Smart heating that works without an external server

[smar]

The hardware is just:

1. An arduino (in my case a nano)
2. A CC1101 radio card (I suggest getting one with pins already soldered in as some come without, and you need to ensure the aerial is the correct 868Mhz one and not the 433 one)
3. Some dupont jumper cables

That’s it! Note that if you get the arduino and the radio with the pins already in, then no soldering is required - the dupont cables just plug in to to their respective pins. It takes longer to check the instructions for which pin joins to which pin, than to plug it all together.

Not sure what you mean by the ‘newer Evohome’ stuff. I have a full evohome system with the current colour touchscreen controller, HR92 TRVs, BDR91 relays, HCC80R underfloor heating controller etc if that helps.

[mstormi (Markus Storm)]

@Feathers_McGraw

I’m not sure why it’s an inappropriate question if the main requirement of choosing a system is that it is compatible with openhab

Then read both of my posts again, please.
The forum and this category is not meant for people looking for HA consultation, i.e. to ask for products to have a certain functionality and to be OH compatible. The latter just doesn’t qualify as a selector because there’s simply too much stuff OH is compatible with. It’s different if you want OH to be that product, but that would mean to do the control programming in OH which is not what you asked for.
I know it’s a thin line and I won’t intervene when there’s people willing to answer, but in general we don’t want to spend our time on educating people in Home Automation where it’s not OH related, and we have seen a number of posters exploiting that willingness which is what I try to protect our users from.
Thank you for understanding.

[H102 (CM6.5 H102)]

You can always build your own as @smar mentioned. I personaly would use an ESP8266 with temp/humidity sensor and a few relay’s for turning on/off your heater. The ESP8266 flashed with tasmota or ESP-Easy will work good with mqqt, OH and a rule or two.

Here is a sensor connected to a sonoff device that works great and sonoff uses an esp8266.

Switch LivingRoom_Light "Living Room Light" <light>  ["Lighting"] { channel="mqtt:topic:pibroker:sonoff11:power" }
Number LivingRoom_Light_Temp "Temperature [%.1f °F]"      <temp>             { channel="mqtt:topic:pibroker:sonoff11:temperature" }
Number LivingRoom_Light_Humidity    "Humidity [%.1f %%]"    <humidity>       { channel="mqtt:topic:pibroker:sonoff11:humidity" }

[Feathers_McGraw (Sam Hobbs)]

@smar great, that’s really helpful.

The reason for my question is I read some information on the openTRV wiki that made me wonder if the HGI80 (and the arduino solution) would only work with the hardware listed under “original version” on that page, i.e. the HR80 TRV and Evotouch greyscale control panel.

From your post I it seems it works with the “new version” hardware too, which is great!

This is also a nice excuse to buy an Arduino, so thanks for that

[Feathers_McGraw (Sam Hobbs)]

@mstormi I think I understand where you are coming from now. Can you recommend a forum for general home automation questions?

The confusion was because I have found some good information on this forum in the past relating to general hardware stuff (e.g. how to flash sonoff smart switches with custom firmware) - clearly that makes those switches useful for home automation generally and is not specific to openhab, but these questions must be commonly asked by openhab users.

[Feathers_McGraw (Sam Hobbs)]

@H102 I am using a sonoff pow r2 with sonoff-tasmota to control/monitor my immersion heater and oven, my central heating is a wet system though so I don’t think this would work for me because I’d need smart TRVs for zoning even if I can use an ESP8266 board for sensing temperature and humidity.

[H102 (CM6.5 H102)]

Where I live wet heating is not common and I have little info on TRV’s and how they communicate. Do any of have an ESP8266 board as part of the construction.

[MDAR (Stuart Hanlon, UK importer of Velbus hardware)]

Hello Sam

Would you consider a fully wired solution?

Or do you specifically need a wireless (non WiFi) setup?

This thread might be of interest to you…

My Central Heating Solution using Thermal Actuators

Hi all, I’m sharing with you here my heating setup in the hopes that it can help someone (and to just show it off, too, I guess. My house is quite typical of UK houses, where I have a boiler, and one or more radiators in each room. The boiler is on/off only, and has a single thermostat, usually located in the worst possible room in the house. You then end up with a single thermostat controlling the temperature of the whole house. I had basic thermostatic valves on each radiator, but the overal…

Good luck

Stuart

[Feathers_McGraw (Sam Hobbs)]

@H102 I haven’t seen any with an ESP8266 included. I think most “normal/dumb” TRVs just have a bubble of air or something similar inside that pushes a pin in/out to increase/decrease the flow of water into a radiator as the temperature changes.

