[TEST] Connected radiator valves (Tado°, Danfoss, Fibaro, Eurotronic)

try to bring the valves an Homey close (less than 20 cm) together, while including (exclude first always)

You need Tado’s bridge like this one:
image

It sounds like the Spirits haven’t connected properly to the hub.
They are designed to be connected to the hub first, and then mounted on the radiator.
So as JPe4619 says, when you are connecting the Spirit, hold it close to the Homey, and allow the “interviewing” process to finish. The Spirit will let you know when it is ready to be mounted on the radiator.

So exclude all the malfunctioning Spirits first, do a factory reset, and then try reconnecting them.

Hello, here is a “small” :sweat_smile: explaination to the question on heating up the boiler requested by the valves:

I have a “old” non-smart boiler, but with a bus system. So it’s not possible to connect something like a tado to control the boiler. They can only switch the boiler on or off. They can not control the target temperature or the water heating. So it makes no sense to add a such a simple “smart” control to the boiler.
If you have a very old boiler which is only simple swithed on/off by room thermostat, you can try to add a tado relais.
If you have a modern boiler with bus system and integrated time/temperature setting heating based on outside/inside temperature, you would make a step back. Leave ist as it is.

The vales will control only the heater based on the target temperature. They operate stand-alone.

In this case, it is important to deactivate the heating based on inside-temperature. In my case there is a wall mounted thermostate in the living room which is checking the room tempoerature and based on this, the boiler would warm or not. This way you will get problems, if your boiler thermostat wants to heat byt the valves are clodes based on the Homey-settings.
In that case it is better to deactivate the room temperature in the boiler thermostat. Then the boiler will only heat up based on outside temperature (flow temperature).
The valves will open if heat is needed.
The boiler will heat up more if the returning temoperature is low (vales open) or it will heat less if the returning temperature is high (valves closed).

A positive effect:
In the past while heating based on thermostat, the boiler stopped heating if the living room was warm enough (south side), but other rooms kept cold (north side).
Now with boiler based on outside temperature and temperature decrease between flow/returning temperature, the house is heated more uniformly.

I hope ist was explained understandable :blush:

This is exactly what I have in my house.
I use a Fibaro relais to make the on/off connection for my central heating unit (cv in Dutch)

My Eurotronic valves send an updated temperature every now and then
When the updated ‘current’ temperature is lower that the ‘requested’ temperature it activates a ‘Set’ value per radiator valve (using the Sets app: https://homey.app/en-gb/app/org.scheffers.homey.sets/Sets/)

When one of the ‘Set’ values is active, the relais activates, when none of the ‘Set’ values are active, it switches off again. This way, I can control the temperature in all of my rooms without needing an overly expensive thermostat that requires an internet connection to function ‘smart’.

Nice solution @anon8748058 and a variation to mine :wink:

I use a Fibaro relay to switch my central heating ON/OFF too.

The Spirit valves I have all follow a heating plan, which I earlier had written a dozen of flows for, but now are made with the Homey Heating Schedule app. I can’t find this in the new App store anymore. Here a link to the help page the developer made

Per room I have a virtual thermostat (this App)

With the virtual thermostats a can quickly and temporarily change a setpoint in a room. The schedule controls the setpoints of all rooms.

I use that app too for the scheduling of the temperature-requirements. Unfortunately the app doesn’t have a trigger we can exploit (which is why I use the ‘Sets’ app to use this) to toggle the boiler.

Aha, understand it now.

As a trigger I have a ‘check every 15 minutes’ flow, which checks if any of the Virtual Themostats is requesting heat. So, that flow runs 96 times per day. Your solution with ‘sets’ is a better alternative; it will only run when a set value is active.

Thanks for this!

Thanx for a great test n thread. Have ordered Danfoss LC-13 today and adapters to fit it all on my old radiators. Finding correct adaptors wasn’t easy but finally.
Will revert with more once I get the parts.
Rgds
M

My fibaro works great after getting the latest firmware.
For my one room system, it is amazing! :o:

Feedbacks updated :slight_smile:

I’ve been using Eurotronic for a whole winter, and generally they are ok, except for one stupid bug - sometimes they goes crazy and keep on heating ignoring the target temperature! It’s sooo annoying. I set target to 22 Celsius - and most of the time it’s fine, the temperature is around 22 - but sometimes it opens the value and keeps heating and heating and can reach 24, 25 Celsius… never checked how high can it go, usually I just set manual mode and close valve manually.

And it’s something that occurs randomly in every of my Spirits - I have 6 of them, so it must be some generic bug in those valves.

Hi,

may I ask how you got the latest firmware in?
I guess not via Homey?

Regards Frank

Interesting topic. I’m using 5 Eurotronic valves for a while now with an external temperature sensor. This enables me to send the room temperature from a flow. Keeping the communication good is another topic, but I’ve found my ways to handle that problem.

My question: Which other valve brands do support the functionality of the external temperature value to be sent by Homey from a flow?

Briefly O.T. sorry!

What have you done to keep communication good?
I have created flows that resent the setpoint 3 times with a small delay between the card:

Do you have a smarter way?

I have firmware version 769 after receiving replacement thermostats. I have installed 2 z-wave range extenders.

Every day I change the thermostat mode from comfort to economic to comfort with a delay. This closes and opens the valves. And from my experience it “wakes up” the thermostat(s).

For external room temperature and target setpoints:

  • I’ve created 2 timers (temp,setpoint) for each thermostat
  • When the timer is empty I resend the same value to the thermostat

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I bought something like 5 Eurotronic Spirit in Z-wave
I’m hapy so far, flows work fine.
Only they are quite big, i wonder if other brands aren’t a bit smaller

Hi!

I’d like to buy them too. Amazon reports an “old” version for € 35,56 and a “new” one for € 53,66. Which one did you get?

Hi,

I see what you mean, i saw the amazon items also,
I bought my eurotronic zwave from another store, but no idea if i received the old or new ones.
In fact i’d love to learn recognizing the old from the new version

I bought both so I’ll keep everybody posted!

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