Heating Scenes?

[Al3x 2]

Does anyone have any ideas for a good heating scene or know of any? i am struggling to find something or some idea of how i can improve of what i have.

 

ATM i have heating panel to set schedules and temps of trvs in certain areas for certain times of the day. What i would like is to some how make it easier for me wife to turn on heating on in certain rooms and off in others. I use Nest and dont plan to use a switch to turn heating off / on. I was thinking of having the HC2 do the work of adjusting temps and then just control nest using another app.

 

I am struggling on how people make can control room temps on the fly without spending a good few mins changing them all. I was thinking of a scene and just code in changing trv temps but the issue with that is on the fibaro app, you can trigger a scene but ive not been lucky stopping a scene and then playing another to overwrite the settings for the trv

[cag014 731]

Don't know if it helps,but

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see Multi-room call for heat

 

Edited November 10, 2019 by cag014

[alex88 71]

I have a lot of heating zones and soon became frustrated with manually updating each zone independently through the mobile interface, as the temperature outside changed drastically, so I build a virtual device. 

 

I can change all zones to 4 different profiles, plus an option to turn all heating off, which is all I need for my home. 

 

I then have vacation and manual settings which I set through the mobile device for exceptions which I change very rarely. 

 

I had a few older versions of the VD which had a lot more functionality ie could tweak each zone manually but I found it was too much to maintain (and too much development time to fully build) as the system grew and in the end I just didn't really need that level of control. 

 

Where I have setup 4 profiles you could setup as many as you want, but if you want to control each zone independently this is not for you. 

 

If this is for you I can share my VD with you.

 

PS My heating setup is very simple. I use fibaro relays and now some switches to turn on /off actuators. The LUA is very simple. You may have device specific needs that will not be met by my code, so depending on your confidence with LUA consider this. 

 

 

 

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[Al3x 2]

nice setup, i decided the whole fibaro ui and dashboard was not the way to go because they are extremely dated now and currently investigating other apps that link into fibaro that do a much better job.

 

One thing i have noticed is that the TRV battery life seems to be really bad, we are talking a few months and then they need replacing. What wakeup times '/ settings are you using for trvs to give you the ability to call heat and not have the batteries drain away

[alex88 71]

7 hours ago, Al3x said:

What wakeup times '/ settings are you using for trvs to give you the ability to call heat and not have the batteries drain away

 

I don't use TRVs.

 

I have a heating manifold where each radiator / underfloor heating zone is controlled by an actuator. It's all mains powered.

When I designed by heating system I looked at all the TRVs and didn't like them. There were too many limitations in how they worked, so I setup my system with a manifold instead. I appreciate that doesn't help you much though.

 

If you decide to use a Fibaro VD I can share my code with you, else please share what your final solution looks like.

 

 

Edited November 23, 2019 by amilanov

[baskalex 17]

On 11/11/2019 at 9:40 PM, amilanov said:

I have a lot of heating zones and soon became frustrated with manually updating each zone independently through the mobile interface, as the temperature outside changed drastically, so I build a virtual device. 

 

I can change all zones to 4 different profiles, plus an option to turn all heating off, which is all I need for my home. 

 

I then have vacation and manual settings which I set through the mobile device for exceptions which I change very rarely. 

 

I had a few older versions of the VD which had a lot more functionality ie could tweak each zone manually but I found it was too much to maintain (and too much development time to fully build) as the system grew and in the end I just didn't really need that level of control. 

 

Where I have setup 4 profiles you could setup as many as you want, but if you want to control each zone independently this is not for you. 

 

If this is for you I can share my VD with you.

 

PS My heating setup is very simple. I use fibaro relays and now some switches to turn on /off actuators. The LUA is very simple. You may have device specific needs that will not be met by my code, so depending on your confidence with LUA consider this. 

 

 

 

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Hi, @amilanov. Could you please share your VD? I have quite similar setup and am trying to solve similar problem. So your VD would be quite useful for me. 

