[HN Gopher] Automating heating with Home Assistant
___________________________________________________________________
Automating heating with Home Assistant
Author : domh
Score : 99 points
Date : 2023-01-01 18:59 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (seanblanchfield.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (seanblanchfield.com)
| Semaphor wrote:
| For anyone interested, there's a neat HACS integration: Better
| Thermostat [0] that simplifies some common usages: Auto off on
| window open heat to room temperature (as opposed to TRV measured
| temperature) are the big ones for me.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/KartoffelToby/better_thermostat
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| _For a bit of clarification if readers are not familiar with
| Home Assistant_
|
| Home Assistant is an
|
| > Open source home automation that puts local control and
| privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers
| and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a
| local server.
|
| > Home Assistant Community Store (HACS) is a Plugin in Home
| Assistant that gives you the ability to download and update
| plugins that are on GitHub and are not in the Home Assistant
| standard repository.
| a1371 wrote:
| > My Google Nest Thermostat was part of the problem, and I needed
| to get rid of it to improve my home heating. The problem is that
| any central thermostat will shut down the boiler as soon as it
| reaches its target temperature, even if there are other areas in
| the house that still need to be heated.
|
| I think this is important. The so-called smart thermostats have a
| very narrow optimization scope.
| crmd wrote:
| I feel like my partner and I have been in a virtual thrupple
| relationship with Nest's useless "machine learning algorithm"
| for the past five years, passive-aggressively fighting for
| control of the heat.
| dnadler wrote:
| So, I made a raspberry pi into a smart thermostat with remote
| sensors all over my house which allowed me to do all kinds of
| targetted heating, averages, etc. Turns out that Ecobee makes
| one, and it's quite good. Been happily using them ever since.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Interesting. Unless I'm missing something, my Honeywell T9
| thermostat already handles most of this. I've got 4 remote
| sensors hooked up to it. It's fully programmable without any app.
| (I think it needs WiFi for initial setup, but it's been fire-
| walled off since.)
|
| It also connects with home assistant over Wi-Fi. Combined with my
| home-kit window AC unit, I have full control over scripting, with
| the thermostat able to operate independently if Home Assistant
| fails.
| cptskippy wrote:
| I have T9s as well but the Z-Wave variant. Mine are more like
| traditional digital thermostats with thresholds and momentum
| compensation but it's all manual and not self calibrated. You
| can however program them via Z-Wave so you could use Home
| Assistant to do the Smart part.
| nyx wrote:
| When I got my new HVAC system installed a few months ago (heat
| pump, woohoo!), they needed to upgrade my thermostat, so they
| gave me a Honeywell VisionPro 8000, which is a "smart"
| thermostat but, like your T9 (I think), demands WiFi and some
| garbage "cloud" service to access the connected features.
|
| I replaced it with a T6 Pro, a thermostat which is by all other
| metrics a downgrade, but which has a single killer feature:
| Z-Wave. No phoning home, no janky embedded devices on my WiFi
| network, just a solid integration with Home Assistant that
| falls back to a regular thermostat if my HA server is down.
|
| Seems like Honeywell is moving away from making Z-Wave versions
| of their products, because I think most consumers are generally
| content to tunnel their request through some shitty cloud thing
| every time they want to turn the heat up... but for those of us
| who are a little more ideologically rigid about keeping their
| stuff LAN-only, would definitely recommend grabbing a T6 Pro
| while they're out there.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| As far as I can tell, the only T9 features needing an
| internet connection are local weather, geo-fencing, and
| remote control.
|
| WiFi isn't necessary and can be turned off. Quite a few
| settings can only be set on the thermostat itself. It has an
| on-screen keyboard and by its appearance, I think it runs
| some version of android. :)
| Nextgrid wrote:
| That's my approach to heating as well - I'd rather not have
| Hass directly control the boiler/radiators with relays since in
| case of failure you could have the system either stuck on or
| off. A network-connected thermostat where Hass merely sends
| commands to is better since it will still retain some
| functionality should Hass fail.
