Hello,
i’m so sorry but i need your help;
The heating of my house is divided into 4 zones: each zone has a solenoid valve that activate the natural gas boiler.
I’d like to controlling the solenoid valves with openhab.
I just need a schedule programming (don’t understand if is possible with openhab) and thermal (by selecting temperature target) control.
Not sure if:
use a wired system (I’d really like to avoid further wireless transmissions)
but in this case i really don’t know what to do.
Can u give me some suggestion?
Thanks in advance!
I asked similar questions when I first started. My recommendation is to use the zwave thermostats. They cost a bit but here’s the deal. In the few years I have been running automation, I have come home to my controller (vera, not so much with OH) to be locked up more than once. My house was chilly because the temp didn’t come up for me to arrive home but what it wasn’t is frozen.
If you rely 100% on home grown solenoids and OH, if anything goes awry, the heat doesn’t kick on. With a dedicated thermostat, it will at the very least hold the last temp.
You could also consider wifi thermostats if you don’t want to invest in zwave. I had zwave already for my switches so it made sense.
Thanks for your suggestion.
Yes, i already have a zwave network so isn’t a problem.
But i prefer wired solution so i’d like to know if there is another solution!
WiFi thermostat like netstant are always wireless so i don’t like anyway…
Most thermostats are wired to the heating equipment, but may also have Z-Wave, Wi-fi, ZigBee, or other ways to control them remotely. There is nothing more or less reliable, generally, between the different wireless systems. You may dislike cloud-based thermostats because that adds further possible points of failure, but it also often adds a lot of convenience — a dedicated infrastructure provided to you, possibly with the same or better up time than a self-managed system might be for reliability of remote access. I’ve found downtime to be very rare with both Nest and Ecobee, for example, although reputations probably differ for different vendors.
All that being said, often Z-Wave thermostats cost quite a bit less, and many are well supported by the Z-Wave binding.
This is, in my opinion, an important thing to consider. The value of Nest and the more expensive “learning” tstats almost seems moot if you plan to control it with rules. If you are simply looking to trigger from it I suppose it can make sense. I will give you that the nest looks better than my kinda chunky honeywell units. I also don’t trust google to not be constantly cataloging my whereabouts but that’s paranoia.
When I first started looking, I specifically wanted to get a technology that was self sustainable in that if the manufacturer decided they no longer wanted to host the cloud service it didn’t become a useless hunk of silicon over night. That doesn’t mean it has to be zwave, I personally would just be sure that you can talk to it fully via LAN even if the WAN is down.
If i understand well i agree with u.
Nest isn’t a way for me. i don’t love it.
the preferred solution for me would be a wired solution; ror wired solution i mean a lan solution;
This would means that:
build a gpio solution with raspberry (actually too hard for me)
use a knx solution (too expensive because i didn’t use knx it now and don’t understand perfectly how does it works)
use a wireless solution -> zwave thermostat [wired with valve but wireless with other].
Hello,
i newly update the thread. I just checked some thermostat but i’m not sure about decision to take.
In the and i suppose that the best solution is:
use a fibaro relay to open and close a solenoid valve
emergency toggle to turn on/off (if openhab have a problem) connected to the fibaro relay (all the solenoid valve are close in the same room)
But… the biggest problem is programming.
Maybe i can make a rules with temperature but don’t know how to make a touch friendly schedule.
there is a way to do it?
Any suggestion?
There is quite a number of advantages to using a pre-built thermostat that’s compatible with your heating/cooling equipment, and can also be monitored and controlled from openHAB. The logic for when to call for heating and cooling really ought to live in the thermostat for simplicity and reliability – unless you want to get into the thermostat business or just want to build your own from scratch. There are good options for Z-Wave and a number of vendors of “smart” thermostats that can be controlled via app, web and home automation.
Thank you for the reply;
yes but i.e. with heatit thermostat i’ll spend 600/750€ (150€ each one);
With a fibaro relay about 100/150€.
And also with heatit i didn’t found manual so i don’t know how does it works!
Do u have any suggestion about this thermostat?
I can use zwave, Ethernet, wifi…
thanks!
If cost is a very important factor you could go by something like the max! system from eq3.
It is wireless though, with approx 30eur per unit. It is mainly thermostat heads, but it has also a version that just can switch a load,e.g. in our case the valve.
