Heat Controller with extra sensor temp way off

[oajungen 5]

Hi,

I am using a few Heat Controllers with external sensors for some days now. I am wondering how the extra sensor is being used by the HC because the HC is heating the rooms way to high considering the temperature I request. I request 21 degrees Celsius, but the room is heated by the HC up to 23 degrees according to the HC sensor and other temperature sensors in the same room. At 23 degrees the radiator is still burning hot. Why?

 

I would expect the HC sensor to tell the HC to stop/lower heating when it reaches the right temperature. Why isn't it working in this way?

To be honest.... at this moment I am not very happy and might return everything.

 

I hope this wil be solved soon? Have to find a way to log a bug for this.

 

Regards.

Olaf. 

[petergebruers 1,268]

Issue confirmed. We're all waiting for a firmware update. BTW the HC does not play a part in opening and closing the valve, I explain that in one of the posts below, but your observation is correct.

 

Please start with his post and what follows, then consider the other topics below:

 

 

And then there's this:

 

And if you want some background:

 The geek stuff:

 

 

If that does not answer all your questions I'll be glad to try and answer them here... 

[oajungen 5]

Hi thank you for the prompt reply!

I read the other posts and I am aware we are waiting for an update of the firmware. I hope it will be released soon. Have to explain to my girlfriend why it isn't working as supposed several times a day :-).

Wasn't sure if the issue I am facing was raised before. That's why I made the post. Let's hope this issues will be solved with the firmware update.

[petergebruers 1,268]

@oajungen no need to apologize, it's not always easy to find relevant information. I happened to have bundled a few of my posts so I could copy/paste... There is no ETA for the firmware but Fibaro has stated "we are working on it". I keep my FGT, I have faith they'll fix the issues... But you have to decide for yourself.

[Tigo 0]

I too can confirm that the valve is not operating correctly nor consistently. Although I set my room temp to 18 degrees, the heating is now going through the roof: 21 degrees! I use the external sensor but also have backup measuring from my fibaro smoke sensor. But really, I can tell without any device that the temperature is not right at all.

 

I understand that sometimes a product may have some issues upon initial release. What annoys me though, even more in this case, is that Fibaro only enables firmware updates to those customers who bought/possess a HC. Ýes, I know this is an old issue, but let me tell you why I bring it up again. I think I have some legit reason to complain, as have countless other Fibaro enthusiast all over the globe:

 

I have currently 17 Fibaro devices in my house, really happy with them, but I also have some devices from other companies-- also happy with those. I do not want to use a Fibaro HC because the system I have--Domoticz in this case--is much more flexible and can control much more devices than what Fibaro offers. This is not meant to be a critique on Fibaro, it's a reflection of customer choice in a free market. However, Fibaro explicitly advertises and sells its sensors and devices as Zwave compatible with other system. They are sold as stand alone products; hence they should be supported as such. Again, I really enjoy the Fibaro products because most of them function well and I happen to find the design really beautiful. So, I consider myself to be a very good customer for Fibaro, who is willing to spend a lot more euros in the future on Heat Controllers (provided they start working as intended) all over the house and other sensors.

 

But please Fibaro, take your customers--all of your customers--serious and enable firmware updates through other controllers. I am not asking for extra functionality or privileges you would like to reserve for buyer of a HC lite or HC 2; I am simply asking for normal support on a stand alone product, advertised and sold as such.  If it requires an firmware update to function as adverstised, make sure we get it, no matter how we control the device. Of course I do not want to dismount 17 devices every now and then and send them out for replacement or updates through a not so local seller (at extra costs by the way). That is really not how the digital age works. I just spent another 100 euros on the Heat Controller and the external sensor. I can understand something went wrong that should be fixed. No problem, I am an early adopter, so this is a risk sometimes when new products get introduced to the market. But if you have a fix, make it widely available to anyone who uses Fibaro products but who also chooses to stay out off the entire Fibaro Ecosystem. It really isnt such a big deal and it shouldn't even be a discussion.

 

 

[oajungen 5]

The issue is also the other way around unfortunately.

Room temperature is around 20 degrees. I raise the HC's to 25 and they stay cold..... what is going on? I opened them to the max and now the radiators are getting hot. Why doesn't the valve open/close at the right temperature setting? Calibrating the HC doesn't solve the issue unfortunately!

 

This has to be fixed really soon Fibaro. It is winter time and currently our house is not comfortable due to you!

[petergebruers 1,268]

22 minutes ago, oajungen said:

Room temperature is around 20 degrees. I raise the HC's to 25 and they stay cold..... what is going on?

 

It might be related to the reported issues. In am curious... Do you happen to remember, after setting 25 °C on your HC and noticed it did not work, did you touch the valve to adjust it? If so, what colour was the LED before your turned it to max (Magenta)? I am trying to establish if it was a network issue or a valve crash. If the LED was not RED (set point > 24 °C) then it did not get the correct set point from your controller. If it was RED but did not open the valve, it had probably crashed.