| googlryas wrote:
| Are there smart TRV equivalents for those with forced air
| heating? IE smart vent covers which open and close based on room
| temp?
| blcArmadillo wrote:
| You can get motorized dampers that you install where the
| branches come off the main trunk.
|
| My understanding is it's not great to shut down vents all the
| way since it increases the static pressure in the branch and
| the air is just going to try to find ways out. You also have to
| be careful with closing down too many registers as it can cause
| too much pressure on the furnace. Some furnaces will shut down
| in this case.
| googlryas wrote:
| Right, with the smart dampers I dream of they would just be
| placed as register covers throughout the house, and would
| communicate with each other and the furnace to regulate house
| temp. So they would never try to close many at once, it's
| more like the cold room opens wide and the rest close a
| little bit.
| foobarian wrote:
| In my fantasies the central controller can learn how much
| to open each vent until each room heats up at about the
| same rate. Presumably that would end up with one or more
| vents fully open, and the more insulated rooms
| progressively more closed.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| > Install Smart TRVs. This doesn't actually address the initial
| problem at all. Smart TRV can't heat a room if the boiler has
| been switched off by a central thermostat.
|
| A valid point but the way round this is to set the main
| thermostat to the highest temp you would ever want the house to
| be and have the schedule to 24 hours or just the primary heating
| hours of the day.
|
| I say this so those in rented accommodation don't think they miss
| out on this fun. You can swap TRVs out with no plumbing skills
| and you don't need to worry about what primary thermostat you
| have.
| nsteel wrote:
| I didn't understand the quoted critism from the article. Smart
| TRVs are supposed to be able to independently call for heat,
| isn't that the whole point of them.
|
| There's nothing very smart about simply reporting they are too
| cold - is that really all Nest can do!?! I was under the
| impression that Tado, Drayton Wiser, etc handled this properly
| and would have solved the problem (albeit for lots more money).
| sokoloff wrote:
| There are Smart TRVs that can wirelessly trigger a contact
| closure that will turn on a zone for the boiler. You could also
| listen to the (usually Zigbee) protocol messages and close a
| relay yourself if you have a home automation setup (either
| directly from Zigbee, or by gatewaying the Zigbee to MQTT and
| then responding to the MQTT traffic).
|
| The problem with running a call for heat to the boiler (nearly)
| full-time is that that will run the circulator pump for the
| zone and, if there's nowhere for that water to go (because all
| TRVs are closed and there's no "loopback" pipe), the circulator
| is going to draw a lot of power and eventually fail from being
| deadheaded.
| Dan_- wrote:
| It depends on the circulator. If it's the usual Taco 007,
| then yep it'll fail. If it's an ECM circulator set on delta-P
| like a Grundfos Alpha, then it won't mind a bit.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > The problem with running a call for heat to the boiler
| (nearly) full-time is that that will run the circulator pump
| for the zone and, if there's nowhere for that water to go
| (because all TRVs are closed and there's no "loopback" pipe),
| the circulator is going to draw a lot of power and eventually
| fail from being deadheaded.
|
| It's common to leave a single radiator without TRV for that
| reason - typically the bathroom.
| nsteel wrote:
| I've found the TRV-less radiator is usually in the hallway
| as that's historically where a thermostat would live
| (ground floor, no windows, cool) and you don't want them to
| battle each other. You also want it to be sufficiently far
| from the boiler so the return water cools enough and you
| stay in/near the sweet spot for a modern condensing boiler.
|
| TRVs are often avoided in bathrooms since those rooms have
| another source of heating (bath/shower) that will screw up
| what it's trying to do. Also, some smart TRVs don't have
| sufficient IP rating for such a moist environment. That
| said, you could install one in a bathroom and people do.
| Not sure why though, maybe they get carried away with their
| smart setup.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > In my house, our nursery both cooled faster and heated faster
| than any other room in the house. The thermostat (a Nest)
| controlled the boiler from the living area, and would often turn
| off the boiler while the nursery was still chilly.