[cag014 731]

Hi guys,

I do have heating system (but I don't use heating panel and zones) and my system runs automatically depends on outside weather and internal temperature (and humidity)

My question is why you need manual setup for that? May be there is something that I'm missing in my system?

 

[alex88 71]

@cag014, I change temp manually across all zones using my VD simply because I haven't written the tiny bit of code yet to fully automate it.

 

The first step was to build the VD and test that my temp settings across all zones worked based on the outside temp. 

 

The next step will be to autistic schedule changes. 

 

I hadn't thought of using humidity as I don't have a humidity sensor in every room in the house. 

 

I'm interested to understand how you have used humidity to adjust temperature. 

8 hours ago, baskalex said:

Hi, @amilanov. Could you please share your VD? I have quite similar setup and am trying to solve similar problem. So your VD would be quite useful for me. 

Np. I'll post it when I get a chance shortly. 

[cag014 731]

1 hour ago, amilanov said:

I'm interested to understand how you have used humidity to adjust temperature.

@amilanov

First of all I'm using Aeon Labs sensors in my rooms. They do have humidity sensor and can work on direct power supply (not batteries)

To keep rooms out of mold according to @knuth formula, I'm changing the temperature accordingly. In some cases you need too high or too low temperature to avoid mold, but at least you can increase days to mold risk. I'm still playing with the algorithm for that.

 

see also

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I'm sure you'll automate your heating system, but looking on the forum majority of the users chasing VD and automatic solution. That's why I'm wondering if I miss something...?

Edited December 9, 2019 by cag014

[alex88 71]

1 hour ago, cag014 said:

To keep rooms out of mold according to @knuth formula, I'm changing the temperature accordingly. In some cases you need too high or too low temperature to avoid mold, but at least you can increase days to mold risk. I'm still playing with the algorithm for that

 

I installed a MHRV system so don't really think about mould anymore other than in one bathroom where it is controlled

through the extractor rather than through heat. 

 

Without thinking about it too much I would have thought that it's more efficient to control mould through extraction rather than heating.... Take the water out of the room and the rest will be fine, but then again my house is usually warm. 

 

Maybe this issue is worse in colder counties. UK is relatively mild. 

[cag014 731]

You probably correct, no issue to use extractor in mild weather countries.

To extract heat in cold countries or cold air in hot weather countries it's not a best solution.

 

[alex88 71]

Firstly, I haven't tidied this up for general consumption. In particular I should have moved all the code in the main loop to a button (to make it more efficient on the controller), but I just haven't got around to it yet. Instead I set it up so it only runs when you do something with the VD, so it a'int all that bad.

 

After typing everything below I recognise that it does take some time to setup, but once it's done it will save you a tonne of time. It did for me at least.

I got so fed up of constantly having to adjust temps in the house as the outside temp changed. Now it's easy to do and, yes, eventually it will be fully automated.  In fact, it won't take much to automate. I just don't have the time, however if i'd spent the time it took me tonight to write this post to automate it instead, i think it might just be done by now... go figure.

 

Setup Instructions

1) I have used HomeTable for device IDs. If you don't use it, then I WOULD SUGGEST YOU START NOW :), or else just hard code your device IDs i.e replace every instance of a descriptive label (e.g. HeatingCentral.L4_TVRoom) with your specific device ID.

As an exception to the above, you will  note that I haven't manually added my heating zone IDs to HomeTable, but again you can do whatever suits i.e. hard code zone ids (like I have done) or manually add them to your home table and then reference them instead of hard code them.

 

2) You need to setup the heating panel in your Home Centre. I have no instructions on this here. If you haven't done it, shout out and I can help out, but I'm hoping anyone that wants to use this VD would have setup the Heating Panel already.

