Hi Community,
I am looking for a smart home solution to control my devices step by step. I own a house with a Brötje central Gas heating, Solar for heating and water. There are two rooms witch will be heated, bath and a large living-dining-kitschen room. in the large room is a fire place witch can heat the whole room for hours.
Bathroom has 2 radiators and two windows.
Large room hast 3 radiators and two possible windows for ventilation.
What I want to do, step by step in this order:
automation/smart 5 radiators in 2 rooms with open window function.
Light automation
Security, windows open/close, camera etc. (optional)
My thoughts and hazzles:
My solution was homematic ip, because I want to expand step by step and I all I can read was, that homematic is stable, reliable and worth its money, all from one vendor. Do you have alternatives that works better and/or cheaper?
1.2 For the radiators I am not sure if I take the HMIP-eTRV-2 or the HMIP-eTRV-B (basic)? I can not see the difference (10€ in price per piece). Can you help me out?
As a CUL I was thinking of openhab on Raspberry Pi with pivccu. It seems a stable solution or is Homegear the better solution? Can Homegear and openhab run on the same Pi?
Excuses for my english, it is a bit rusty hope you understand and don’t mind!
I am looking forward for your answers to help me out of my struggles.
Please note that this forum is not on general Home Automation but on openHAB only. We don’t do general HW consulting and discussion here.
Some general advice:
Automating HVAC is the hardest part in Home Automation. We often get to see post like yours, but only the inexperienced start with that and often need to return and rework their heating setup later on.
Get experience and confidence in openHAB and one or two HW standards first (KNX, ZWave, Zigbee) before proceeding.
I personally would never use proprietary stuff like Homematic but would look for a standards based solution instead. Granted, for thermostats there’s not much else on the market so you have to make compromises. Check out the MAX! system, that’s essentially Homematic for thermostats only and works without a CUL.
For a server, best use a Pi with openHABian, it comes with an option to install homegear to run on the same box if you really decide to go that Homematic route.
Thanks alot, that realy helped me! I will take a closer look at Max!
I was wondering, because some people said it is a mess and Homematic would be the better choice.
I don’t know Max!, but I’m using several Homematic components, including thermostats and it works for me.
(I’m using Homematic instead of Homematic IP because I strongly dislike components with cloud connection)
In general I can confirm that Homematic works reliable.
My openHAB server is a Raspberry 3B, no issues with that. Instead of using a separate CCU for Homematic you could use the hardware modul for Raspberry and run openHAB and the CCU software on the same Raspberry, but that is a bit more tricky and the hardware model didn’t work as reliable for me as a dedicated CCU (my Homematic Raspberry modul was dead after a power outage).
Like fex said I also can confirm that Homematic works reliable. I am using several Homematic IP as well as “normal” Homematic components in a mix, such as thermostats, switches and siren and it works well for me.
My openHAB server is a Raspberry 3B+ model, working togehter with a older CCU2 for 3,5 years now, no issues with that.
