FWIW, I have 13 Keen vents, all of which have battery life of 3-4 weeks. I have been "working" with Keen support for over a year to find a solution. Besides the use of the Keen hub, Hubitat, Smartthings, and the addition of repeaters, nothing changed the battery life. I finally bought a Flair vent to test and it has been flawless for months working with Hubitat. Never had to change a battery, and the battery voltage has been pretty stable. They appear to be well built now. The only downside I see is that they are cloud based, so they would be useless without that, and the response time to change the vent vanes position is 1-2 minutes. Neither of these are deal-killers compared to the useless battery life on the Keens. If Flair ever offered direct local connection, it would be a slam dunk win, but in the meantime, I'm changing out the Keens as I really have no choice.
The Flair vents are integrated into Hubitat with Yves Racine's excellent MyFlairServiceMgr.
FWIW, I've had my Keen vents installed since Dec with no issues and NO battery changes. They switch positions several times a day (from 20% to 80% and then back to 20% depending on the need). Battery level on all of them still says 90%!
I only control them with my Event Engine app.
@chuckd, I would love to test one of yours in my environment. PM if your interested and how much you'd want for one, including shipping. BTW, all my vents are the standard 4x10 size.
What batteries are you using? I'm getting wildly different results from different brands.
1.2v batteries get about 8 days.
1.5v random lithium rechargeables get 5.33 days.
Energizer Max got 13.5 days
Energizer Lithium is already at 35 days...which is blowing my mind.
I'm just toggling once per hour, between 0 and 100% using RM. The batteries die in almost the same amount of time even when I give them no commands at all. Just being connected to Hubitat tends to kill mine. I think there's some weird parasitic drain in the vent radio, depending on what revision you get. I'll have to look more closely at mine. Maybe I can figure out what lot they're from.
Same. before I threw mine in the trash, I did a test with just having them connected - sending ZERO commands to them - and the battery would still die in just a few weeks. On all 4 I owned.
Trash.
Too bad. I think there a is a ton of money to be made in battery operated automated vents. Just need ones that actually work, and available in more sizes - all my vents in this house are larger than Keen, Flair, or any other offering provide.
Have you ever used the Keen hub? I'm still curious if there is some update mechanism, despite support being clueless. I still think it's absolutely a hardware issue though.
I'm wanting to basically be able to shut off unused rooms, and boost flow / heating / cooling to actively used rooms. The idea is to make the used rooms as comfortable as possible, the unused rooms to be within a safe / not growing mold range, but maximize energy efficiency.
That is the tough part there, individual rooms. Zone heating/cooling using the existing vent system is usually a whole area (usually multiple rooms) from some "logic" the builder used.
There is always the DIY route with some vents, motors, and HubDuino.
Well, the house is somewhat smallish. Not tiny, but far from a McMansion. A roughly 2K SQ FT ranch style 4BR 2BA home. 3 bedrooms and a bath / vanity on 1/3 of the hosue, kitchen, laundry, dining and great room / living room in the central 1/3, and master suite in the remaining 1/3.
HVAC is actually VERY new, like less than 2 months old post install. The uinit is installed immediately over the side bedrooms, and 5" ducts run to the 3 bedrooms, 4" to the bathroom. Living room has a single duct, no recall of size, and kitchen / dining share an 8". Master bedroom is fed by I believe it is 10" that splits off 2 4", 1 for the master bath, and 1 for the laundry room.
I REALLY want to boost to the master Bedroom, and shut off the guest bedroom. Reduce airflow to the home office / middle bedroom, but adjust to keep the temp below 77 deg at night to keep the computer equipment happy.
I'm sure there is a way to do it. But I know it will require new vents as the ones I have now are the plastic ones you grab from both sides and either push, or pull.
I will likely end up with a cylinder with a rotating baffle like a flue in a wood stove chimney, rotate 90 deg one way on, rotate 90 deg the other way off, varied positions in between for various flow...
On top of these vent solutions being crappy, I also caution people to do some research on what happens when you close too many vents. I bought 3 as an experiment (a failed one I might add,) and it never really improved anything in the other rooms.
You can actually cause problems with your central system. The best solution is to look at proper diverter valves, booster fan ducts, and compressor/blowers that can run at multiple speeds.
Some of the problems I've seen pop up in my findings are freezing coils, too much back pressure, confused HVAC systems, etc. Just food for thought. You might invest thousands of dollars in vents and even if they 'work' ... the might not have the level of impact that you think they would.
In my experience I also had issues where if I tried to close a vent partially to help push more pressure to another, warmer room in the house, you had to get the cooler room vent lower than 20%, which causes a hell of a lot of noise. Anything more-open than that and the air comes out at basically the same rate, just at another angle.
In the end, I'm fairly unconvinced that vent-control is the way to solve this problem. Cheap window units make far more sense, as tacky as that is. You could still use the central A/C in certain circumstances, pulling 5,000 watts, and if you wanted, you could have granular control with the window units and shut off the main system.
Some background: I'm obsessed with the idea of granular room climate control. I even have linear actuators on windows with automated window fans. I have a sensor in the attic as well, and I am planning to install a fan that can pull air through, depending on various conditions.
Yeah if I was replacing my central unit or starting from scratch, that's a no-brainer, and it's what everyone uses here in Hawaii if they are doing a 'central' setup. My house (un)fortunately has a traditional A/C system, and even still, super-duper cheapo window units would likely be a much, much better option than vent controls... for several reasons.
You can get a 5,000 BTU unit for $150, or less from Home Depot, under reputable brands. That's the cost of two vents, basically. Can even get a smart one with temperature controls that hubitat can manipulate.
It would have been way cheaper and smarter for me to just install those window units, which can blow cool air in from the outside if needed... replacing the need for linear actuators, control boards, power supplies, box fans, smart outlets, and blah blah blah
i do the same thing.. too much computer equip in the office i have a window ac in addition to our central ac.. kicks in at a certain temp along with the ceiling fan on high..
also though i am one of the luck few that have a keen vent where the batteries last.. i open when ac is on and close when heat comes on based on the vent temp.. My batteries last over a year so far.. go figure.
Okay, received the vent from @chuckd. I have it paired up and placed in the same Cog (Event Engine) as two other Living Room vents. Will monitor the battery life from here.
Not nice. NO soup for you!
Seriously though, I did pay (not full price of course, they are used) for each vent that I have.
)
