Domoticz

What I'm missing to date is a good quality wireless temperature sensor to add to my home. I would like to add sensors in every room, but so far, all the sensors I have come across have their limitations.

Hue motion sensors have a steady connection, but have an update interval that's way too long (every 10 minutes). You can't use them to control a heating or cooling system without having a large overshoot in temperature.

Weather station sensors connected through RFXCOM update quite regularly but are too sensitive for interference. Too many sensors (including your neighbors') and not enough channels. The range is also hard to extend with readily available equipment.

I've invested way too much money in an Aqara Hub V3 and 4 temperature sensors, only to find out after purchasing them that it seems no longer possible to couple the gateway to Domoticz (wiki is out of date).

Before wasting anymore money on interfaces and sensors, which sensors are you using? How is your experience with them? I'm used to working with building management systems for very large sites, but all sensors there are hard-wired and work with a specified protocol. It seems all the consumer goods products are just rubbish and barely enough to satisfy a layman. Am I right?

Hi Alain.
Why not cabling a RS485 bus (4 wires shielded cable) to supply/interconnect all sensors/input/output modules?
No RF pollution, no batteries, if you supply 12V with a backup battery, they work even in case of power outage.
Creasol DomBusTH is a small module designed for Domoticz within temperature and humidity sensors, 3 LEDs, 4 Inputs (analog or digital) and 2 open-drain output (that you can use to connect external relays).
When you connect the module to the bus, Domoticz automatically detect the module, then you assign a unique address of your choice for that module, and you'll see every inputs/outputs/leds/sensors on Domoticz automatically.
https://www.creasol.it/CreasolDomBusTH

If you want wifi sensors, you can go for tasmota flashed hardware with a temperature sensor.
I use a couple of Sonoff TH10 with SI7021 sensors, the interval is adjustable, I have mine on 1 minute, that is fine for me, 10s is minimal...

You also could go for zigbee, cheap and easy extendable.
I run zigbee2mqtt and a CC2531 USB stick. A couple of Xiaomi temperature sensors and off you go.
Zigbee temperature sensors only send updates if the temperature changes ....

I'm using Aeotec Z-Wave Multisensor 6. I dont run them on battery, but USB powered, a "hidden" cost unless you got access to something like old iphone chargers.
The part that make me keep buying 'em, is the settings: Being able to calibrate temperature, humidity, illumination, frequency of updates, plus settings for limits for treshold (min & max) of change to trigger reports, thats options I've yet to see in similar sensors.
It can run on both battery or USB power, and the device itself is kinda small and somewhat unobtrusive.
That's the good parts. The bad parts, in my opinion is:
I don't speak Aeotec's version of Hex. For some of the settings I need a webpage to translate numbers into their system.
The battery (CR123A) is not cheap around here. The first year I ran these on battery, discovering the cost made new iphone chargers seem cheap.
With a large network of these, you can potentially flood a z-wave network. It's not hard to set them up with reasonable reporting rates, but it's not dummy proof.
..and lastly, their not cheap.
In my opinion you pay for quality, these knock the socks off any cheap temperature sensor I've tried.

psubiaco wrote: Sunday 07 March 2021 20:13 Hi Alain.
Why not cabling a RS485 bus (4 wires shielded cable) to supply/interconnect all sensors/input/output modules?
No RF pollution, no batteries, if you supply 12V with a backup battery, they work even in case of power outage.
Creasol DomBusTH is a small module designed for Domoticz within temperature and humidity sensors, 3 LEDs, 4 Inputs (analog or digital) and 2 open-drain output (that you can use to connect external relays).
When you connect the module to the bus, Domoticz automatically detect the module, then you assign a unique address of your choice for that module, and you'll see every inputs/outputs/leds/sensors on Domoticz automatically.
https://www.creasol.it/CreasolDomBusTH

This looks very reliable, being Modbus and it's wired, but the last feature is not the easiest to overcome in a house. It would mean having to run wires all through the house.

I'm currently looking into Modbus to connect my SPRSUN heat pumps to Domoticz, but it's still all a bit unclear to me. I'm still not quite sure what I need.

I'm having pretty good luck with Zigbee sensors at the moment. I have quite a number of smart switches also, which makes for a fairly stable mesh network.

Alain wrote: Sunday 14 March 2021 13:42 I'm currently looking into Modbus to connect my SPRSUN heat pumps to Domoticz, but it's still all a bit unclear to me. I'm still not quite sure what I need.

Most probably you have to make your own plugin for your heat pump: that's not easy. RS485 is standard in hardware, but any device uses it's own protocol and speed.
Althouhgt my heat pump, EMMETI, has a RS485/Modbus interface to fully control it, it's much much easier to control it by some digital inputs: on/off, winter/summer, radiant/coil temperature, full/half power.
If you have such inputs, you can use any relay module to control it.
You can find the script and configuration file to control a heat pump at https://github.com/CreasolTech/domoticz_lua_scripts : it regulates the fluid temperature to maintain the set temperature (that can be reduced in the night), optimizing the power consumption in case you have a photovoltaic system.