Danfoss vs Eurotronic

Hi,

I’m going to buy some zwave heater thermo valves and I’m between the danfoss lc-13 and the eurotronic comet-z.

First of all there’s a difference about the price, the eurotronic is cheaper, but looking at online reviews and tests there’s something the is not clear to me, so I’m asking opinion to who is owing these devices.

Is it true that the eurotronic when turns to manual mode (by using the physical wheel) cannot be remotely controlled for 2h? Reading the manual it seems wrong but I read that behavior in one online review; and is it true that the eurotronic doesn’t report to the zwave controller unit if the temperature changed manually?

On paper the eurotronic seems better, has more command available (even the degree of openness of the valve) and it reports the sensor temperature (the danfoss does not) but it doesn’t have the children block (that wheel on eurotronic is too attractive for childrens :smiling_imp:, but if the temperature changing is reported to the controller it can be re-adjusted via OH) and the display has no light.

Thank you for your help.

Regards.

I am using the Danfoss. Also because of the nice look of the valve (compared to others and also compared to Eurotronic). The Valves are mounted in my living room, so visual reasons were important.

Concerning the technical differences, I can not say anything about the Eurotronic “special features” since I do not own them. But one advice: If you want to have sensor temperature report, maybe the Devolo device is an alternative. It is Danfoss OEM branded and reviews say that this device also reports the sensor temperature (even if Danfoss does not…).

I like my Danfoss and would buy it again (I do not need sensor temperature report because I am using the additional Danfoss room sensor for the current temperature. Also it is not quite recommended to measure the temperature near the valve, because this doesn’t represent a realistic value of the actual room temperature).

@jaydee73 Thank you for your answer. I agree with you about the temperature sensor.

I have a question for you, the protection mode is actionable only by zwave; is it a parameter listed in Habmin or I need an item? I didn’t find any example but the zwave OH database reports the command class as implemented.

thank you

By protection mode you mean the local lock of the thermostat? I have seen this feature in the manual, but never wanted to use it, so I haven’t investigated much time in this. The database states this command class, but according to the wiki the command class PROTECTION isn’t supported by the z-wave binding (see Wiki). Maybe @chris can confirm this?

I’ve also used another zwave gateway before (Zipato Zipabox). This controller was also said to support the Danfoss valve. But there also wasn’t a support of the lock feature. So maybe it’s also not supported in OH?!

Maybe this feature is only supported with the Danfoss own solution (Danfoss CC)?

It’s not supported in the OH1 binding - only OH2.

Hi Stefan,
just a little question from an automation beginner.
Are you controlling (opening/closing) the Danfoss actuators on the base of the room themp that you are reading from an exteenals sensor or you are setting the them profiles to the Danfoss device so that it will be switching on its own ?
I’d like to implement the first schema and I’m not sure if this is possible using Danfos LC13 and openHAB.
thanks very much.
ciao, Marco

Hi @chris,
I checked the database within the zwave binding via eclipse (v 1.8.1) and I can see the command class 0x75 (protection) listed, does it mean is supported?

Thank you.

I’m not sure what you’re looking at, but as I said earlier, the protection command class is not supported in OH1.

@Marcotglb: I am indeed reading the room temperature from an external sensor (also a Danfoss device, the Danfoss RS room sensor). But the controlling of the valves happens based on rules with time events (cron). Simply spoken it’s an “temperature up in the morning” and “temperature down in the evening”. But as there is no kind of scheduler in OpenHAB, I had to make some rules. But it’s pretty easy. The room sensor (and it’s room temperature) mainly doesn’t affect this rules (one exception: see below).

The additional intelligence of the valve itself (the valve also compares the set temperature with it’s own measured room temperature) is sufficient, so that the valve doesn’t heat up to 22°C (even if the rule has defined this) if the “real” temperature is above.

The room sensor serves me to get the real temperature of the room (the sensor temperature of the valves cannot be retrieved). Also I can manually select another set temperature with the room sensor (if I want…) and override the “rule temperature”. This is simply for convenience reasons.

@Stefan. Thanks very much Stefan for your clear explanation.
Do you think it is possible so open/close the Danfos Head independently from what is the Head specific setting ?
In other words I’d like to use the head as a pure slave device that is driven by openHAB (who is reading the room sensors).

Thanks again indeed!
ciao, Marco

Hi @Marcotglb,
I think is not possible.
The other valve, comet z, allows that type of functionality. It can be set in a mode where you can control the degree of openness (according to the manual).

The Danfoss device does not allow for manual setting of the valve position, from my experience. Also if you want to set the temperature often you need to set the wake time to a small interval and then the battery life is abysmal.