I have six temperature sensors fitted in my camper van, and I use one of them to start a diesel heater based on high/low temperature targets. I am currently using Zigbee Sonoff units, but I am not satisfied with their performance. They frequently lose connection to the hub, and when they do work, they are not very reliable for controlling the heating system. Sometimes, the temperature updates are slow even if I adjust the polling settings. Can anyone suggest a good temperature sensor that I can use for controlling my heating system?
A camper van is not very large, unless you have one of those bus-sized RVs. In a space of that size, you should not be having issues with your Zigbee mesh.
What hub are you using and how is it powered?
Are your sensors mounted on metal surfaces? If so, the metal is going to interfere with the signals sent and received by the sensors. Keep the sensors as far away from metal as possible. That goes for your hub as well.
Its not a hub issue. I am running many other Zigbee devices with no problem at all. I have the last genation hub. The sensors are not on metel all on wood or plastic. The hub is monted on wood.
Sonoff TH01 temperature and humidity sensor is one of the most stable T/H sensors that I have... It fully complies with Zigbee standards and can be configured to send updates as fast as every 10 seconds on 0.1 deg change ..
Try this driver, we can see some additional statistics after few days:
Here the hub has received 32 thousands reports in the last few months (because of the frequent reporting settings that I have configured), and the device has rejoined the ZIgbee network only 6 times. This includes the rejoins when the C-8 hub has been shut down for a longer period.
Updated to the drive you suggested. Already seeing noticeable difference. The main temp sessor went for 18.9c to 14.1. I will do a test and turn the heating on and see if it shuts off at 21c.
Before due to slow updates if i would set it to 21c the time its updated its 23c and it very warm.
If the new driver works well, I'd stay with that and your existing sensors. But if they still give you issues, I've had good success for at least 3 years now with the Homeseer brand z-wave multi-sensor device that includes a temperature sensor. You need to plug them in to AC power to get frequent temperature updates, but they use almost nothing in terms of power and I'm guessing you have an inverter in the camper van. I've used them with my Hubitat C7 to control a z-wave plug-in module that turns on and off a heater in cooler months, or a window AC unit in summer. Works like a charm in my "tiny house" office.
