Heating season has started again for a few weeks now, so another update, in case a lost soul ends up here. Would be cool if we get some reviews of other TRVs in here, ideally from people who also tried different ones and can give pros and cons.
As mentioned in my last post, I was going to update the coordinator firmware, and finally did so during the summer. So far, that seemingly solved the issue where they stopped accepting commands, but then again I’m only using two of them now, in places where I never adjust the temp anyways, since touch controls suck a**. I might as well have been an interaction if manual vs. remote control.
The only minor issue I still have is that somtimes when you change the target temperature via zigbee, the device acknowledges the change, but nothing happens for up to ~5 minutes. So I can either wait 5 minutes, or touch any of the controls to wake the TRV up, in which case it displays the new target temp after half a second or so and starts opening/closing the valve. This is slightly annoying with time-critical automations. For weekends I wanted it so that the kitchen gets warm as soon as someone gets up (motion detector in bedrooms), but if you add a 5 minute delay you might end up in a cold kitchen even if you visit the bathroom first. I’d say it happens one out of 10 times.
Also in a room where I almost never adjust the temp (guest room), but it’s nice that is has real buttons, so if you have someone over you can just tell them “press this button to raise temp” and they’ll handle it just fine even if its half dark.
Downside: Can’t get the schedule to work. Fiddled around for days. Time is set correctly on device, schedule is displayed correctly on device, device is set to “auto” mode, yet it stays at one temp the whole time. So now I do the scheduling via HA.
Has become my favorite so far, even replaced a BRT/Moes one with a second Sonoff. It looks sleek, the dial makes it quick to use, the display is minimalist but fine for my needs. Never had any networking or responsiveness issues.
I never encountered the battery drain issue again with either one, and with the recent firmware update v.1.1.5, it became possible to configure how much the valve opens, so I can finally have the temp increase gently if I want to.
EDIT: Please read the heads-up 4 posts down regarding firmware v1.2.1.
Surely the kitchen temperature has no change the first five minutes.
I can’t find any data in my instance since I only save the data 10 days and the radiators have not been on the last 10 days.
But remembering from last season it would take several hours to get the temperature up just a few degrees
Thank you for this. I’ve just started looking at smart TRVs, having decided to replace all the old single panel radiators in our house, and I really like the look of the Sonoff ones so I’m glad to see a good review of them!
I generally hate plumbing but I’m getting quite excited about this project!
Oh it absolutely has. Water temp is 60°C and the kitchen is right above the room with the boiler. It’s the room than can be heated the fastest. 18 → 21 really only takes 10 minutes.
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I wanted to give a heads-up for the SONOFF TRV though. The most recent firmware update 1.2.1 seems to cause issues for some people according to this discussion. Fortunately I googled before hitting the update button, but then decided to try the update anyways, one TRV at a time. Got lucky and wasn’t affected by this, but you might want to either stay away from the update for now, or do it right after unboxing, so you can send them right back if the workarounds mentioned further down that discussion don’t work for you.
Well yeah, 10 minutes was exaggerated. I just checked the thermometer which is at the opposite end of the room, according to this it’s more like an hour for 2°C. The table is pretty much right in between the radiator and the thermometer, so I guess it just feels warmer much faster, as you’re also exposed to the radiant heat. When entering the kitchen, you can definitely immediately tell whether the the TRV turned on five minutes ago and the radiator is blasting heat at you while sitting 2 meters away, or whether it’s ice cold because the TRV is exposing that lagging behavior again. It makes a huge difference in perception.
Thanks for all the great info. Two questions about the Sonoff TRVZB:
Does it support ZHA yet? (with or without a quirk)
Does it report reasonably accurate battery levels (using ZHA)
I agree about the BRT-100-TRV. I had 10 of those, the base plate broken on 3 and yesterday 2 of them refused to stay connected to my controller (not a controller issue) so will never buy them again. I really don’t like the TRV’s where you have to unscrew the bottom and the batteries are behind a small metal plate as the plate keeps bending and the little turny bit keeps breaking.
I’d say it happens one out of 10 times.
