Which Smart TRV / Radiator Valve with Home Assistant?

Hardware
1

Hi.

Can anyone recommend a Smart TRV / Radiator Valve that work with Home Assistant in the UK?

Ideally I want it to connect directly to Home Assistant via Zigbee, without the need for any additional bridge/hub.

2

I can’t help you with a Zigbee TRV but I’ve been using the Danfoss Living Connect ZWave TRVs for several years with good results.

I bought them from Vesternet. Just be sure you get the Wave version as there are other networks supported.

3

Thanks for the reply. Zigbee is preferred though. Also, these ones look mostly discontinued.

4

I use these:-

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002432868660.html?spm=a2g0o.cart.0.0.6b84378duaqmrD&mp=1

Work perfectly with HA, am using them with ZHA, but you do need this local quirk currently:-

https://github.com/zigpy/zha-device-handlers/files/9844752/ts0601_trv_beca.py.zip

There is a thread about compatibility here:-

5

Hi.
I’m in the UK and have both Aqara E1 and Hive UK7004240 TVR’s running in HA. My experience is as follows:

The Aqara E1 works out of the box with Zigbee2mqtt. I use Simple thermostat to set the temperature and Scheduler component to control it - nice and simple.

The Hive UK7004240 TVR’s are basically re-badged Danfoss Ally 014G2461 TVR’s. They work out of the box too with Zigbee2mqtt.

I personally prefer the Hive TVR’s over the the Aqara’s as they run very close to the chosen temperature settings - this is due to the very good integral PID on these devices. The Aqara’s tend to under and over run the set temperature on my heating system - YMMV

The only problem I have had with the Hive TRV’s, is for some reason my Zigbee coordinator and Zigbee2mqtt don’t like connecting directly to three or more devices at the same time - could be a bug. I have no problem connecting three Hive TVR’s via a Tradfri repeater and a Sonoff Smart plug.

4 Likes
6

Also in the UK, I’m wondering how to handle covered radiators, with heads near the floor. In each room I have a temperature sensor connected to the HA. Are there radiator heads on the market to which I can send the current room temperature? Or which can receive something like PID from HA, not just ON/OFF?

7

Hi @FalconTech

As you can see above, I have both the Aqara E1 TRV and the Hive UK7004240 TVR’s running in HA. The Hive valves are re-badged Danfoss Ally 014G2461 TVR’s. The Danfoss Ally TRV’s don’t seem to be available in the UK, I suspect they are only being marketed through Hive.

If you do a search on this forum, you will find people using an external temperature sensor with the Aqara and other valves in conjunction with ‘Better Thermostat’ see here:

I personally didn’t have much success with this setup. The room I was using it in fluctuated in temperature by +/-2 C, at best YMMV.

On the other hand, I have had a really good experience with an external temperature sensor and the Hive valves. The same room stays within 0.5 C of the setpoint. I think this is down to using an external temperature sensor and the valves inbuilt PID (Proportional Integral Derivative) controller. If you are interested in how this works, read this document:

I have setup the Hive TRV’s using Napalm’s excellent (ZHA, Zigbee2MQTT - Danfoss Ally send external temperature to TRV) Bluprint. See here for more information:

Hope you find this a useful starting point.

3 Likes
8

Better Thermostat is nice, but I found that it was almost too good.It kept sending new target temperatures to my TRV’s everytime the external temperature sensor changed its state.

Using the generic thermostat instead, I can control when to send a new target temperature to the TRV only when it goes below or above certain thresholds.

This reduces the amount of flash writes to the TRV’s dramatically, which will in turn, increase its operating life.

If better thermostat had something like a hot and cold tolerance like the generic thermostat, the amount of writes to the TRV would reduce dramatically.

2 Likes
9

I’ve just bought a hive trv myself, how did you manage to calibrate it within zigbee2mqtt?

10

Hi @callumgourlay

To calibrate Hive TRV’s using the Home Assistant Zigbee2MQTT add-on, do the following:

I am assuming your Hive TRV is mounted on a radiator and visible in HA. For the calibration to succeed, your heating system must be running so there is a constant supply of hot water in the system. This is necessary to allow the TRV to find the point where the valve is just starting to open.

