Does anyone have any experience with these?
Would be great if there was an existing driver for this or if anyone could confirm whether the generic zigbee switch could work on this.
They seem like a very bad idea for a few reasons. Here are some off the top of my head.
- In the USA (presumably all of North America), they need to be listed for use with certain breaker panel types. (BR, CH, etc)
- They are very unlikely to fit any North American breaker panel.
- They need to be the proper amperage for branch circuits. We use 15 or 20 amp branch circuits, so none of these are correct.
- Similarly, they are 220V, and won't work for most of the branch circuits.
- They need to be UL listed.
- They are a cheap Chinese breaker with no track record.
- I cannot see any electrical inspector allowing these. They also probably will void any insurance claims if they cause damages or fire.
If you are outside of North America, some of this may not apply. Other than they are cheap breakers with no track record, no standards, and made in China. What could go wrong!
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Hi @neonturbo, thanks for the reply.
I should have prefaced this by saying that I'm in AU, not the US. Even still, I am aware that a lot of your objections are still relevant (other than the 220V comment for example).
Reason why I'm considering this is that I have 2 underfloor electrical heating rings which are sitting on a 20A and 32A circuit breaker.
The in-room control is a very outdated (i.e. fugly!) single pole on/off thermostat which I would rather get rid of which has no neutral. This implies 99.9% of my smart thermostat options are out of the window right off the bat... 
What I wanted to do instead is to ditch the thermostats and just connect the 2 cables that are currently hooked up to the thermostat, completing the circuit in an always on position, plaster over where the thermostats used to sit and then install these circuit breakers and dictate on/off status of the heating circuits via zigbee temp sensors in the room instead.
Happy for any other solutions you may be able to offer that aren't circuit breaker related, but I'm not seeing how else I'm going to be able to achieve what I want any other way at present unfortunately.
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If they were approved and also monitored energy I would be in. But as the above posts even in the EU these would never be approved.
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zwave not zigbee, but legal, reliable, and available in Oztraylya.
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Yup, that's one that I had come across as well, thx for the recommendation @sanewton72. Problem with this one is that it's rather large and I'd rather not fit this inside the wall which is where this puppy would need to go.
Not something you'd want to have to look at in your living or dining room if you need to install it on top of the wall 
if you can't use that, a lower risk option than the ..ahem.. unproven chinese-manufactured zigbee breaker" (if you can safely mount it in your switchboard):
use a 'proper' Clipsal/Hager RCBO to power an Aeotec Dual Nano, and a 'proper' 2 pole contactor (e.g. Schneider 32A). the Nano switches each contactor pole on and off. that way circuit protection is done by legit devices, loads are controlled by a zwave device which only has to switch extremely low current (contactor coil), and the zwave device is also electrically isolated from loads/people by the contactor.
you would need one extra pole (spot) left in your switchboard/distribution board to achieve this.
i gotta comment at the risk of the flames: about 80% of everything is made in China, and a lot of it is good quality, some less so. but just because its made in china doesn't mean its bad.
i remember when everyone said that about japanese cars, and my oh my didn't that story work out well for the high-and-mighty western car manufacturers with their non-existent quality controls and attention to detail 
there's also the french-made nodon DIN-mount relay i posted about recently..which i'm tempted to check out. of course, its not australian RCM tested but its passed the EU tests which is usually our template for tests anyway (doesn't make it legal, but does indicate it most likely would be if someone paid the australia tax...)
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Actually, I alread have the Hager RCBO and Contactors in my fusebox...
I thought it would just be the easiest way if I just swap out a 'dumb' breaker for a smart one in this case...
Just to quickly describe this setup: the first from the left turns the timer next to it on or off, the other breakers that are on, are 2 underfloor circuits we sometimes use. The third one we leave off at the breaker.
We only have 2 analog thermostats for the 3 circuits and 1 of the thermostats isn't in the room we heat... I guess you can easily figure out what happens then, which is why we want to use zigbee temp sensors instead.
I'm intrigued by the Nano setup you described though, keen to know more! How can I hook that up to control this without it acutally being confronted by the load? Anything that gets placed in-line will need to be able to handle the same load as the actual breakers or else it would fry. So minimum 20A for the smaller of the 2 heating circuits and 32A for the larger of the 2 heating circuits we commonly use.
And yes, I agree as well on the China front: I didn't want to say anything either but lots of stuff gets made in China without people realising it so I wouldn't automatically assume something that wasn't invented or originally licensed to be produced in China by an EU or US company wouldn't be a decent piece of kit. Of course, I am conscious of quality control of Western companies producing in China will likely be higher, but I wouldn't say that something homegrown Chinese is necessarily a bad thing.
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with respect, sounds like you need a sparky, my friend 
to answer your question, check out the 20A ABB contactor in the middle.
its job is to switch a 20A current (terminals 1/2 and 3/4), and it does that when you switch on a very low current coil inside it. (terminals A1/A2)
so you can control a Dr.Evil Sized "Laser Beam" with a Mini-Me sized switch
The nano is Mini-Me.