|
| This Home Assistant project is great fun, and I highly recommend
| playing with HASS to anyone who likes to play around with and
| maintain these things.
|
| But for anyone looking for an easier solution: Ditch the Nest and
| get an ecobee with remote sensors. Nest has remote sensors as
| well, but you can only pick one. ecobee will average across the
| sensors you choose. It also has a mode that can follow occupancy
| detection and prioritize rooms with movement, but that's not
| useful for a nursery with a sleeping baby like this.
| alsodumb wrote:
| In reality I noticed that while it helps in maintaining the set
| temperature in a given room, it ends up over heating or cooling
| some of the other rooms.
|
| Unless you have controllable vents like this
| https://flair.co/pages/flair-google-nest-thermostat it probably
| won't help much (as one of the comment says, this product isn't
| well reviewed. I was just giving an example).
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Unfortunately those Flair Smart Vents review poorly. I'd
| point you to Amazon or anywhere else they're sold.
|
| Cool idea, but I haven't seen someone deliver one I'd want to
| buy yet.
| Bedon292 wrote:
| I have been looking for a while too. It seems to be a
| product that a handful of companies have tried, but no one
| has really succeeded yet.
| chime wrote:
| > get an ecobee with remote sensors.
|
| That's exactly what I thought of when I read the issue because
| I did that myself and it works great. My Ecobees have multiple
| sensors and I have zero complaint about them. Fantastic
| integration with HA too. I love tracking the indoors humidity
| graph and have alerts on when I should use more moisturizer.
| Bedon292 wrote:
| I have considered switching a bunch of times. Its just been
| hard to justify spending money on new thermostats and
| sensors, since I already have the Nest. If I could go back
| and change what I originally bought I definitely would
| though.
| nonane wrote:
| Honeywell T9 is also quite good - supports remote sensors and
| lets you decide which sensors to average out depending on your
| schedule.
| [deleted]
| sigmonsays wrote:
| i'd recommend against ecobee due to API stability and bad
| UI/UX. Long story short, i've been a home assistant user for
| many years. When google shutdown the nest API long ago, i
| purchased an ecobee and set it up.
|
| I will provide more details if asked, but the mobile app was
| awful due to the ecobee server API constantly failing to work
| properly and the UI not being in sync with reality. There has
| been times at 3am when I tried to turn a fan off, I simply
| could not due to API errors.
|
| I'm back to nest and have written ecobee off as a suck cost.
| [deleted]
| metadat wrote:
| More details pretty please.
| asveikau wrote:
| I don't really trust Google to not break Nest integrations.
|
| I wasn't following it then, but Google phased out earlier
| "works with nest".
|
| Last year, the oauth for HA's nest addon broke. Supposedly they
| did work with Google folks to ensure a smooth transition. It
| works now.
|
| But ultimately we use Nest with HA at Google's discretion. Part
| of the strength of HA is its ability to use cloud-free, local-
| only infrastructure, meaning it won't break on the whim of a
| megacorp.
| deadmutex wrote:
| FWIW, a lot of other startups have gone belly up, and taken
| their infrastructure offline, and that is worse IMO. E.g. I
| purchased my light switches from Lutron just because I knew
| they were going to be around (I have seen a few startups go
| offline). Before you say, "Oh, if they made it all local then
| stuff will still work". Yes, that's true to some extent, but
| then it is still possible that there could be security issues
| that need to be patched down the line. And one can say "Then
| you should quarantine the hub and have it connect to HA
| instance only"... but most people are not going to be able to
| do that, or may be too much work to maintain over time.
|
| Hopefully with Matter, we'll see more products that can work
| securely + locally. But IMHO, the tech just wasn't there
| before (at a price point that was cheap).
| asveikau wrote:
| Zwave and ZigBee are also somewhat promising in those
| terms, and exist today.
|
| I too have lutron lights, but most of my other stuff is
| zwave.