 

I have read and answered your other posts, so I am trying to understand why you set the FGT to 25 °C in the first place. Do not get me wrong, you do whatever you please, I am only being curious! I am trying to understand your goal (considering your other posts). Am I correct if I say you set it to 25 because you want to override the algorithms of the TRV, to make sure it goes fully open? So you use another, low value in a script to close it, and 25 to open it? Or do you really like your room to be 25 °C (fine by me... I do not judge...). Or did you first send 22 and it did not respond. Then you thought... let's try something higher, and it still did not respond?

 

I ask these questions because this TRV is new and I want to understand its behaviour.

 

I can tell you, the older LC12 and LC13 could only be opened immediately by going to the max setting of the valve and it would respond very, very slowly in all other cases (say... minutes). In fact, it was so slow you would probably think it did not work (and it sometimes didn't). Preliminary tests indicate the FGT is much faster in 2 aspects. Because it is FLIRS it responds within 1 second to Z-Wave. And also adjusting the set point (Z-Wave or turning the ring) seems to "spin the motor" (maybe it is only a "click") a few seconds after you release it.

[oajungen 5]

Hi,

I am experimenting because I am having issues to get comfortable temperatures with the HC's.... and wondering why.

 

In the HC2 I have different heating zones. The one in our living room is at 21.5 degrees, for now I have the Nest on 21.5 degrees also.... but I will remove / change the Nest as soon as the HC's are working well by them selves. The HC's in the living room went on initially, but turned down to fast (temperature in the room was only about 20 to 20,5 degrees at that moment according to the extra HC sensor). The Nest kept the boiler burning because the radiators kept cool. That's why I turned the HC's to 25, but..... unfortunately the radiators stayed cool / HC's closed. I opened the HC's to the max..... radiators hot of course. After a little while the Nest turned down the boiler (at 21.5 degrees). I don't understand why the HC's are having this kind of issues. But it looks like we are beta testers at this moment.

 

I am having similar issues in other rooms also with in total 7 HC's at this moment and more HC's are ordered. I hope it won't be a waste of money.  

[petergebruers 1,268]

@oajungen thank you for satisfying my curiosity

I am 99,9% certain this is a firmware bug only, so an update will fix that.

[robmac 173]

I am seeing reasonable if slightly odd behaviour since forcing re-calibration of my three valve heads last night.

 

Three valves all configured to one remote sensor in the same room.

 

The valves might crash as @petergebruers has reported at some point but for a good 4 hours the temperature in the room has been stable with only 0.25C change over that time. The room door is open and the heating in the rest of the house off. The room also has an open fire (not lit) and the chimney draft excluder is currently not fitted as we enjoyed a yule log this week and I have not refitted the draft excluder yet. This room is not a very easy space to maintain at a stable temperature like this.

 

 

The Horstmann thermostat in the room is set high (26) to force hot water available from the boiler so takes no part in room temperature control.

 

Temperature @ Horstmann 1.5m from floor near door 19.6

Temperature @ fire alarm on ceiling above horstmann 21

Temperature of remote sensor 20  on table next to sofa.

 

Radiators currently 2* tepid and one cold but each heats and cools independently and this is what I find curious.

 

@fibaro is this what you would expect?

 

Should I expect all three valves to start and stop heating at the same time when using the external sensor rather than this rather odd seeming two on one off?

 

Alternatively does the algorithm used in the valve use a function of internal and external sensor temperatures to control the valve so this behaviour is expected?

 

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On a slightly different subject.

 

I do worry when the recommendations given by Sigma get ignored :

 

SIGMA specification ...

"Schedules MAY overlap. This introduces a potential for conflicts between multiple schedules. Whether schedules are in conflict depends on the actual application. If the overlapping schedules control different functionality, there may be no conflict anyway. A controlling application SHOULD avoid creating conflicting schedules and a controlled device SHOULD discard a new conflicting schedule. To maintain a predictable behavior, a new conflicting schedule SHOULD be discarded even if the conflict is with a temporarily disabled schedule." 

 

FIBARO manual....

 

"The device allows to create multiple heating schedules to manage
temperature in the room throughout the week. Schedules are created
via controller interface or app.
• Up to 253 normal schedules can be created.
• The lower the schedule ID number, the higher the priority.
• Schedules with higher priority override those with lower priority
in case of overlapping schedules.
• Schedules can be disabled without deleting it."

 

Will have to wait to see how this works but an interesting design decision to go for the MAY rather than the SHOULD in a specification. Each to their own I guess.

 

Has anyone managed to get schedules setup from HC2 yet? There is that strange synchronise schedule button. I was thinking that loading the correct JSON into the appropriate node and pressing the button might load a schedule to the FGT-001 but have not managed to work out what the JSON should look like yet.

 

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but what goes in here? Any hints @Fibaro

 

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Robert

Edited December 30, 2017 by robmac