Hi All,
Firstly, apologies for my ramblings
I'm very new to all this home automation malarky and thought it best to ask those of you who have made some of these decisions before now and are aware of what is available on the market! I've had a read through a few threads to try and figure things out but with the shear amount of options out there I am getting a bit swamped with it all, so any help and insight will be very much appreciated!!
I have so far come to the conclusion (maybe a wrong one!) that I think it best to go down the z-wave route so I can handle both lighting and heating effectively using a single protocol with a Rasp PI and z-wave daughter board without too much bother (in theory), but I have some questions before it makes enough sense for any purchases
I will be starting with the heating side of things first and moving onto lighting at a later date, my home has a conventional boiler with separate storage tank (baxi ga compact 15 / megaflo) with separate heating and water timers and 6 controllable radiators in 5 rooms. I'm ignoring the towel radiator and hallway radiator, neither of which currently have a TRV on them and don't factor into things for me to start with. At some point I'll want to schedule the towel radiator but it can run based on a general schedule for now, the hallway radiator really does seem redundant as it's currently used to regulate house wide heating control with not on/off valve at all and the thermostat 5 feet away.
One thing I am struggling to understand is what sort of configuration with thermostats / radiator valves I would need to zoned heating with different temperatures in each of the rooms. I am not dead set on any framework yet as nothing has been bought so would consider completely different options but the main requirements for me are:
So far I am thinking of the following components to do this:
I'm assuming I don't need any wall mounted dedicated thermostats and that I can set my existing manual thermostat to a max temp for the house as a whole so it doesn't impact anything, and that I can run the main heating control using my existing schedules with the knowledge that valves will restrict hot water usage as desired.
Is this simple approach an okay one? Should I consider splashing more cash and factoring in boiler controls to manage a boiler schedule? My boiler isn't that clever and it's not a combi so I'm not sure if it's worthwhile and even do-able without lots of money being spent. Not sure why I would need a wall mounted wireless thermostat either, especially if I want to monitor temps in each zone separately and use other components for that.
Would it be possible to use both RFXCOM (via usb dongle) and Z-wave (via daughterboard) at the same time with Domoticz? Just wondering if later on I decide to use an alternative framework to z-wave when adding lighting or other things I can do so?
Any thoughts would be very much appreciated and please correct me if I have gotten the wrong ideas about any of this!! And sorry for going on a bit, no doubt I missed some useful info too!
Cheers,
Mark
Firstly, apologies for my ramblings
I'm very new to all this home automation malarky and thought it best to ask those of you who have made some of these decisions before now and are aware of what is available on the market! I've had a read through a few threads to try and figure things out but with the shear amount of options out there I am getting a bit swamped with it all, so any help and insight will be very much appreciated!!
I have so far come to the conclusion (maybe a wrong one!) that I think it best to go down the z-wave route so I can handle both lighting and heating effectively using a single protocol with a Rasp PI and z-wave daughter board without too much bother (in theory), but I have some questions before it makes enough sense for any purchases
I will be starting with the heating side of things first and moving onto lighting at a later date, my home has a conventional boiler with separate storage tank (baxi ga compact 15 / megaflo) with separate heating and water timers and 6 controllable radiators in 5 rooms. I'm ignoring the towel radiator and hallway radiator, neither of which currently have a TRV on them and don't factor into things for me to start with. At some point I'll want to schedule the towel radiator but it can run based on a general schedule for now, the hallway radiator really does seem redundant as it's currently used to regulate house wide heating control with not on/off valve at all and the thermostat 5 feet away.
One thing I am struggling to understand is what sort of configuration with thermostats / radiator valves I would need to zoned heating with different temperatures in each of the rooms. I am not dead set on any framework yet as nothing has been bought so would consider completely different options but the main requirements for me are:
- Solution I can host on a single device and develop software against (either like the z-way web service based thing or a more rudimentary API if need be)
- Ideally something supported via Raspberry PI or my Synology NAS so I utilise an existing device to control everything, either by my own code or using something like Domoticz for example
- The ability to setup heat zones with separate temperature settings in each at any given time (radiator valve and temp/proximity sensor combo)
So far I am thinking of the following components to do this:
- 1 x Rasp PI with Z-wave daughter board and possibly running Domoticz
- 6 x Danfoss Z Wave Radiator Thermostats (to provide remote AND local manual overrides, not sure they'll do the job as some have had issues?)
- 5 x Aeon Z Wave MultiSensor (to provide a future proofed set of inputs per room, tad expensive though)
I'm assuming I don't need any wall mounted dedicated thermostats and that I can set my existing manual thermostat to a max temp for the house as a whole so it doesn't impact anything, and that I can run the main heating control using my existing schedules with the knowledge that valves will restrict hot water usage as desired.
Is this simple approach an okay one? Should I consider splashing more cash and factoring in boiler controls to manage a boiler schedule? My boiler isn't that clever and it's not a combi so I'm not sure if it's worthwhile and even do-able without lots of money being spent. Not sure why I would need a wall mounted wireless thermostat either, especially if I want to monitor temps in each zone separately and use other components for that.
Would it be possible to use both RFXCOM (via usb dongle) and Z-wave (via daughterboard) at the same time with Domoticz? Just wondering if later on I decide to use an alternative framework to z-wave when adding lighting or other things I can do so?
Any thoughts would be very much appreciated and please correct me if I have gotten the wrong ideas about any of this!! And sorry for going on a bit, no doubt I missed some useful info too!
Cheers,
Mark
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