| deadmutex wrote:
| Sadly, ZigBee is a failure in practice. If you buy a
| Zigbee hub from one vendor, it is unlikely it will
| reliably work with Zigbee products from another vendor.
|
| Zwave doesn't have this issue, but it lacks market
| adoption. Likely due to cost, but I am not sure.
| asveikau wrote:
| I've found zwave to be more flakey than lutron caseta.
| The "700 series" controller needed to have a lot of
| firmware patches in the time I've owned one. Even after
| that, I see a lot of dropped packets.
| nsteel wrote:
| I'd never heard of ecobee and turns out that's because it's
| only sold in North America.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Ecobee also gives you access to your own data, Nest does not.
| It enables projects like beestat (no relation besides being a
| user).
|
| https://beestat.io/
| colordrops wrote:
| Looks nice. Tried out the demo. What does it do that home
| assistant can't?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I don't use home assistant, so I can't speak to that.
| j45 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this tidbit.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| My forced-hot-water furnace, probably like most recent furnaces,
| can run at a range of power levels, producing radiator water at a
| variety of temperatures. Unfortunately, its only input is a
| binary one: "gimme heat" or "don't gimme heat". That means
| there's no way for it to adjusts its output intelligently based
| on the room temperature deficit. (There is an outdoor temperature
| sensor that gives it some intelligence, but not a whole lot.)
|
| I'd love to have a system where the furnace controller knew the
| actual and set temperatures for the various zones, and could
| throttle itself up and down to best meet the heating needs.
| Haven't seen one, though.
| _huayra_ wrote:
| I think newer heat pumps (forced air or mini splits) do this.
| My parents got one and it seems to just run almost all the
| time, producing a varied amount of heat or cooling.
|
| This does indeed require some fancy touchscreen super
| thermostat thing though, so that's probably the crux of this.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Typical problem:
|
| >> In my house, our nursery both cooled faster and heated faster
| than any other room in the house. The thermostat (a Nest)
| controlled the boiler from the living area, and would often turn
| off the boiler while the nursery was still chilly.
|
| Nerd solution: integrated sensors. Smart home devices. Complex
| multi-zone heating. Issue never really goes away. Each time
| something is updated/bricked the entire system must be revisited.
| (See LLT tech tips videos about Linus's new house.) I'm still
| laughing at his hot LCD displays mounted directly below the
| thermostats in each room.
|
| Actual solution: An electric space heater. Available at any
| Walmart for 25$. Built in thermostat. Problem solved.
| photoGrant wrote:
| I find it hard to adjust the majority to fit the minority.
| Better to cater to the edge cases individually and keep the
| larger system more stable.
| j45 wrote:
| Some things are a hobby to tinker with and learn from.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| :D
|
| Put an ESP32[0] in the space heater. Detect temperature,
| humidity, barometric pressure. Detect human presents, identify
| if it is human versus dog. Provide Zigbee communication to Home
| Assistant. Send alert if dangerously excessive electricity is
| used, and shut down power to device. Check external weather to
| make sure water pipes do not freeze when away, and keep heat
| sufficiently high to prevent freezing but optimize for lowest
| power usage. Check every 15 seconds. Write automation that
| knows when away, on vacation, or price of electricity is too
| high turning it off, on, or throttling to reduce consumption.
| Reduce grid usage, by heating during best solar panel power
| generation.
|
| And, then you just began. _This_ is how Home Assistant used. :)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESP32
| mason55 wrote:
| I just stuck a door sensor on the nursery and have the space
| heater turn on if the door is closed for two minutes (and
| back off when it's open for two minutes).
|
| Perfect mix for us. Not (much) to break in the automation.
| ender341341 wrote:
| Careful with how you're enabling the space heater, many
| smart plugs aren't designed for space heaters (or other
| high amperage devices). Though there are plenty that are.
| Bedon292 wrote:
| What space heater? I work from my basement and its a bit
| cold down here. I have a manual one but would like to be
| able to do some automations.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| I run Home Assistant on a RasPi 4B and it takes care of
| the office temperature & humidity more precise and cost
| efficient than if I fiddled with the knobs on heater and
| dehumidifier.
|
| And, it is fun.
| bob29 wrote:
| Where's the robot to pat you on the back?
