Ok, I Have 3 Vera’s (upnp bridged) and I just purchased an Elk M1 Gold system…
I have 2 MultiZone A/C heat trane units. AprilAir (?) multizone controller.
T5ere are 5 Thermostats in the house. I am slowly replacing them with the Trane Zwave so that Vera can manage. They really only tell the Zone controller that there is heat or cold demand for each given area (which is really just what a thermostat does). So my question: Couldn’t I just us a temperature sensor add-on to my elk which could expose that to Vera which could trip a contact to tell the multi zone controller I need cold or hot (depending on the contact) and eliminate the ugly thermostat on the wall?? Does anyone know if the current ELK plug-in would expose the temp to Vera?
I believe the next release of the elk plugin is suppose to add temp sensor support on the m1. It would be a nice setup if the elk outputs were exposed to Vera to control, so output expanders could be used to trigger the zone controller.
What about if one doesn’t have an Elk system? Is there some way to install zwave low voltage relays on the zone valves (or thermostat input on AC system) and then install remote temp sensors in the rooms and have Vera 3 run the whole program?
It’s possible to let Vera run the show. Keep in mind though that for some reason, Vera only exposes the sensor’s readout in whole degrees (the sensors themselves do report fractions of degrees). For a temperature control algorithm, that resolution is a bit on the low side.
You could use other temperature sensors like 1-wire, and interface them to Vera to get higher resolution temperature readings (see elsewhere on this forum for more info). If you plan to add many sensors, it may well be a more cost effective solution too.
I ended up adding a number of Horstmann Z-wave thermostats to my rooms, letting these thermostats control the heating directly. That way I take advantage of their built in control algorithm and more precise temperature measurements. They give me a temperature reading, LCD readout of target and actual temperature, and a dial to adjust the desired temperature manually, all in a single nice looking package.
[quote=“intveltr, post:4, topic:171302”]It’s possible to let Vera run the show. Keep in mind though that for some reason, Vera only exposes the sensor’s readout in whole degrees (the sensors themselves do report fractions of degrees). For a temperature control algorithm, that resolution is a bit on the low side.
You could use other temperature sensors like 1-wire, and interface them to Vera to get higher resolution temperature readings (see elsewhere on this forum for more info). If you plan to add many sensors, it may well be a more cost effective solution too.
I ended up adding a number of Horstmann Z-wave thermostats to my rooms, letting these thermostats control the heating directly. That way I take advantage of their built in control algorithm and more precise temperature measurements. They give me a temperature reading, LCD readout of target and actual temperature, and a dial to adjust the desired temperature manually, all in a single nice looking package.[/quote]
But If I were to let Vera manage supposing I can write the algorithm in lua… What output (electrically) do I need?
That depends on your heating system. I’ve no idea how the US systems work. European systems are usually based on a single heater, sometimes with electromechanical valves for different zones. The heater is turned on by closing a contact, though more modern modulating boilers take a proportional input (I am not aware of Zwave products able to drive a modulating boiler). I suspect US systems aren’t all that different, since thermostats on both continents started out as a simple mechanical arrangement, often a mercury switch on a spring that wound/unwound with changing temperatures.
To start my heater, I close its contact with a Zwave enabled isolated relay, such as the Horstmann heater unit, or a Fibaro switch.
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