PS i haven't watched this link, but it looked promising. apologies if it sucks.
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Well aware I'm out of my depth in this area 
But the breaker swap would have been well within my realm of achievability, hence me asking the question here 
Turn mains off, take out dumb breaker and swap with smart one, ensuring wiring is installed identically
Getting a sparky in is great when you want conventional stuff, but mostly they give you blank stares when you want to make everything a little smarter as they don't see the point and haven't had the experience.
I'd rather ask the question here first, over paying a call out fee for a sparky who is likely not to be of much help anyway.
If the device I mentioned had been confirmed supported in HE, I could have still gotten a sparky in to make sure, but without the device there is little point to doing that.
Appreciate the help though @sanewton72
word!!!
you're welcome. its a straight forward job really, the nano just replaces your wall switch/thermostat, and it can do it from a far more discrete position in the load centre, and you can patch over the hole in your wall or put in a nice Zen.
leave your dumb breakers and contactors where they are.
but...do get a sparky, hate for you to get fried. it hurts.
btw what city you in? (PM the response)
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Yeah, built-in energy monitoring and breaker status would be cool.
But as far as the rest, I'd be shocked (pun intended) if any residential building code body has gotten beyond the long held (and deliberate) box separation between Power Protection and Control Systems. Obviously by the looks of that picture of his panel some are heading that way?
Not sure about Australia electrical code but it's a huge NO NO to have infloor electic heating with no overvoltage/GFCI protection thermostat.
You can get a zigbee infloor thermostat here.
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In general "breakers" are not to be used as ON/OFF switches (although I understand many commercial building control the lighting with breakers).
I think the advertised ON/OFF cycles (10,000) is rather low for automated switch.
Visually they look similar to a DIN type of mounting (FWIW).
What would happen if you heaters were on 100% of the time due to some failure?
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although its not a bad thing you pointed it out, we're way ahead of the americas for a change wrt this - in australia every circuit in the house needs what you guys call GFCI protection. so a thermostat with GFCI is redundant here.
i did cover this off in my earlier post, over here we call a GFCI an RCBO
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In the US, as of 2008, I think the NEC requires combination arc/ground fault breakers (CAFCI breakers) for circuits that supply power to all living areas. Obviously, this doesn't apply to much older homes like mine.
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I've had quite extensive talks with Sinopetech and unfortunately that doesn't work for me either:
In total we have 3 underfloor heating rings, but we only have 2 thermostats. One thermostat therefore determines what happens for 2 of those underfloor heating rings.
That thermostat is placed near the entry of our house which leads to a 10m corridor (first heating ring) with floor to ceiling single glazing either side which then ends up in the living room (second heating ring).
We've closed off this hallway from the living room because that hallway basically serves as a giant fridge which sucks the heat out of the rest of the house. Running that hallway underfloor heating just adds to the crazy cost we already incur just running the living room heating ring and there is no point in heating that section of the house. The result of course is that there is never an increase in temp in that section of the house where the thermostat is and the underfloor heating in the living room never shuts down as a result. With underfloor you want to reach a certain temp and then have it cycle on/off to maintain the heat, something I'm having to do manually now by running up and down the hallway every 30 minutes 
Given that the Sinopetech thermostat:
- needs to be installed in the same spot as the original thermostat (i.e.: in the always cold entry hall)
- rely exclusively on their internal temp sensor or attached floor temp probe and the SetTemp is evaluated against those readings to determine whether to switch the heating circuit on or off
- those readings can not be replaced with readings from other zigbee temp sensors
this means that the SinopeTech devices are unfortunately of no use to me 
ah! so there you go. aust is not ahead, rules are the same.
except, here if you change/update a circuit it must be compliant when you leave it, regardless of age.
so on an old house, it can be left alone and its still compliant until you do work on/change it, and at that point it must be left compliant with all current regs...which means @Silvermane should be swapping out his CB for an RCBO if he has his electrician re-configure that circuit...on top of the fact that an RCBO on an UFH is just a darn good idea. Nothing worse than spilling a beer AND getting electrocuted too. Double whammy.
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I doubt we have beer strong enough to penetrate the slab once spilled to short out the UFH 
Maybe tequila in sufficient quantaties could manage that though
But yes, I will definitely look into getting an RCBO fitted, thx for the advice all. Guess it's sparky time... anyone know a good one with a bit of affinity for smart devices in Melbourne? I'll be updating all my wall switches soon too so decent enough work to be had. Typically I would do that myself, but if I'm having to call one in anyway, may as well get everything done up to code.
Unfortunately for me @sanewton72 is in Brisbane...
Not sure if a sparky will consider putting a zigbee or zwave switch on a contactor as being up to code though
there is nothing to worry about in that regard. AS3000 is pretty protocol agnostic, much to the disappointment of the cbus product manager.