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Shhh. Do not scare them away too early.
|
| https://www.ranzhourobot.com/pat-me-robot/
| vsviridov wrote:
| All because of one simple cherry...
| florbo wrote:
| The real win was balancing the boiler and TRVs. Automating the
| boiler for efficiency is neat. I'd have kept a spare thermostat
| connected (with a physical switch for it's power) in case all
| that automation implodes, though.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| blitzar wrote:
| > LLT tech tips videos about Linus's new house
|
| I tried, I couldnt take it. Between doing things the most
| botched way possible and spending the most money possible (My 4
| billion $$$$ home theater system clickbait) I couldnt take it
| anymore. Its a low form of scam / con when you use your home
| renovation as a tax writeoff and "content".
| zamalek wrote:
| > My 4 billion $$$$ home theater system
|
| I loved the idea of running my PC elsewhere in the house, so
| I looked up both the USB and Thunderbolt fiber solutions he
| recommended.
|
| $800.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Plus that whole project has been a disaster anyway. This is
| like his third attempt at centralized gaming machines, and
| even this one is buggy and problematic.
|
| His previous one was flagged by anti-cheat due to it being
| VM-based.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Ya but it is also a common syndrome in Vancouver. Someone
| building a "nice" house is pulled in by people touting
| various control systems. The systems never really work. It is
| always the first time the installers to be installing this
| particular equipment. There are reasons why people with old
| money still use standard light switches just like poor
| people.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| My rule for home automation is that the automation should
| merely _augment_ the existing stuff and degrade gracefully
| in case of failure.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I automate accessory lighting, but not primary.
|
| Christmas/holiday lights, mood lighting, under counter
| lighting, all that is controlled by automation.
|
| Now, primary lighting for the room, there's a switch on
| the wall for that.
| adql wrote:
| I remember some IoT switches that just had lamp and
| switch connector and outside of control did just that -
| worked as dumb switch so if all else failed lights still
| worked as usual.
|
| It is still adding one extra component that could fail,
| but it was at least immune to "controller died, nothing
| works" problem.
| Retric wrote:
| The con aspect of tax write-off is offset by him being stuck
| with a lot of early adopter systems that don't really work. I
| suspect his family would have been happier using 5$
| thermostats that actually worked than such poorly implemented
| home automation.
|
| LTT is like 95% entertainment 5% actually somewhat
| informative.
| delusional wrote:
| "Offset" for him, the money are still not going towards
| Canadian schools or healthcare or whatever.
| Retric wrote:
| LTT needs to make a video either way. If he sets up home
| automation at his house or an artificial studio demo the
| same money is spent and not ending up going toward
| Canadian schools.
|
| In terms of the deduction, I doubt he's committing actual
| tax fraud if for no other reason than he's so public a
| figure.
| novok wrote:
| OMG, a few thousand dollars is being deducted for a
| canadian business making money from mostly foreign
| countries, helping the trade balance, spending money in
| the canadian economy, hiring people who also pay taxes,
| promoting canada as a country and more, but they're
| ripping off canada because he dares have a few well
| documented tax deductions.
| detaro wrote:
| Isn't that pretty much all LTT content? High on money and
| flashy-flashy, low on facts and care.
| gamjQZnHT53AMa wrote:
| It's such garbage content and I also stopped watching. I
| figure he probably can expense a lot of the cost/tax because
| it's a business purchase once he makes content out of it but
| not sure if that works the way I think it does..
| newaccount74 wrote:
| People write off personal stuff as a business expense all
| the time, it's not like tax authorities have the time to go
| through line items on invoices.
|
| As for the legality, when you take stuff that you bought
| for the company and later use it for personal things, you
| need to "pay" the company for it, you can't just write if
| off.
