I am considering to buy the Homey and have a question. I have been testing Vera, Fibaro and Futurehome, but I am not too satisfied with them. What I need to know about Homey, is whether a virtual thermostat is built into Homey. In the Nordics, heating panels is the most common source for heating. The setup at my house is to have a Fibaro switch installed inside the power outlet for my heating panels. Then, I am using this device for measuring the temperature and for adjusting the set temperature in a room:
The device is using Z-wave for communication with the gateway.
This setup is supported out-of-the-box in the Norwegian gateway Futurehome. My question is, would this setup also be supported in Homey? Alternatively, I am considering to use the Aeotec multisensor with a permanent USB power supply for reading the temperature if it is not possible to use the Danfoss device. However, the Danfoss device is working perfect with Futurehome and makes it easy for e.g. kids to easily adjust the temperature in the room!
Thanks Tony for sharing! As I understand, you would need to create these custom flows for every room? How does it work if you have states like “Home”, “Night”, “Away” and “Vacation”. Can you easily configure Homey to lower/raise the set temperature for these modes? Or would it be a very manual approach for each room as you describe above?
Would there be any chance that it exists a Homey app with out-of-the-box support for the kind of virtual thermostat I am describing? Some Googling pointed to an app called Virtual Devices. Can this app solve the need for a virtual thermostat?
I would have been nice to figure out this before I spend money on my fourth gateway after buying Vera, Fibaro and Futurehome…!
Yes you need the flows for every room. I only have this in my kitchen for an extra heater.
You can change the set point for different states or time if you like. I don´t use this. Their is presence like someone is “Home” and “Away” built in i dont know how it works. You need the app Virtual Devices if you like to use more states like “Night”, “Vacation”, or “Party”.
@Bananfluen Some guidance on how you have configured the virtual thermostats in Homey would have been appreciated! Have you used the Danfoss Room Sensor or another temperature sensor?
Looking at the Danfoss app it only supports the LC thermostat, which app did you use to add the RS device to Homey?
I made a request to add support for this device, but have not seen any updates to the Danfoss app since.
I have the same thermostat from a previous Homeseer setup which I would like to use with my Homey. Currently I’m using the virtual thermostat together with temperature reading from a motion sensor. It works, but the sensor is at ceiling level where the temperature is higher.
Can’t wait to try this, I strongly believe basic functionality of a house should be accessible from hard interfaces. Virtual devices and phone interface have their place, but should’t be the main interface.
Doing something similar with TrĂĄdfri outlets and Aqara sensors in the room.
I will have a 0.5C lower margin, so it doesn’t go on/off all the time.
But how about setting the temperature? Are there any virtual buttons available?
With the new Homey V2.0 app I’d like to have a button with target temperature for each room, just go in and click up/down to set temperature, and the flow will follow automatically.
Example from SmartThings
Possible?
I’m also considering a Nextion touch LCD with MQTT communication which will be a mini controller for all rooms.
VThermo worked great when I initially installed it in december 2019, keeping the temperature correct.
But the last month (or longer) it has started to just turn itself off several times a day, on all thermostats.
I now have to turn the thermostat on several times a day (and then it works until it turns itself off). Since this is my main source of heating (water heating in floor combined with temp sensor) it is a major problem to remember to activate it several times a day.
My feeling is that this problem started with the Homey FW 4.1. upgrade.
Anybody have a solution other than changing to the competition?
Its the thermostat that turns itself off, its not the heating element/actuator that is controlled by the thermostat. I see no reason why the thermostat should turn itself off without human intervention.
Debugging errors in Homey is very difficult, not just in this case. As a professional SW developer the logs are not good enough to contribute to finding bugs or config errors, The log should contain the person or the name of flow turning off vthermo - or other units (so I can eliminate or fix those causes)
I have a very complex system now (80+ devices ), and debugging with trial and error why the curtians do not raise on sunraise, or why a lamp always is turned on at a spesific hour (with more than 50 flows I can not check every flow manually everytime something weird happens;-), without any information why it happens in the unit logs makes me think I have outgrown Homey and need something more advanced.!