The smart ones have proper digital temperature sensors and a motor to move the pin. Most are connected using wifi or 868MHz, and I even found one that uses bluetooth. In general I am happier having lots of devices that use something other than wifi because they are less likely to become part of a huge botnet if left unattended!

[Feathers_McGraw (Sam Hobbs)]

@MDAR That’s cool, I saw JG speedfit do something similar for a proper manifold but I hadn’t considered putting an actuator on the radiator! I will give it some thought, thanks.

[MDAR (Stuart Hanlon, UK importer of Velbus hardware)]

You could always hook an actuator up to a TP-Link HS100 smart socket and control that via openHAB2.

Although they do “Call home” I have simply blocked it’s access via my router.

You could go a stage further and setup an isolated SSID for them, which openHAB2 would need access to.

Good luck

[Bruce_Osborne]

If you do that you could use a Z-Wave or ZigBee smart socket which keeps everything local and off your Wi-Fi.

[MDAR (Stuart Hanlon, UK importer of Velbus hardware)]

Have you seen this thread?

Thermostat recommendations (UK, old system boiler)

Look at evohome. Works well in isolation and has a very good openhab plugin. Works fine with old boilers

[CDriver]

Have you seen this post?

Tutorial: Cheap, Tuya-based, Smart Plugs. HowTo reflash them and use them with OpenHAB

Cheap Smart Plugs (With power monitoring!) [image] The Mission: Based on this thread about cheap, wifi-based smart plugs, it was suggested I do a write-up on how to flash them and how not to brick them (like I did ) Why: Smart plugs are probably the first or second thing you’ll want to do with your new smart home. But, there are a number of issues to smooth before you can use them. Once smoothed you’ll see that it’s actuallly a doddle to get these plumbed in to your system. W…

The TPLinks are good but, as you say, they do phone home. They’re also reliant on a binding and for that binding to work. If they update the firmware there is a chance we’re stuffed

[MDAR (Stuart Hanlon, UK importer of Velbus hardware)]

@CDriver

If they update the firmware there is a chance we’re stuffed

I hear you, loud and clear.

We’ve all read the horror stories about Sonos.

That’s why I’ve blocked my HS100 from the internet.

I can see in the router log that it keeps trying, but that’s not a big deal.
If I had dozens of them, I’d definitely put them on an isolated SSID without internet access.

(I only bought this one as a experiment to see if it would help a client who didn’t have a switched outlet in a room that did have a Velbus Thermostat.
I’m happy to report that it’s working really well.)

[CDriver]

@MDAR

That’s why I’ve blocked my HS100 from the internet

From Pihole:

Next to the Philips hue, they’re second!

[MDAR (Stuart Hanlon, UK importer of Velbus hardware)]

Wow, that’s a lot of call backs

[Ali_Farmer]

It sounds like you should look at the Drayton wiser solution - it does everything you want, is reasonably priced and has great openHAB integration.

It’s zigbee based, controls the boiler, zigbee based trv’s, zigbee smart plugs which act as range extenders. It can be controlled locally or via the cloud - the app will connect locally or through the cloud depending on where you are. The app provided is good, provides good control and scheduling and has a good deal of intelligence built in. I have both water and heating controlled with trv’s on every rad. This then integrates in with other temperature, geofencing and sensors in openhab to provide intelligent room based control.

[Feathers_McGraw (Sam Hobbs)]

@Ali_Farmer thanks for the suggestion, that sounds like a decent system if the hub would work when firewalled off so it can’t access the internet. Have you tried this? There’s always a chance they have done something daft like use a local connection from the app to the hub but made the hub rely on the WAN server for authentication.

As you say, the prices are reasonable too.

I have to say I’m also tempted by a Velbus type wired solution (wired bus would be more reliable and appeals to the engineer in me), but it could be a pain to install downstairs where running cables would be difficult, and I think it would be more expensive overall.

[roli (Andrej Rolih)]

I will just borrow this topic a bit since I have pretty similar needs. With the exception that I do not mind something internet connected (although I would like if it would work without it).

Basically I currently have a Nest, but I want more control with separate TRVs and all that. Plus google and their removal of works with Nest APIs.

I was looking at the following (as mentioned above):

• Drayton Wiser
• Tado
• Honeywell Evohome

Tado seems to be the cheapest and most feature packed (the fact that it can also control the AC is appealing). And it looks like it integrates with Openhab. Anybody using it? Is it a good choice?

My second choice would be Drayton (price is appealing - again), but the Openhab binding is not complete yet it would seem.