| danuker wrote:
| Electric resistive heating is much more expensive than gas
| heating.
|
| Maybe a heat pump is more efficient (about the same as gas,
| depending on climate) but needs more capital than $25.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > Electric resistive heating is much more expensive than gas
| heating.
|
| That seems like a complex question to answer.
|
| Electric heating is more efficient than gas heating (100% Vs.
| 95%), but electricity costs more than natural gas, taking out
| any benefit. But that isn't even what makes this complicated,
| if they're running their natural gas whole-home system to
| heat a single room, how does THAT compare to a more costly
| room heater?
|
| Heat pumps are definitely more efficient (e.g. 300%) but cost
| $1K for a single mini-split, and installation
| costs/permitting is expensive. $5K isn't unrealistic for just
| one installed, maybe $2K~ DIY (assuming you can even pull the
| permit yourself for both electric and HVAC).
| mcbishop wrote:
| I hear that Mr. Cool is a good DIY heat-pump option. The
| refrigerant is "precharged" / included (i.e. you don't have
| to mess with refrigerant). https://mrcool.com/diy-4th-
| generation/
| goodpoint wrote:
| Proper insulation is the best solution.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > Each time something is updated/bricked the entire system must
| be revisited.
|
| The advantage of a fully local, self-contained system is that
| you can treat it as an appliance - you don't have to update or
| tinker with it continuously. There's no reason for it to update
| or brick itself.
|
| A friend of mine still has a Home Assistant set up from now
| almost 3 years ago running with no updates or anything - it
| just acts like a PLC to manage some lights, switches and
| toggles heating on/off based on window sensors. Nobody has to
| mess with it and it just works in the background.
| bggjncd wrote:
| He must not look at the UI, because the HomeAssistant
| interface begs you to update it _constantly,_ it's actually
| one of my biggest gripes with HA
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Yes, in this case nobody looks at the UI - Hass acts as a
| glorified PLC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_l
| ogic_controller). I look at it every few months out of
| curiosity when I have the opportunity to visit but given
| that it works well and fits their needs I resist the urge
| of updating the system.
|
| If there was a need for a UI I'd probably enable the
| HomeKit Bridge extension and let them control it via
| HomeKit (with only specific entities whitelisted) so that
| 1) they don't have to suffer through the eyesore that is
| Material Design and 2) don't get confused by a lot of the
| internal, read-only entities.
| simondotau wrote:
| If you're looking at the Home Assistant admin interface all
| the time, you're doing it wrong IMHO. The key reason to do
| home automation is if it's actually automated and not just
| replacing a bunch of physical switches with web page
| switches. For the things which cannot be automated, bridge
| them over to HomeKit (or Google's thing) so they can be
| natively controlled by your phone and/or voice assistant.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| A lot of things could be automated in my home if HASS
| knew that I'm not working tomorrow, that one of us or
| both of us are in bed, etc., but no idea how to best tell
| HASS about these things and how to model all the
| different cases without going crazy.
| Bedon292 wrote:
| You can integrate it with a calendar and have automations
| based on the events. So you can have a work calendar that
| it checks before doing specific automations.
|
| People have also built a variety of presence sensors for
| beds. With pressure sensors and such. Or if you have a
| Sleep Number bed, it also has presence detection. You
| could also do things like detecting phone is in the room
| and plugged in as a rough equivalent for presence of the
| person.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> toggles heating on/off based on window sensors.
|
| Do people want this? Maybe I want both warmth and fresh air
| in the room? And I foresee the day where the window sensor is
| faulty. I'm shivering in bed as I have an argument with my
| furnace about which one of us should be in charge of setting
| the temperature in _my_ bedroom.
| looperhacks wrote:
| Especially in Europe, many people have radiators right
| under the windows. If the windows are open and the
| radiators aren't turned off, the cold air will come in,
| fall down and hit the thermostat, which will lead to the
| radiator running at full power because it stays cold.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| It's a fail-safe against leaving in the morning for work,
| opening the windows, and leaving the heating on full-blast
| all day long as it tries to heat the outside. It matters
| even more now given the energy prices in some countries.
