Central Heating Control with StellaZ

[pdjm43]

Finally got round to making it pretty.



Domoticz is excellent.

Next thing to do, I'm going to try and modify the Zwave config files to allow direct control and remove the unused setpoints.

My next project is to try and find a workaround to trigger my Nissan Leaf remote heating using Google calendar of my work days and the outside temperature. Set to be warm when I leave home and when I leave work.

[pdjm43]

I've had a couple of my 6 valves stop updating over the last few days.
This is a problem for me because I check the valve percentage before I allow the boiler to activate for that room.
I'm at work so have only got the gui to use to try to resolve the issue, I've had Domoticz crashes when at home and changing hardware settings, so I know to be careful when at work (I don't want remote SSH to pi/raspberry).
When trying to 'fix' unresponsive valves at home I've pushed their blue button and fiddled with polling to try to recover. This caused 4 valves to stay awake and poll constantly, I finally got them to sleep but then they didn't update anymore after that.

I just found that (when not always awake) checking the OpenZwave control panel shows all valves working fine waking for 5 seconds and sleeping for the set duration regardless of what Domoticz thinks/reports.
Except for 1 valve showing temp lower than setpoint but valve closed or 6% on gui and control panel.

Performing a controller soft reset fixes all of this. The only downside is the hardware node list for the Zwave is now empty, but does not affect anything. Done this twice now in 2 days and it's an instant fix.

Will try to find a scripted soft reset command now to run periodically.

Zwave StellaZ Aeon Labs

[robpow]

Thanks for the update, interesting to hear how it's working.

I've still only got two Stella TRVs in a test setup and have had mixed results, the worst of which was when one ran out of batteries while almost fully open while we were away. Nothing I could to apart from watching the room temperature go up and up from 1000km away...

Matt

[pdjm43]

I've still only got two Stella TRVs in a test setup and have had mixed results, the worst of which was when one ran out of batteries while almost fully open while we were away. Nothing I could to apart from watching the room temperature go up and up from 1000km away...

Yes, I had a valve with a flat battery yesterday and the yellow battery warning didn't occur. The valve was open enough to keep heat in the room though.
With my control, if I have a non responsive valve but I see there is a temperature rise in the room (due to other room calling for heat) I can adjust the valve icon like a dimmer and when Domo sees it above 25% it allows the room to call the boiler or below 25% it prevents the call.

Remotely, I have a heating off button (for summer) which I used yesterday to cool the valves for an hour before they would get back into heating and cooling routine after being off all night due to Zwave lockup. In your scenario I could've set the switch timers to 'pulse' the heating.
I'm just writing a script to give me separate room isolation buttons which will set that room to 14oc on the virtual thermometer and adding buttons to add or subtract 0.5oc per push to a room after passing the virtual thermometer to a variable. Also an 'away' button to set all rooms to 14oc with PIRs to set it back to normal operation. Obviously all these buttons could have a timer added or even respond to Google calendar events.

Just sounds like you need to add more control

Once I was away for January and set my old house thermostat to 10oc, before we left my wife put towels on the radiator (to dry, unknown to me) below the thermostat. We came home to a near empty oil tank.

[robpow]

Ah see, there's the difference. We have no boiler but get our heating from a CHP-style districting heating system so there's a hot water loop that enters the house and a passive heat exchanger in the utility room. There's nothing to turn off as such.

Matt

[pdjm43]

Soft resetting the Aeon Stick removes the nodes from the hardware list, while this doesn't effect Domoticz straight away, it does if you restart Domoticz. All polling is removed, back to square one with no update on valves.

Disabling the Aeon Stick in hardware then reenabling it repopulates the hardware list then you can set polling back on the devices. I just had 4 valves come straight back with their first wake-up, a 'heal node' on the other 2 brought them back too.

If the valves are working in the Zwave control panel but not in Domoticz then pressing the blue button makes things worse, in my experience.
This has alll been done remotely.

Thinking about this it is the same as my 1Wire probes, sometimes 1 or 2 don't update after a restart. So I disable and reenable and they all come back. I can see in the log that 7 probes have been added.
Looks like the simple disable and reenable of the Zwave should be all it needs too. Obviously I will most likely get the chance to try it.

Changed my plan view too.

[pdjm43]

Well I decided to try the StellaZ again after reading a post on here about actually controlling the setpoint from lua.

Spent a fair bit of time on it to be fair over the last week. Now it all works exactly as my initial concept required a year ago.

The StellaZ are set to 5 min wakes, no polling. The setpoint using lua works 100% but from the gui is not, but there is no need to use the gui.

The only issue remaining is when I change the batteries in a StellaZ, it is a major headache to get it working again. So I'm going to try a different valve.