Evohome + HGI80 & Domoticz users - zones calling for heat functionality?

[bruce_miranda]

OK so the HGI80 has allowed me to find at least one issue with my installation. My Kitchen UFH is configured as a separate zone using a Y87RF temperature sensor and a BDR91 relay as the actuator zone valve. What I noticed is that when I turn on the other zones, in Domoticz along with that Zone Relay going ON, the CH Valve Relay turns on and one of the two Boiler named Relays turn ON.

When on the other hand I turn the Kitchen Zone on. There is no Zone Relay that turns on, instead the other Boiler Relay Device turns on. So Domoticz seems to read the zone valve BDR91 as a device named Boiler. But what I was surprised to see was the CH valve, the other Study named device relay and the other Boiler named device Relay also turn on. When I looked at my 3 BDR91s, sure enough the UFH BDR91 was on, but what I wasn't expecting was for the CH Valve BDR91 also to come on.
My CH Valve relay seem to be double bound to both the CH Valve as part of the S plan set-up and the Kitchen UFH zone valve. I'll fix that in the morning. I think this is what seems to be causing the duplicate entry called Study Relay.

What I still haven't been able to explain are the 5 devices called Zone. 4 of them are constantly showing ON (value 200). And one seems to move around from OFF to 90 to 106 to 122. With seemingly no co-relation to what else is going on.

[jdp80]

Neighbours?

[bruce_miranda]

All the relay devices named Zone which refuse to auto name or change value seem to be have a Unit of 0. Whereas all the others that react with my changes have numeric values of > 0 in the Unit column in the Devices list.

I'm going to fix the double bind first before I spend any more time trying to figure out what is happening here.

[DanD]

Hi Bruce,

I'm glad the HGI80 and Domoticz are helping a bit to debug your system set-up. The Evohome Domoticz code does still have some bugs of its own and also not all Evohome devices have been fully implemented. For example, your using an Opentherm bridge which isn't fully implemented in the code and I think it's causing the additional Boiler device as I've seen this in another user's set-up. The four additional zone-relay devices each with unique DeviceIDs, but unit=0 are a new problem which I've not seen before and I can't see an obvious source from your set-up. The multiple binding problem that you're troubleshooting is interesting and it was on my to-do list to understand how the BDR91s can be used (intentionally) in this way and how it might impact the devices in Domoticz. I'll let you know if I come up with any other ideas.

PS I've checked the Domoticz code versions and I think that your Synology version is using the most recent versions of the Evohome code.

PPS You should start to some the battery information populate within an hour of startup. The devices don't send their battery information very often, I think it's only a few times a day. Testing out this functionality was a bit of a pain and I had to resort to opening up one of my HR92s and keep swapping out different batteries to test that it worked OK.

Regards,

Dan

[bruce_miranda]

So it would appear that I trusted Domoticz more than I trusted my own installation of Evohome and in the process have completely reset everything. I wanted to redo the zone valve relay double binds and went into the Guided configuration and without thinking clicked the 'Zone Configuration' button and all my 12 zones were gone!! I should have click 'Hot Water configuration' (AAHH HONEYWELL and their stupid naming convention!!).

Anyway, it turned out that there was in fact nothing wrong with my configuration. The CH Valve was correctly turning on with the UFH valve. The evohome cannot deal with an S Plan Plus. So even though my UFH is set up to use a separate motorised valve directly from the boiler, the fact that the evohome is set up as an S Plan means that everytime the UFH demands for heat, it will switch on not just the UFH BDR91 but also the CH Valve BDR91 because Evohome assumes that the CH Valve has to open for ANY heat demand.

I may have worked out why I had two devices called Study. I think it's a bug related to the Auto-naming. When I had all my zones removed and I looked at the Domoticz devices, I saw there were no names to anything. The moment I added the first zone called Cloakroom, a lot of the devices got renamed as Cloakroom, instead of just one. See image.Domoticz Devices after Cloakroom.jpg

[DanD]

Oh dear! I need to be more careful when I use phrases like 'restart Domoticz' as I think the restart within Domoticz triggers a reboot on all platforms, sorry. I stop and restart the Domoticz process on my Pi to restart Domoticz rather than use the restart option (a bit late to mention this now I know).

Thanks for all the additional information which will help me debug and improve the auto-naming code. I'm certain you're correct and I didn't consider the scenario where zones hadn't yet been defined, but the HGI80 would immediately auto-discover all of the relay devices. It'll be a little while until I take a proper look at this as I'm recovering from illness at the moment, and I don't quite trust the combination of my coding skills and concentration .