|
| Hass just sends on/off commands to a self-contained
| thermostat in response to window sensor state change
| events. If it fails, you can still manually go to the
| thermostat and set it to whatever you want.
| adql wrote:
| Flip side - one sensor failure and your home is without
| heating, and if you so happen to be on winter vacation at
| the time it can possibly be catastrophical
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| Are there any thermostats at all that work completely
| locally, i.e. without any internet access and no cloud,
| but still can be controlled via HASS?
| maxerickson wrote:
| Venstar wifi thermostats have a local API that can be
| switched on.
|
| https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/venstar/
|
| I've not used it (I installed one because I wanted
| scheduling and liked that it had further possibilities
| and wasn't overly expensive).
| kcb wrote:
| Yea, your best bet for non cloud/internet stuff is to
| stick with Zigbee or Zwave. I have a Trane Zwave
| thermostat https://www.zwaveproducts.com/collections/tran
| e/products/xr5... that's worked well for several years.
|
| For a more advanced use case I've recently set it up so
| that the thermostat logic is within HASS. An automation
| driven by a binary switch helper then switches the
| thermostat to a fixed hot or cold value for heat and AC.
| Then I can feed the HASS thermostat with whatever
| temperature sensor data I want, like an average of
| multiple sensors around the house. All this is totally
| optional though if you just want to control the
| thermostat from within HASS.
| odiroot wrote:
| I use a Hive thermostat. It's much cheaper than Nest and it
| doesn't talk to the cloud at all, if you buy the hub-less
| version. It communicates over Zigbee and works great with Home
| Assistant over Zigbee2MQTT.
|
| My version supports both heating and hot water (important for
| system boilers in UK) but there's also a "just heating" version
| for combi-boilers.
|
| The installation is really trivial, at least in UK where the
| programmer plate is pretty much standard in every house.
|
| Even if you don't connect it to HA, the programmer/thermostat
| provided by Hive is so much better than the usual Drayton crap
| you see in UK.
| kinnth wrote:
| Do you use any thermostat switches on your radiators to manage
| temperature too? Any recommendation on brands in the UK?
| blackfawn wrote:
| Any issues using the Hive without the hub? They sure make it
| sound required... Any features that don't work, etc? And HA can
| fully control the Hive thermostat via Zigbee?
| odiroot wrote:
| I guess you can call it an issue but it stops being "smart".
| As in, no special "AI" to decide when to heat etc. You have
| to program it yourself.
|
| Or hook it up to HA and send the on/off commands as you wish.
|
| As for HA, there's really no dedicated service or add-on for
| Hive. But the generic thermostat service is good enough.
|
| I combine the scheduled heating in Hive with "on-demand"
| through HA when needed.
| jabbany wrote:
| Ah, I also use hass to automate my home heating but for a much
| dumber reason...
|
| I live in a really old house where the furnace is on a two-wire
| control system (open=off, closed=on) so no possibility of working
| in good smart thermostat solution.
|
| So I just patched in a "smart" relay on the furnace wires that
| let me close them in a software controlled way and use temp
| sensors to control it over hass. I also kept the old dumb*
| thermostat connected in parallel and just set it really low as a
| failsafe to prevent stuff like pipes freezing in case my bodge
| smart automation job crashes silently when I'm away or something.
|
| *: Only marginally newer than the mercury-in-a-tilting-tube ones,
| the one I have uses bi-metallic coil with a magnet on the end to
| control a reed switch.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Having a mechanical fallback is a really good idea. I always
| get a little worried when I see people patching together
| mission critical systems on a raspberry pi with little thought
| to failure modes. Learned this is the hard way.
|
| Dealing ~99% reliable smart bulbs and guests not understanding
| the fancy buttons is death by a thousand cuts. Even a 0.1%
| failure to respond will add up fast if you have multiple bulbs
| per fixture.
