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FGT Heat Controller Motion Sensor and Adaptive Mode


Nisse57

Question

I am renovating a 10 room house and considering FGT to control the radiators. Many rooms are not used that often so I am interested in the adaptive working mode of the FGT but cannot find any details of how it works. It is supposed to use motion detection in the FGT to adapt the temperature, but how and where do you make that configuration. Does the FGT require a Homecenter to make this work, or can it work stand-alone. 

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39 minutes ago, Nisse57 said:

It is supposed to use motion detection in the FGT to adapt the temperature, but how and where do you make that configuration.

 

Welcome to the forum!

 

Where did you hear or read about "motion detection"? I am intrigued. Short answer, as far as I can tell you'll have to write some Lua code. The "adaptive" means the algortihm of the valve is intelligent and learns about room size and radiator size.

 

Before you buy, you might want to find out if you want the external probe because it is 10 EUR bought as a pack but 15 when bought separately.

 

I've been around here for a while and I think "temperature control" is a tough subject. Much tougher to grasp and understand than electricity. It is more difficult to measure stuff...

 

I do not want to underestimate you... I just want to start at the basics to make sure everyone is at the same level of understanding by the end of this post.

 

This is copy/paste with some rework from my previous posts on this forum... I'll keep repeating and improving the explanation until everyone understands it... To my knowledge, no one on this forum has attempted to explain heating systems... until now. So please bear with me... I am not a heating specialist, but an engineer and passionate about HA so boiler control and temperature is part of my hobby.

 

Let's get some things straight.

 

  • The FGT is a THERMOSTAT. Popp, Danfoss Licing Connect, Eurotronic TRVS, they are all THERMOSTATS. Technically, they are not "valves", they are "thermostatic heads" attached to a valve. It is customary to refer to the assembly (head + valve) as a "Thermostatic Radiator Valve" or TRV.
  • I will use TRV if I refer to some sort of thermostat to control water flow. I will use FGT or FGT-001 when I talk about the "Fibaro Heat Controller". I will NEVER refer to the FGT as the "HC" because that abbreviation is used quite a lot on this forum to reference the "Fibaro Home Center". If I accidentally use HC in a topic about heating, I mean "Home Center". I'll try to avoid that...
  • They do NOT use your controller, to regulate temperature. They do not use any sensor measurement of your Z-Wave system. They contain their own sensor (or sensors!) and the FGT has an optional external probe. That probe is not Z-Wave, it is Bluetooth Low Energy. But the measurements are transferred to your controller, by the FGT. So reporting from the external sensor to the FGT is fairly frequent (every 10 minutes) but reporting by the TRV to your 
  • You tell the FGT to go to 22 °C and it does that for you. It does not need a controller or a temperature reference, nor does it need a room thermostat and you also do not have to buy the external probe... It is an autonomous system. It uses hot water and a battery to control room temperature.
  • The FGT-001 can either use its internal sensor or the special extra bluetooth low energy "button" external probe. The extra sensor can be in a more optimal place: the right height, no direct sunlight, nearer to the spot where you want to control temperature. With this probe, the FGT starts reporting temperature too. It reports to the TRV every 10 minutes. To conserve power and reduce network traffic, the FGT only sends temperature to the controller every 2-3 hours or when the temperature readings differ by 0.5-1 degree from the last report.
  • You can turn the KNOB to change the set point. No magic involved. For instance. Turn the ring until it displays "cyan" and it will regulate the valve, until the temperature averages 18 °C. It does not need the extra sensor, because there is one (actually two) and the device itself has an algorithm to go to the set temperature. It also does not really need a controller, all magic is performed by the micro-controller onboard.
  • Your TRV does not need a connection to a controller to do its job. You can install a TRV, set the thing to 24 °C if you like that, and it will start to open and close the valve. So you can check the performance of your TRV by leaving it excluded. This will make sure it is not a communication problem, or a script changing the set-point. Of course, this degrades it to "a mechanical thermostatic head" - but we managed to live with that kind of control, did we not?
  • You get more interesting possibilities, with a Z-Wave controller. You can send temperature settings to the controller via your app, or using the browser interface. Like: "go to 23 °C for 4 hours". Because FGT-001 is a FLiRS (frequently listening routing slave) device, roughly one second after you change the temperature, it will take into account your new target value! So there is no "wake up" interval (and delay) like ordinary battery operated device. Older TRVs are not FLIRS so they kind of "request settings at regular intervals" - otherwise know as "wake up interval". To my best knowledge, the only other FLiRS device on the market is the "Spirit Z-Wave Plus". Danfoss has announced the LC14, it should be FLiRS based but I don't think you can buy one yet.
  • Some part of slowness of the "older TRVs" comes from the wake up interval. The FGT-001 has eliminated that. It will respond to commands "almost instantly".
  • You have your TRV to a Z-Wave controller? So now you have a "remote control" for your thermostat. It still does not need your controller or a temperature sensor to control the temperature. Sometimes, it is more convenient to use your phone or a tablet. But it's not real automation (yet). Communication is bidirectional: the controller can set the TRVs set-point and the TRV will report the set-point if someone turns the knob. The FGT-001 also reports temperature if it has an external sensor. It DOES NOT report sensor data without external sensor. To me, this makes totally sense, because the sensor is not in a good position to detect room temperature. I have dedicated a separate topic to this. Popp is a modified Danfoss TRV. It reports temperature, but depending on your house and position of the TRV, its temperature reporting will not match the temperature at a key point in your room... If you want to know more, please read my other topic... 