Go to zigbee2mqtt front-end UI and select ‘Devices’, ‘friendly name’ of device you want to calibrate and select ‘Exposes’. Go to the ‘adaptation_run_control’ and select ‘initiate_adaptation’. The ‘adaptation_run_status’ should change from ‘None’ to ‘Progress’ after a few seconds. The calibration process can take up to a couple of hours. If you want a bit more background information on this , see section 1.6 in the document ‘AU417130778872en-000101.pdf 48’ I indicated above.

1 Like
11

Does anyone have any suggestions for a TRV which works without cloud connectivity, just as well as the Hive TRV? It seems the Hive integration relies on Hive cloud service (hivehome.com).

The specs for the Hive TRV says it uses Zigbee for connectivity so does that mean I can keep these disconnected from the internet and just use the Zigbee integration to create manual controls for the Hive TRVs?

12

Hi @abdullahX I use both Aqara E1 and Hive TRV’s, neither require cloud connectivity and both are Zigbee devices. I don’t use the Hive app as I find it easier to use the simple thermostat card to set temperatures and the scheduler component card to set schedules for each TRV. This setup worked without a hitch last winter, I plan to fit three more Hive TRV’s in a few weeks time.

1 Like
14

Hi @jao
May I know how do you control the boiler?
Smart TRVs just control the temperature of the room (or radiator), right?
How to let the boiler knows it needed to be turn on? Thanks

15

Hi @arnoldxt
I have a Hive Active Heating setup to control my boiler. Mainly because I want it to be reliable and continue to operate if my Home Automation goes down. I use the HACS Hive Custom integration when I want to control my heating at home and the Hive app on my phone when I’m outside my home. The Hive thermostat is used to set a base line temperature in my hall way and switches the boiler on and off.

As I explained in my previous message above, I use the Scheduler component in combination with the simple thermostat card to fine tune the heating of individual rooms via a TRV. e.g. I can determine when rooms are heated and to what temperature.

Effectively, I have two independent systems running at the same time. This gives me both reliability and independent room control.

16

thanks jao
Let me check if there’s any other options.
My boiler already support RF wireless control. Not sure if I can control it by raspberry pi somehow.

17

Hi folks! Very interesting thread!

I also have a thermometer in every room, and I would like to find a valve that can be controller just as a switch, basically I want HA to open/close the valves based on each room’s thermostat. Does anyone know of any VRT that allows for that? (basically I want to bypass their internal thermometer/thermostat completely and let HA decide when the valve should be operated).
Also I would be inclined to use zigbee as I already have tens of devices on my WIFI…

Thanks in advance for any suggestion.

18

So you’re planning to control the valve opening percentage based on the room thermometer? Yes, that’s possible, there are a few that let you directly control the valve. A possible list to start from is searching for “radiator” at: Zigbee2MQTT and then check which of them let you control the valve. Maybe you’ll also find something here GitHub - jmcollin78/versatile_thermostat: A full featured Thermostat for Home Assistant: presets, window, motion, presence and overpowering management in README, discussions of issues – I remember that the over_valve regulation was a topic last winter, as it has a regulation that effectively replaces the TRV self-regulation and might lead to better results.

PS: Let me know what you find out, I’m curious.

1 Like
19

Great thanks for the answer I’ll check that. And btw I wouldn’t be so demanding about the opening percentage, an “open/closed” control would be enough! Thanks I’ll let you know

20

I also thought that open/closed would be enough, however for a typical setup I think you will discover that works poorly – the temperature of the room would overshoot. All good smart TRVs will intelligently adjust the valve open %age as needed.

21

You’d be surprised how quickly your battery drains when the valve always has to open/close fully. My Eve Thermos go by steps of very few percent – if they notice that it’s getting too cold, they very slowly increase the opening. Due to their internal temperature sensor they notice temperature increases very quickly. I had great results when combining that with room thermometers with versatile thermostat last winter. With the only downside that their offset calibration isn’t controllable, so the target temperature they display on the device usually isn’t the “real” target temperature – which confuses everyone who’d like to increase/decrease the temperature in the room.