|
| Eventually, I switched to using Lutron Caseta products as the
| base layer. Now my light switches will still act like light
| switches if the hub is down and all the remotes are dead. And
| the remotes don't need the hub online.
| adql wrote:
| Yeah there is very little thought in resilience in most such
| systems.
|
| Ideally I'd see some generic rule-based system (maybe just
| WASM VM fed with some code and triggers?) that does _just_
| that - feeds code some data and pushes output to controllers,
| maybe with standarized methods to ask for historical /other
| sensor data, then have that just be a blob you can deploy on
| few devices, share a password and it would pick a master and
| keep rest in standby.
|
| Then just have HA-like Web UI for configuration so the big
| fat of UI can run really wherever on anything, but the core
| that is needed _for everything to actually work_ can sit on
| some cheap device in the closet.
| clairity wrote:
| any recommendations for a cheap, simple, but "smart"
| relay+thermometer like this that can be added to a apple
| home/zigbee network in plug-and-play fashion[0]? i also have a
| dumb heater that would be nice to be automated. the existing
| dumb thermometer/switch is too close to the heat, making that
| thermostat unreliable, and i can't move it without tearing up
| walls.
|
| [0]: without having to run home assistant if possible
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| There "Blakadder's Smarthome Shenanigans" website is a good
| reference to identify if a Zigbee device might work with your
| system. If a device is compatible with many, it is almost
| certain it is also compatible with your solution.
|
| https://zigbee.blakadder.com/index.html
| deepsun wrote:
| The first action should have been "look the nursery for what
| bridges cold and fix it".
| chucklenorris wrote:
| I don't know what type of gas meter you have in uk so this might
| not work for you but I used a aqara door/window sensor without
| the plastic case stuck under the meter digits. There's a magnet
| embedded in the last digit so it will trigger it once per
| revolution. It looks like this: https://community.home-
| assistant.io/t/gas-meter-from-xiaomi-... .I saw that others 3d
| printed an enclosure and moved the reed sensor closer, but, i
| just wrapped it in electrical tape and it's been sitting there
| for 6 months without an issue.
| indigomm wrote:
| Modern thermostats are a bit better than simply turning the
| boiler on when cold, off when hot. They are Time Proportional &
| Integral (TPI) devices. Put simply, they 'learn' the
| characteristics of the room - how long it takes to heat up and
| how much heat it needs to maintain the temperature. This is then
| used to work out how much to cycle the boiler on/off to keep the
| actual temperature much closer to the set point. Less variation
| makes for a much more comfortable room with less temperature
| swing than a simple thermostat can do. I see no reason this
| couldn't be built into HASS, but to my knowledge it isn't in
| there.
|
| Also, modern boilers have digital control such as OpenTherm. They
| aren't just simple on/off devices, but instead vary their output
| based on the heat demand. The heating controller works out the
| temperature losses across the system, and gets the boiler to
| moderate the flow to match. This means that instead of turning on
| and off all the time, the boiler runs continuously at a low rate.
| More efficient with less wear and much tighter temperature
| control.
| lima wrote:
| Danfoss Ally thermostats have a built-in PID controller that
| does this, and can be used with Home Assistant via zigbee2mqtt.
|
| In theory, you could use aggregate heat demand from the Ally
| thermostats to control a modulating OpenTherm boiler.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| Even mechanical thermostats have heat anticipator settings.
| When the thermostat turns the furnace on, it also turns on a
| small heater in the thermostat. This simulates the heat that
| will continue to arrive (thermal momentum, as it were) after
| the furnace is turned off. Otherwise, the temperature will
| forever be overshooting the thermostat setting.
|
| https://inspectapedia.com/heat/Heat_Anticipator_Adustment.ph...
| Havoc wrote:
| >It is inevitable that some rooms in a house will cool faster
| than others
|
| Feels like a system like this could use a way to pipe air from
| one room into another to achieve target temperatures. Should be
| way more energy efficient as 1st line of defense
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