I just had a 17-zw delivered. All great and in Vera as a thermostat, and also directly associated with my zwave electric heaters. Working great.
I did have a virtual thermostat working before, but this didn’t pass the wife test for her being able to change the temp if I wasn’t around.
I’ve set a basic program into the c-stat for our rough life and temperatures, wake up, bed etc for the week.
How have other people done it to make it more intelligent?
Eg, wife at home all on a Wednesday, so I’ve programmed the thermostat for 20degs all day. But what if she goes out? (I have 3in1s for motion detection)
Should I put the 'stat to 16degs, then a scene on motion to change the set point to 20deg?
How have others done it?
(The virtual 'stat had the two set points, so motion moved the set points between normal and Eco brilliant!)
Thanks.
I ended up solving this by having an Away button next to the outside doors, and a Go Sleep one downstairs. Heating turns on automatically in the morning on a set schedule, and turns off when we go to bed or leave the house. The buttons are useful for turning off the lights as well.
The question then becomes: could the system detect that we have all left automatically? No easy answers, there’s a new thread on this subject in the General forum
I use a Program Logic Event Generator (PLEG) plugin to calculate the required setpoint according to normal schedules but modified by Home/Away, Vacation start/end, an Early-Start one-shot, a mid-morning reduction and Summer/Winter switch. The result is a number between 8 degrees (C) for frost-protection and 20 degrees for winter mornings. The PLEG sends the calculated setpoint to the 'stat whenever it changes.
Adding additional terms to the calculation is very simple. Determining if someone is at home is more challenging. ;D
I haven’t paired it with the asr. My c-17 is paired to a TKB switch and a another make switch I can’t remember at the moment. Working really well though.
It’s a weird arrangement, build a programme of temperatures to timings, then manually keep changing it via Vera. Brilliant.
I want to buy a C-Stat 17W package as well.
And like the rest of us i have some questions as well:
What i want to do is include the C-Stat and the ASR-ZW receiver into the network and just use the C-Stat to control the central heating system (as most Dutch houses a gas based system) and let the Vera Lite do the multi-zone bit.
On the ground floor i have floor-heating and on the first floor normal radiators.
I want to be able to heat the first floor independently from the ground floor.
So on the ground floor i want to use a switch to control floor-heating pump and have the Vera control the switch.
Next i want to use Stellaz radiator controls to control the radiators on the first floor.
I do have some questions on how to get this to work.
– Once the C-Stat and the ASR-ZW are included in the network do i need to associate these(how?) to get the C-Stat to talk directly to the ASR-ZW ?
– If that is the case can i then still control directly the ASR-ZW if i want to tell the central heater to start heating ?
– The Stellaz can only be controlled by means of setting a setpoint currently as i gathered somewhere else on this forum right ?
– If so can i then use another thermostat control (display and rotating knob) in that room to put the new setpoint in the Stellaz since the Stellaz do not have a display or is this practically not feasible since there is a delay because the Stellaz only wakes up every 4 minutes (or default 7 days) ?
– And the most important question (imho) will the Stellaz report back to the vera that there is a demand for heat (the heater needs to be switched on) or is this handled by means of association with the ASR-ZW ?
Basically i want to control the ASR-ZW by both the C-Stat and the Stellaz and use the fact that the Stellaz is controlling the heater to shut down the floorheating pump on the ground floor.
I hope somebody can help me here.
UPDATE:
What i forgot to mention is the reason why: my ground floor(basically living room) is much better insulated than the rest causing the heater not to switch on even though the rooms on the first floor may require heat.
So i thought if i created something that allows the rooms on the first floor to control the heater as well thet will get heat as well.
I foresee this problem in the future getting worse since i plan to install a woodstove in the living room as well.
This will have the thermostat in the room think it is warm enough and thus almost never switch on, making the rooms on the first floor way to cold if they did not have a way to control the heater.
[quote=“michaelr64, post:7, topic:175327”]I do have some questions on how to get this to work.
– Once the C-Stat and the ASR-ZW are included in the network do i need to associate these(how?) to get the C-Stat to talk directly to the ASR-ZW ?[/quote]
You need to associate them, check the manual for the C-Stat.
-- If that is the case can i then still control directly the ASR-ZW if i want to tell the central heater to start heating ?
Yes and no :) You can turn the heater off and on manually, but the C-Stat will periodically override it, especially when its on a x minutes on, y minutes off cycle. You can wire a second ASR-ZW in parallel to the first if you want multizone control over the heater.
-- The Stellaz can only be controlled by means of setting a setpoint currently as i gathered somewhere else on this forum right ?
Yes
-- If so can i then use another thermostat control (display and rotating knob) in that room to put the new setpoint in the Stellaz since the Stellaz do not have a display or is this practically not feasible since there is a delay because the Stellaz only wakes up every 4 minutes (or default 7 days) ?
Yes, I have done this in a few rooms: I use a scene that runs every few minutes and copies the temperature dialed in on a Horstmann thermostat to StellaZ / Danfoss TRVs. There will be a delay of up to 5 minutes or so, but in my case that’s acceptable.
-- And the most important question (imho) will the Stellaz report back to the vera that there is a demand for heat (the heater needs to be switched on) or is this handled by means of association with the ASR-ZW ?
To my knowledge the StellaZ TRVs do not report a heat demand, which is why I used a full fledged Horstmann thermostat which reports heat demand directly to a receiver at the boiler. You could have Vera handle this by simply comparing actual temperature as reported by the thermostat or the StellaZ against the temperature set point, and switching the heater relay accordingly.
My setup has 3 parallel switches at the heater, 3 thermostats, and a number of slaved TRVs. This works well in the scenario you described i.e. heating the rest of the house when the fireplace in the loving room is lit.
I had figured most of the info already from the forum, but i needed someone who actually has these things to confirm them.
Why do you have three switches in parallel on the heater ?
I thought i read somewhere on the forum that if you included the switch and c-stat separately and then did the association in the vera you could still control the switch trough a scene besides of course manually.
I figured that a scene which would run every so minutes that would compare the dial setpoint with the stellaz room temperature and when the stellaz is lower then tell the heater to switch on. The failsafe might kill it after an hour but that is just fine, the scene will probably switch it off earlier when the two match.
I also need to know the temperature of the c-stat since i need to disable the floorheating pump when i tell the heater to switch on if the room is already at the right temperature. This will also double as a pump-switch to save energy.
I can then sell the one i have already :-).
An additional problem might be that the vera can not handle floating point stuff (for the setpoint) and the thermostats also only report in full degrees.
I hope that the rel. coarse resolution will not introduce resonation into the system.
Best Home Automation shopping experience. Shop at Ezlo!