Dumb question for my own edification - what is power flush and when would/do you use it? And how often?
Mine is an old model and does not have auto-powerflush. My manual power flush is a ball valve that sends water at full pressure through the unit to flush sediment. Water flows through the steam line and out of the steam head in the shower. They recommend flushing every 1,000 hours. The next steam start up take a but longer and water bubbles out before steam starts.
Here is a link to the instructions for my manual flush. (As an earlier project, I installed a Zwave valve to open mine remotely).
The newer units have auto power-flush.
I was out and missed a whole lot of the conversations, so will add some additional points here. I built out a test rig but have still not completed mapping the Kohler unit to the ThermaSol unit - it appears that all they do is jumble the wires or invert them, but the units are also not identical internally as I was attempting to map not-connected resistance or capacitance across the pins. Close, but not there yet.
RJ-11 / RJ-12 / RJ-45 - RJ11 & 12 you will find mostly from the phone era - both have the same dimensions, but an RJ-11 has only 4 connectors in the middle while an RJ-12 has all 6 connectors. As this has worked out, you could in fact use an RJ-11 as the two outer pins would be +5v and -5v and the inner pin would be to turn on and detect status respectively. For reference, an RJ-45 is a regular 8-connection Ethernet plug.
I should have been more specific - Pin 5 is +5v/VCC DC and pin 2 is -5V/ground/VSS DC, as you have already determined. For me the control unit serves an important purpose to maintain temperature and provide an on/off in the steam room, so I intend to automate in place. I already have a crimper and RJ-12's as well as punchdown RJ-45 female plugs that I used for the test rig and will just use that to create a splitter.
Woodsby peaked my curiosity, so I ordered a Shelly Uno and like the idea I can run it off of the power and use both the relay side and sensing side - I plan to have it switch on pin 5 to pin 3 for a second and then the controller can take over from there, I can monitor pin 4 for status. If one did not have a crimper and plugs the next easiest would be to just purchase extension leads from Amazon or whomever and then splice them as needed.
My prior steam unit had Powerflush, the replacement one has manual - I think I prefer the control of the manual - even if I could technically override it now having mapped how it is activated.
These earlier or more baseline units are all on or off for the steamer and the controller is really quite dumb. The newer higher end units I see they do PIR or variable input to maintain steam at a certain temperature which is also likely slightly more power efficient, but at this point it certainly works "well enough". Come to think of it, it may not even be variable power input, but just an SSR that is cycled in a PIR manner. I can clearly hear that the unit I have has a relay and not an SSR. With inifinite time, perhaps I will get back to looking at the CAN bus on the unit and the feasibility of more granular control. Or not.
One addition that would be nice on a sensor would be the temperature of the steam room. At first I thought this was exposed across some of the pins, but it does not appear that is the case. Yes, could run another sensor there and wire it to the Shelly Uno, but for me that will involve some construction and I have already spent way more time on this project than I planned to.
It is nice that it would be feasible to create a complete replacement for the ridiculously overpriced control units - I expect there are many of these units out there where the control unit has issues but the rest is still good.
In reading the docs, it appears the uni plus has internal pullups on the digital inputs so everything should work right out of the box - as you described. If that's the case, the only reason I can think of for flashing tasmota on it is I'm unsure if the HE shelly support provides status on the inputs. I would try it with the stock shelly firmware and see what you get. And please report back for others.
Thanks so much. This is all so helpful. I will be curious if you ever get a chance to see what's possible with the newer units and their CAN bus. My older unit struggles sometimes due to calcification I believe ( early on I wasn't as faithful in flushing it as I should've been). I've been thinking about buying a new unit with this controller. But I do like now having the on/off control on the older unit, thanks to this help.
Now that I can control it, I wish I had a battery-operated switch or remote that could stand up to the rigors of the steam room. Any suggestions?
Now you’re pushing it… perhaps you can find a basic waterproof 433mhz remote and use a Broadlink RM4 to control the steam shower.
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Hi all,
I know this is an older thread but it's closest I can find to my questions..
I have a Kohler 3 port DTV valve and controller which work great. Problem is the integration with Hubitat.
I used app mentioned above with reserved IP address. It doesn't operate anything with child devices. When trying to use via option for Kohler Konnect i get errors
Error: index is out of range 0..-1 (index = 0)
The devices seem to think they are thrmostats...
As mentioned above only 3 waters valves out, no steam or lights....
TIA - Bill
