I recently bought a couple of MOES smart TRVs and some Sonoff motion/temperature sensors to see if I can get some improved control over the radiators in my house in the UK. They had TRVs on before but I wanted them to open for a period of time if motion is detected as my wife and I sometimes work from home, sometimes not.
I have all the devices working correctly and its nice being able to set a heating set point in the TRV (using the Tuya driver) to replicate the TRVs that were there, that control directly to the TRV works well.
The issue I have is with having created the Thermostat Controller device which (i think) means I should be able to incorporate the use of my Sonoff temperature devices. I have created the Thermostat Controller in the Apps list and its created the virtual device which should allow me to control the TRV. In the Controller I have set the Controlled Status from Free to Controlled.
The issue I have is that the relationship between the virtual device (the controller) and the TRV (the controlled device) seems really flaky. In some cases you can influence the set point for when the heating temperature is activated and at other times the TRV picks its own set point temperature and the only way to change it is by going directly into the trv device itself.
I want to have a rule where in my office it heats the room initially but if no motion is detected it sets the controller to a low set point, to essentially turn off the raditator but if it detects motion then to set the set point to 21. But this rule doesnt work because of the flaky nature above.
Hi everyone, just further to my initial post. It appears as though the Controller is not operating as I would have expected (and the instructions would indicate).
I have a Controller set up with an independent room thermometer to act as the single reference point for temperature and two radiators in the same room, both with MOES TRVs. In an uncontrolled state they can both be set individually from their respective device page, but when they are controlled within the Controller page I would expect them to ignore their own in built temperature level and only use the one determined in the controller. However their operating state (either heat or idle) is also influenced by their own individual temperature. The overall controller turns idle or heat at the correct time but the individual radiators/trv's do not act accordingly.
The real life implication of this is if the room is not yet at temperature but the thermostats in the radiators think they are then they turn off too early and the room never reaches the required temperature. THis defeats the whole purpose of creating a virtual controller and I can only think it is a bug or error of some kind? Why even display the temperatures of the radiators in the controller page if their temperature data should be disregarded by the virtual controller?
Does anyone know if I have set this up incorrectly? I have an incorrect expectation of how a Controller should work or if their is a likely bug in how it is operating?
I am not aware of any Moes TRVs that have as a standard functionality pairing with an external Zigbee thermometer. The TRV always uses the built-in temperature sensor to control the valve, depending on the heating setpoint... What is your device model and manufacturer? (from the web page Device Details - Data section). Also, which is the driver and the driver version that you are using?
There is one possible workaround that I remember was mentioned somewhere - automatically adjusting the offset of the TRV internal temperature sensor, depending on the difference between the internal and external sensors temperature readings and the desired temperature as a third parameter... it's rather complicated and is limited to a maximum +/- 5 degrees temperature adjustments. It will require a complex RM5 rule or an HE app to do the math.
Thanks for your reply and interest in exploring this further - I think the work around you are suggesting is perhaps over engineering the solution though?
The standard HE Thermostat Controller App and Virtual Device is (I think) meant to control the chosen Thermostats (TRVs) with the purpose of superceding their local temperature and using the chosen temperature device?
Screen shot below
In this screen the "Current Temperature" in the Controlling Thermostat is the temperature of my independent temperature device and should be the one that all the other TRVs use instead of their own?
If there were to be a device/driver issue perhaps it would be that the Tuya driver I am using is not allowing the Thermostat Controller App/Virtual Device to control the operating state of the TRV directly and disabling the TRV native one? I am unsure as to how this functionality works...
Probably someone who uses a similar setup, but with a thermostat different than Moes (Tuya) can share his experience.
UPDATE: I see you also have an electric thermostat controlled. What type of thermostat it is and which driver is used for it? Does this electric thermostat has its own Heating Setpoint, and is this setpoint changed by the Thermostat Controller app?
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There is some functionality in place with the relationship between the valve and the Thermostat Controller as its able to take the valve above the valves native temperature and it doesn't go straight to Idle. It does however often go to Idle before the point it has reached the intended temperature set in the thermostat controller.
The other device in that setup is an experiment. All my other rooms have a single radiator. That room is a kitchen/dining/conservatory all knocked through. It gets very cold due to the conservatory, that device is a virtual thermostat with a rule that changes whenever the state of one of the other trvs changes, there is a smart plug with a fan heater which kicks in to help boost the initial warm up.
It was because I had set the rule up to mirror the operating state of one of the other valves that I noticed they were not quite working as part of the thermostat controller as (I think) it should.
It would be amazing to get this to work. Lots of people in the UK have radiators like this and having the valve so close to the radiator means rooms are not heated effectively and efficiently. The setup I was hoping to create would really improve this.
Having given the use case a bit more thought today and from reading other posts which I think @kkossev you may have commented on with others in the past, I wonder if there is an alternative?
Connecting the above with a plug to the mains and controlling the live wire with one of these
I could keep the Sonoff or Hue temperature gauge and the thermostat controller, add a virtual thermostat as the Controlled Thermostat and create a rule to turn on/off the ZBMini depending on the operating state of the virtual thermostat?
Can anyone think of a reason why this would not work?
Thanks, just so I'm clear,are you referring to the approach in the link or what ive shared above?
I'm not keen to have to create relays etc, that's beyond my ability, just trying to keep things simple so if they ever stop working I stand the chance of being able to work out why and to fix them.
How do you ensure the boiler doesnt turn on when all TRVs are shut? Ive read that it can rapidly cause the boiler pump to fail.... Especially as the valves can take 2-3 minutes to open.
My boiler has a bypass, very inexpensive, so no issue. It's on my to do list to add a timer though to only pump 2 mins after opening, and to shut off 2 mins before closing just to save a bit of energy. It is good practice to have one single rad hooked up as 'always on', generally the bathroom. I didnt want that, and had the bypass fitted instead.
Yes thats true, a bypass helps, but if the loop is too small then the boiler gets horrifically confused due to the temperature oscillations in the pipe!
The bypass is the furthest distance away from the boiler in a 3 story house so the effects are fine I believe.