    Please login or register to see this link.

  • The next step would be to use the heating panel. The heating panel is nothing but a scheduler. It contains time/temperature settings. And all it does is send the schedule to the TRV. Again, the FGT is fully autonomous after it receives the schedule. Older thermostats get only a set-point change. The FGT-001 gets a complete schedule. The effect is largely the same. You can override the schedule by turning the knob, or by using the app. You get manual override and holiday mode as a bonus. You need to understand the concept of zones and rooms and maybe take into account that one FGT remote sensor can send temperature to three FGT-001 heads. It might be a little bit more complex than I suggest... one thing that trips people is how "time" plays a role in overriding the schedule.
  • If this still isn't enough control, you can use Lua to send a set-point to the TRV. Even in this case, you still do not need an extra temperature measurement... The FGT is FLiRS and responds almost instantly to your commands. The older valves get a setting at the next wake-up (typically set to anything between 5 an 30 minutes). Of course, you can use some sensor in the room to estimate the performance of the TRV and nudge the set-point up and down, to compensate for the fact the TRV is not in a good position to measure room temperature. I do not present scripts to do this... You can use Lua with or without the heating panel,. If you want to make your own scheduler, you can do that, no need to configure the heating panel.
  • All it needs is... a steady source of hot water and battery. And this brings us to the issue of room thermostat and boiler control. The boiler should take care of the hot water problem. It has a boiler thermostat, and possibly some settings and maybe an external probe. You see, I do not mention a "room thermostat" when I talk about boiler control, this is intentional. I might discuss this another time.
  • For sake of completeness... other TRV systems exist. If you are interested in a mains operated, completely silent actuator (not a thermostat!) look up "thermoelectric actuator". notice: "actuator" is not "thermostat"... You need a thermostat to control that kind of actuator. It is something to keep in mind: all Z-Wave TRVs make some noise!
  • There is one rather peculiar device on the market, which causes a lot of confusion: "Danfoss RS 014G0160 Thermostat". On a HC 4.160 you can use this as a kind of remote control. It does not act as a real thermostat, because the device does not control any output (on a home center). You can use Lua to intercept "value" and "timestamp" as with any other thermostat.

 

At the moment (2018-02-04), your FGT-001 might not performe as expected, but this has nothing to do with the previous explanation:

 

  • FGT-001  FW 4.0 can crash "open" or "closed".
  • The issue was confirmed by Fibaro on december, 19 of 2017. I'll put a link to that post below.
  • Some people seem to very happy with this FGT, it does not seem as if all users are affected.
  • I wrote this long post, plus follow up, because depending on your setup, you might not notice the crashes, or they simply work for you.
  • Fibaro has identified "a bad calculation" and is preparing and testing a new firmware, OTA, for all HC users.
  • There is no official ETA but support told me "to be fixed in Q1 2018".

 

 

Are you still with me?

 

Any questions? Go ahead! There are no stupid questions... I learn from people asking questions, either because it makes me formulate the answer or makes me aware of things I do not know! Thats good!

Edited by petergebruers
Removed part about boiler control to avoid confusion
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  • Inquirer
  • Thank you for the thorough response. Very helpful. Regarding the motion triggered temperature control, that info is from 

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      ("Thanks to the adaptive working mode, the radiator head will lower the temperature within chosen rooms, generating savings for you. However as soon as the Motion Sensor detects movement in a room it will raise the temperature to an optimum level."). I was planning to use Genius Hub, Genius TRV and Room Sensor to have a system with motion control  (

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     ), but it looks like the FGT is a much more sophisticated TRV. However, I need to understand how the motion detection feature works, because the is crucial to me.