Slightly off-topic, but with regards to how Evohome deals with S-plan plus, I have wondered whether setting up the 'boiler relay' feature with one BDR91 linked to the boiler and then binding the relevant zone valve BDR91 to each zone as an additional actuator (I think it's possible to do this) would be a solution for set-ups which have multiple zoned groups of radiators controlled by zone valves? I may be talking complete nonsense here.....

Dan

[bruce_miranda]

OK so I had the pleasure of installing my entire evohome system today. After I did that the same 35 devices reappeared including the naming as of yesterday.

I still get
2 relays named Study
2 relays named Boiler
No relay named Kitchen
5 devices called Zone. 4 of them are constantly showing ON (value 200) and one seems to move around.

I am convinced that one of the relayed named Study is a bug when it should have been Kitchen.

Sure enough, one Study (1) relay turns on when I raise the Setpoint in the Study. The other named Study (2) doesn't.
When I raise the setpoint in the Kitchen, the other Study (2) relay switches on in Domoticz.

The two Boiler relays seem to react to the zones calling for heat. Boiler (1) relay comes ON whenever any of the radiators call for heat. Boiler (2) relay stays OFF in this instance.
When the Kitchen UFH calls for heat Boiler (2) relay comes on with a value of 198 but because the CH valve also opens Boiler (1) relay comes on with a value of 200.

[bruce_miranda]

Now that all the zones have entered the Night set point, one of those rogue Zone relays has dropped from 200 to 176. There is another bug with the way the Relay charts work in the Log. They seem to plot the On or Off, rather than the % Value. As a result the graph for that Zone is still showing a constant line because although the value has dropped from 200 to 176, the status is still ON.

[DanD]

Now that all the zones have entered the Night set point, one of those rogue Zone relays has dropped from 200 to 176. There is another bug with the way the Relay charts work in the Log. They seem to plot the On or Off, rather than the % Value. As a result the graph for that Zone is still showing a constant line because although the value has dropped from 200 to 176, the status is still ON.

Hi Bruce, it's worth checking that you've fully refreshed your browser cache on the machine you're using to view the Domoticz switch log graphs. I've had loads of trouble when testing small JavaScript updates as I keep on forgetting to refresh the cache on the test machine and then wonder why nothing's changed! Let me know if it doesn't fix the problem and I'll add this to my list of bugs to investigate.

Regards,
Dan

[bruce_miranda]

The issue with the Graphs in the switches section is that the Data being used for the graph is just the On or Off state and not the Value. Had the value been used the graphs should have been fine.

Oh and a day later, no battery or signal strength information has been populated in the Devices list.

p.s. : am now on version 3.5776, the latest beta.

[DanD]

Hi Bruce,

Sorry, I should have explained my reply a little more. The current code does plot % demand exactly as you've requested, but it sounds like you're not getting this functionality as the browser is still running the JavaScript code from a previous Domoticz version held in its cache. I can post a screenshot tomorrow, if it helps, to check that I'm understanding exactly what you're describing.

PS I'll add the battery info to my list too to look into. The signal strength doesn't get populated for Evohome devices as it isn't transmitted to the controller.

Dan

[DanD]

Hi,

Here's an example of how the demand graphs should look in the switches log showing % demand:

Demand pct2.jpg

Dan

[bruce_miranda]

I see what you mean about the browser cache playing havoc. Even after clearing the Chrome browser cache 3 times I can't get the output. See attached images of the same device in IE and Chrome.

Domoticz graphs IE.jpg

Domoticz graphs Chrome.jpg

Really scratching my head wondering why I'm having so much trouble clearing my Chrome browser cache.

Update : It turned out that I need to delete the Domoticz Cookie in chrome and that forced the web page to refresh the Browser cache. So now my graphs work.
I think I really need to find a Vaillant eBUS monitor to see if I can find any correlation between the "Boiler" and those "Zone" devices and the target temperature being set by my OT bridge.

[DanD]

Thanks for the update. I'm glad you managed to fix the cache refresh ptoblem with Chrome. I've just realised that this also might be linked to the battery status not appearing in the devices list. Are they appearing OK now? I don't have any HR80s, but I'd be surprised if they use a different command structure from the HR92s, so I'm hoping it might just be a cache related problem.

[bruce_miranda]

In fact you dont need to refresh the cache at all. Just delete the cookie for the domoticz server and it forces the browser to reset the cache. No battery info still. I know the HR80 transmits it because the controller is able to show when the batteries need changing.