I have a dedicated pc running HA supervisor and attached to it i have an Aeotec z-stick 7 and all is working fine.
at the beginning of the new year i will be restructuring my HVAC solution for my old house.
as part of this restructuring I plan to install smart valves on my 11 hot water radiators. Currenly these radiators have Giacomini valves and a tube diameter of 13 mm… Giacomini has smart valves however they are with a zigbee protocol.
I will be adding 7 new fan coils to the house. On these fan coils i can install z-wave smart valves and i will have no issues.
My Qestion:
can i install a separate zigbee usb controller controlling the existing 11 radiators on the same PC that runs HA to control these valves (i would install z-wave smart valves to control the fan coils).
If not this would mean changing all the valves on the 11 old radiators (this would cost over 1k £)
And plan out your ZigBee repeating infrastructure. ZigBee works basically like Zwave in that line powered devices repeat and battery powered ones don’t. They also have similar ranges. So every consideration you made for Zwave applies here with the additional consideration of being wary of WiFi interference. Enough line powered repeaters to get your signal to all of your radiator valves. Work out from the HA install and build a good repeater infrastructure.
Gee Folks thank you very much for your prompt replies. this is greatly appreciated/
I have been using z-wave for many years and i had no issues with ranger to date because of their mesh architecture.
@NathanCu sorry i do not understand your reference to wifi.
Because i will be moving from my ausus router to opnesense i will end up with 2 access points. 1 delivering wifi to the lower part of the house and outside and one handling the loft and upper MB. My house is on 3 floors but it’s not that big
All my Pcs and servers are hard wired I only use wifi for my phone or for guests
The reason I bring it up is you apparently have a handle on how ZWave works. ZigBee basically works the same way (Zigbee people don’t eat me - yes I know it’s a gross oversimplification) with one HUGE exception.
Zigbee shares radio spectrum space with 2.4Ghz Wifi and doesn’t behave well in close proximity to USB 3 devices… (Which throws off 2.4 GHz interference)
That means when planning your Zigbee install, do all the same things you did to plan your ZWave install. Ranges, distances, repeaters, etc. BUT you also have to understand if your Wifi will cause interference. For my particular install that meant isolating all my 2.4 Ghz wifi to Wifi channels 1 and 6 and putting my Zigbee stick on Zigbee Channel 20. (no it’s not the same channel scheme, but these are nonoverlapping channels) to get them as far away from each other as possible.
Thanks for taking the time to explain this to me. This is very helpful. my WIFI devices currently connect to the AP via 5GHz (amazon echo).(except for my phone)
I understand what you mean by isolating. this is a point that i did not considered this…
I have two zwave sticks, two zigbee sticks and my Unifi wifi AP within 3 feet of each other and have never experienced any interference. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen but unless I’m just really lucky (doubt it) I think the concern could be way overblown.
