Sinope Water Valve with Flow Sensor (FS4220/FS4221)

@mike.maxwell did Sinopé send you a RM3500ZB Water Heater controller?

They even have put Hubitat logo on the box!

Can't wait to add this to my power saving routines.

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they haven't as of yet, though Ive asked for one...

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@mike.maxwell I reached out to Sinopé tech support to ask that they send you one. We'll see... :crossed_fingers:t2:

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@mike.maxwell tech support has replied that it is planned to send you a RM3500ZB. Should be done in January.

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@mike.maxwell Any update on the RM3500ZB ? I spoke with tech support last friday and they told me they were almost ready to send you one unit, but they couldn't tell me when exactly.

Nothing yet

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How to you use 2 differents drivers : the load controller and moisture sensor ? I use the load controler and it works great but i'm missing the temperature :frowning:

Succesfully installed a VA4220ZB with the FS4220 flow sensor and getting flow rates. Thanks !!

@mike.maxwell I wonder if the device can report volume as well. After all, volume should be directly proportional to the sensor turbine' rotation count. @samuel.c.auclair 's custom driver hints at this, but it doesn't work for me (I don't get anything from the flow sensor when using it).

I'm using this to monitor usage on a drilled well.

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Yes the custom driver was to perform some test on how to get this flow/volume because at the time the default driver was not giving those values. I should remove it.

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It does not report volume.

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Thanks.

In that case, I wonder what is the standard way of interpreting flow sensor readings (and does this flow sensor follow that standard) ?

  • value is valid only at the instant it is reported
  • value is an average since the last report
  • other?

What I am seeing in the logs is that after a period of time for which water is flowing, the sensor will report a low value (1 or 2 LPM) and then... nothing until there's a new call for water. I can check that there is actually no water flowing using a manual ball valve upstream of the VA4220ZB. When a new water call happens (e.g. toilet flush) a zero gets reported (does this mean it's averaged zero LPM since last report?) then a bunch of values every 5 seconds or so, as expected.

I didn't see this 1 forever then a zero reading thing...
i was testing the meter at the end of the valve fed from a garden hose, the device ran to 0 when the valve was closed.

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When I close the Sedna valve itself, that seems to force a "zero" report from the flow sensor. When I close the manual ball valve upstream of the Sedna, no zero.

it must be leaking then...

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Thanks. Tested that too. I have another ball valve directly downstream of the Sedna. No leak.

In other words : I can have both valves on either side of the Sedna closed and still the flow sensor doesn't report a zero until I reopen the valves and water starts to flow again.

huh, well apparently the valve itself is overriding the meter value when shut, that would be my guess...

That's my guess as well. After a couple of hours playing around with this thing, here's what I also infer:

  • Flow sensor "awakes" with water flow : when that happens, the valve writes a zero to start a new data sequence, then reports flow rates as long as there is flow
  • Every flow rate sample reports the average flow rate over the period spanning (this report's timestamp - previous report's timestamp).
  • Thus the last flow rate report is valid up until its timestamp and not beyond. BTW the 1-2 LPM reading was incidental - my reading has been sitting at 7 LPM for the past two hours (confirmed no actual flow).
  • The flow sensor cannot be polled (Refresh on the valve device appears to have no effect). One impact of this is that I put this sensor on a separate InfluxDB logger instance that never polls otherwise I get a bunch of bogus data points.

This is what my dishwasher's rince cycle looks like:

The red line I squiggled on there will only appear once the next data sequence starts (or the Sedna valve is closed) but my understanding is that the area under this curve (red line included) is the actual volume of water used.

In the end I don't know what the flow sensor is encoding but it is likely not a flow rate. To my knowledge all such sensors encode revolutions (anemometer, speedometer, etc) and the number of revolutions gets multiplied by some ratio to get volume/distance/etc and divided by time to get a rate. Explains why the driver is asking for the sensor diameter (3/4" or 1") as this info is necessary to set the ratio of revolutions to volume (and then divide volume by time to rate). Sinopé could expose only the (static) ratio + the number of revolutions as a 32-bit integer and we'd have all we need.

Aside: found this in the installation instruction sheet :
image

Kinda kills one of my use-cases : 2 LPM is approx 30 gallons per hour, which is pretty close to the production rate of a drilled well around here, which means I could in theory have a leak big enough to empty it yet the flow sensor would not report it...

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I changed the driver for my valve for the new VA4220ZB driver then hit Configure and Refresh. I don't receive any reading from flow meter. I have seen in comments above that the driver ask for 1/2 or 3/4 but I don't have this in my device settings page. Is there something I should do to reset my valve status or something?

Mine looks like this. Note there are two drivers in the list, use the second one. I think the valve was initially set up with the first one (thus the device name) and I had to switch manually after.

@mike.maxwell Any thoughts why I don't see the flow meter preferences in my valve settings?

My valve is 6 months old. The flow meter was reporting data back when it was paired to a GT130. So I guess it shouldn't be hardware related.
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