Hello all,
I am completely new to home automation, I have no hardware yet, and I am still trying to find out what I need It started with the idea to have smart thermostats, but some quick research mainly finds cloud-based solutions where you need accounts at the vendor etc pp.
This is what I want to completely avoid, and rather have a solution bound to my home network only, which seems to be possible with openHAB, as for my current state of knowledge.
To be honest, I am a bit overwhelmed by the plethora of possibilities, pieces of hardware, technologies and protocols. To get somewhat closer to a solution for me, here is roughly what I want to do:
- have 2-4 heaters in my home use smart thermostats
- those should be programmable, so e.g. they start heating my home before I come back from work
- optional: should be controllable via iPhone app (but this is given already by openHAB I guess)
- optional: should be controllable via siri
- those thermostats shall not try to access internet, or should still function when beeing blocked by my pfsense firewall
- at some point I might like to add supper for light switches, but not right now
I already have 2 raspberry pis, and I am familiar with linux and also a programmer, so setting things up in openHAB should not be a difficult task I suppose (from what i’ve seen in the wikis). The more difficult task will probably be the selection of suitable hardware.
Right now I like the idea of z-wave, for its claimed performance thru walls and so on, and the fact that it won’t access my LAN network/internet. I also found a thermostat which seems to be suitable:
https://www.amazon.de/Eurotronic-Z-Wave-Energiesparregler-intelligentes-Heizthermostat/dp/B075X257NC?psc=1&SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duc03-21&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B075X257NC
Is my assumption correct that I would need the following things done to make it work:
- buy the above thermostat(s)
- get a z-wave transceiver for rpi (USB or GPIO)
- install openHAB on rpi
- install z-wave bindings/driver on rpi
- setup openHAB for the thermostats
- connect rpi to thermostats
Are there any recommeded thermostats, connectors, other piece of hardware I should consider? I am completely new to this, so I have no idea what should be considered when buying. I live in germany, if this is of importance. I guess the above thermostats should be installable on my heaters.
Also, shouldn’t the thermostat have any external temperature sensor which I put some where in the room, instead of a built-in one (which might be less precise due to the proximity to the heater)? Or can this be done with separate sensors I add to openHAB?
Where should temperature sensors be put in a room? (probably depends on my home’s layout?)
Thanks for any comments Hope it was not too confusing.