeMatic IP and have the control set up through Node Red flows, but it can be done in HA itself too and there is also the Better Thermostat integration to ease this somewhat.
Your heating solution will first become really good once you have added temperature sensors away from the radiators though.
Battery powered devices that do not move around is a hate object for me, so I tend to make them mains powered. It is pretty cheap and increase the selection of devices available.
I wasn’t implying any particular order of doing things, apart from first of all trying to figure out which TRVs can best be integrated into HA. Clearly I shouldn’t have confused the issue by mentioning the other aspects of all this. I just want to establish the best TRVs to use as I will need to read the temperature and then be able to control valve opening. Some TRVs will be better to use in HA than others and I’m hoping to find out which.
E.g. Tado make TRVs, but as they work on an entirely proprietary protocol, probably impossible to fully integrate them into HA. Shelly TRVs look a good choice and I have read of HomeMatic also being used. What about Eve?
I’ll keep searching the forum, but direct experience of others would be appreciated here.
I agree and it is one big reason for thinking Shelly may be the best solution. Tado’s battery consumption is alarming and I don’t want to repeat that.
You use HomeMatic but are they not simply battery powered? Will they run ok on rechargeables? Most seem not to and so far I’ve only found that Shelly don’t need a constant supply of batteries.
old USB adapters. The ½A and 1A versions are usually plenty to these setups.
A piece of standard 2-core electrical wire
2 pieces of round wood or plastic about the same diameter as a battery and maybe ½cm smaller in length
2 metal screws (the head need to able to act as the end of the battery and sometimes one screw work and another does not)
Recipes:
Drill a hole in one end of each of the round pieces and mount a screw in them
Adjust the screw, so the round piece and screw will fit in the battery compartment of the device you want powered. Replace the screw if the head does not make proper contact in the battery compartment.
Connect one core of the electrical wire to each of the screws (glue or solder does not matter much as long as the connection is there)
Connect the other end of the cores of the electrical wire to the USB boards pins. use 3.3V = 2 batteries or 5V = 3 batteries (solder or crimp with dupont connectors if you want)
Connect the USB board to the USB adapter and you are ready
The electrical wire have no issues with the heat for a normal water-based radiator, so you can mount the electrical wire along the pipes.
The last piece is just to find the right way to insert the fake batteries you now have and find a way to lead the wire out from the battery compartment which might require a little cut in the lid for the compartment.
[quote=“WallyR, post:10, topic:684173, full:true”]
The were battery powered. Now they are mains powered.
…
/quote]
Ha, excellent work. I have planned to do exactly the same with my Tado TRVs, but in the end decided to get rid of Tado completely and change to something else.
Jury’s still out though on which TRVs to use.
Something just occurred to me though. Sonoff have recently introduced their own TRV, at much lower prices than all others which makes them attractive, but they’re battery powered - 3 x AA which I thought worse than 2 x AA so did not consider them any more. What I’m now thinking is that they must be running on about 4.8V and would surely be OK with direct USB power, no step-down board required. So just hook up a USB PSU direct into the TRV.
Also, they are Zigbee and I have several hubs and repeaters to spread a good signal throughout the house.
True it is not required, but I found the stepdown boards cheap and it is so much easier to work with the pins on that instead of an USB connector.
The stepdown board does actually not do anything for 5V. It is just a pass-through and can often be used as input for the stepdown to 3.3V.
Hi there, I am a newby in the field of home heating automation. Maybe my question is ignorant but possibly you can advise.
OpenTherm is a commonly used protocol, also in my (Dutch) central heating system (Remeha.nl). I’d like my trv’s to be able to, individually, call for heat and turn on the burner. My impression is most TRV’s only open/close the valve of the radiator they are on, with a central thermostat (usually in the living) controlling the burner. If the living is warm, the trv’s won’t function.
Is my understanding correct? Any ways around this? I am thinking a hub with OpenTerm protocol that accepts input from all trv’s. Not sure if such exist?
Im not familiar with OpenTherm or your heating system. In general heating source must have thermostat somewhere. It could be outside, inside or maybe using weather forecast.
Depends on temperature setting on thermostat it will turn heating on or off when winter time is on or off.
Smart trv can emulate zone heating. You can have zone heating ie. different temperature settings for each zone without smart trv but this is very expencive as you will need thermostat and a pump for each zone and a pump for whole system.
Im using smart trv for zone heating. I have furnace that has its own automation and outdoor thermostat. Zone heating can reduce heating cost because not all parts of the house needs the same amount of heating. Buy reducing number of radiators that require heating you will reduce amount of gas used for heat cyclus maintaing more temperature whre you need it. It will also keep minimal temperature in the parts you dont use or need.
If you can control the burner from HA then you can trigger on the TRV going to heat mode and turn on the burner.
Keep in mind TRVs are kind of loud when connected to a radiator and eat a lot of batteries.
There are wired 230 v thermal actuators, but they need a smart switch and a temperature sensor.
If you already have a temperature sensor in each room then you just need the switch and the actuator.
It’s so much nicer to not have to listen to the TRV anymore.
Most combi boilers are controlled by a simple relay switch. There is a box next to the boiler that has the radio link to the remote room temperature sensor / thermostat (or the wired room sensor/thermostat if its really old). It has a cable coming out the boiler with two wires and connecting those together tells the boiler to be on and breaking the connection turns the burners off.
To automate it you need… a microcontroller with wifi (ESP32, Arduino Nano IoT 33 etc) a relay board controlled by one of the GPIO pins of the microcontroller and some way of powering the microcontroller (230v to 5V board or a USB power supply etc).
Set up the microcontroller with the relay connected to it (countless examples online) and wire the boilers trigger wires into the relay (in the common and normally open terminals). Then set the microcontroller up in Home Assistant as a device.
You then create a switch in home assistant that tells the microcontroller to set the GPIO pin that the relay is controlled by to high which makes the relay turn on (and thus the boiler) or low which turns the relay off.
Now you can use any TRV or temperature sensor or timer in Home assistant to trigger this switch however you wish.
Boiler is now automated.