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    5 minutes ago, Nisse57 said:

    that info is from 

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    Oh, I see, marketing stuff. That's OK, it could be a lot worse. ;-)

     

    They seem to suggest the FGT-001 somehow automatically works with a motion sensor but that is not the case.

     

    You really need a Z-Wave controller. Do you have one? HCL or HC2?

     

    It can be done, without much coding, but personally I do think it is nice to have the option to use Lua.

     

    Without coding it goes more ore less like this. Add "magic scene". Select your motion controller. Select "when breached" (= motion detected). Then select action on FGT-001, then "set temp to 22 °C (for example). Behind the scenes, this kind of wizard makes Lua code for you.

     

    So the motion sensor talks to the controller, the controller runs a scene, and the scene sets the target temperature.

     

    Does this help?

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  • Ah, so the Fibaro marketing did not mention that you also have to have a motion detector to make this work. A bit misleading if you ask me. I assumed that the FGT also included motion detection because it has some feature to measure the room size.

     

    The house renovation does not start until April, so I'm still deciding on what system to buy, the Genius stuff, or Fibaro, but if the motion detection works I probably go with Fibaro even if I then have to also buy a detector for each room. Do I understand you correctly that I then have to have the HC2 for the Lua?

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    Don't forget to change temperature back to to 18°C (or whatever value you use) when the person leaves the room.
    And remember that the radiator will need some time to heat the room, so it's not the thing i wish to have in my home...

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    33 minutes ago, Nisse57 said:

    Do I understand you correctly that I then have to have the HC2 for the Lua?

     

    Yes, HCL is much more limited (features, memory)

     

    Please login or register to see this link.

     

    34 minutes ago, pogo said:

    Don't forget to change temperature back to to 18°C (or whatever value you use) when the person leaves the room.
    And remember that the radiator will need some time to heat the room, so it's not the thing i wish to have in my home...

     

    I agree, I bet many users do not have a clue how fast their room can heat/cool. I depends on many, many factors...

    I have not thought this motion thing through yet, because it never felt like very useful to me. My house is different, the climate is different.

     

    What I did think to implement this year... My daughter forgets to close the door to her room. So if door is open > 15 minutes -> reduce heating. Because she leaves it open for the whole day.  I know, this is a kind of punishment but maybe it works better than telling "please close the door". I used to send mails to her smartphone, but she ignored them. Again, that is my daughter, not your daughter :-D

     

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  • Regarding temperature control I'm thinking of a combination of schedules and motion for most rooms. E.g. for the kitchen/living room a schedule for comfort temperature 7.30-9, 12-13.30 and 18-22, but  combined with motion control that lower temperature if no motion is detected during a 30 minutes period (to cover no show, or leaving early). When the room is on low temperature and motion is detected comfort temperature should be set, but now the "no motion interval" should be for example 5 minutes to not waste energy on quick in and outs (this also works as en extension of the scheduled comfort temperature time intervals). I live high up in the mountains were it is very cold during the winter, and heating actually is required more or less year around. The clever thing with the Genius system is that it does this, but you don't have to program it, it is self learning. However, the FGT seem to have an advantage in that it can start heating as soon as it detects motion while the Genius is based on LC-13 and hence suffers from the wake-up interval.

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    1 minute ago, Nisse57 said:

    Regarding temperature control I'm thinking of a combination of schedules and motion for most rooms.

    So you start with the heating panel ( = scheduler) then supplement that with your logic. I do not think there is a one-size-fits all solution but you'll find plenty of examples. If you know how you find them. Try "heating override" and "thermostat override" as search terms.

     

    4 minutes ago, Nisse57 said:

    The clever thing with the Genius system is that it does this, but you don't have to program it, it is self learning.

    Do they use the same marketing bureau as Fibaro? In that case ... ;-)

    I have checked their website, all their hardware is rebranded Z-Wave stuff. So the secret sauce must be the code running on their controller.

    I do not have a clue what it looks like.

     

    5 minutes ago, Nisse57 said:

    Genius is based on LC-13 and hence suffers from the wake-up interval.

     

    You can set wake up to 5 minutes and still get some decent battery life. FGT-001 on the other hand is instant and it is very nice to have that. It uses a rechargeable battery, you need a power bank to charge it.

     

    You might want to do more research...

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