 

3) You need to distinguish between the following concepts to understand how the VD has been setup:

- Heating Zone

- Heating Device

 

In some places I have multiple Heating Devices that are controlled by one Heating Zone 

e.g  2x radiators (Heating Devices) in a room that are controlled together in the heating panel by one Heating Zone. These heating devices (radiators) work independently i.e. turn on and off as required by their respective temp sensors to meet the target temp for their respective heating zone. 

 

I also have air temp sensors that I want to read the temp from for under floor (UF) heating for which I also want to read the temp from.

If you don't have either of the above, then your label count in the VD will equal the Zone ID count setup in the Fibaro Heating Panel. In my case zone count = 14 and device count = 21.

 

4) You need to create the following global variables manually:

- VD_Heating_Control

- VD_Heating_Run

 

Setting up the VD

1) You will want to add/delete the labels in the actual VD from label4 (Kit Din UF) which is object number 9 onwards. I have left my LUA and labels setup as I use them mainly because of laziness, but also because it helps me to see how someone setup a VD so I know what to do when I set it up myself, so I am going to argue that it's better the way I have provided it than providing a blank VD

The labels should reflect the heating devices you want to track as well as any additional temp sensors you want to track.  You can call the labels whatever you want as the VD works off matching the label ID (e.g. label4 from above) not the label description (e.g. Kit Din UF from above)

 

2) In the main loop you need to configure the following LUA:

 

(A) From row 19 - delete and update the following lines to reflect the heating devices you want to track ie to reflect what you did in "1) Setting up the VD" above

You just have to make sure the ui.lablexxx,values are updated to reflect the final set of label IDs you have in your VD. 

Leave the "-" as is unless you want another character to show when there is no data to display i.e. I use this to "reset" the VD to that I know the little fella is working when it's updating. It's a bit rich, but I like to see things happening in front of my face to believe they are happening.

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(B) From line 78 you will need to setup your zones with the zone id in the final column i.e. This is obtained from your heating panel where in my case heating zone id = 4 for the zone I have called "TV_Library"

You can call the zones (e.g. TV_Library) whatever you want, so long as you are consistent throughout the LUA in the Main Loop. The VD works off of Zone IDs not Zone Names.

Keep the the a1, a2 is numerical order without any gaps in the number sequence

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When you have decided on the number of zones to manage in the VD, update line 59 to the zone count, in my case = 14

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(C) From line 105 you will need to setup your preset temperature for each heating profile 

I have setup heating profiles for Cool, Cold, Freezing, Boost and Off. You could add more or delete some if you like, but you will need to update the buttons at the top of the VD to reflect any changes. So far this number of profiles is working ok for me.

There are 4x temps for the 4x temps in the Fibaro heating panel i.e. morning, day, evening and night. 

If you have 14 zones in the ZONE-ID table above make sure to have 14 zones of temperature profiles in this table

 

Partial excerpt of the table:

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On line 189 I was doing something fancy I think with updating icons, you might want to comment this line out or add a valid icon ID where I have 672

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(D) From line 261 you need to setup the IDs of the heating relays, temp sensors and zone ids. 

The columns are:

- Heating device 

- VD label ID that this device maps to 

- Actuator/Rad is effectively the Fibaro Relay device

- Blank - I left space for a spare device which I haven't used as of yet, so just keep the "" blank and ignore this

- Temperature probe for the heating device

- Blank - again I left a space for a spare temp sensor, but haven't used this as of yet, so just keep the "" blank and and ignore it

- Zone ID of the heating zone from the heating panel

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You need to update line 236 with the number of devices you want to retrieve from. In my case (as described above) even though I have only 14 zones, I have 21 devices I want to retrieve data for.

As mentioned above, there are two reasons for the difference:
- I have more than 1x radiator and temp sensor in 1x zone in the Fibaro Heating Panel, but I want to track the temp for each radiator in this VD despite it being joined into a single zone

- I have air sensors that I want to track the temp of where I have UF heating

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Notes on Using the VD

1) Last Used (Time) - is just the last time the relay was turned on/off. It useful to me to see how long since a device was used or how long it's been in use. I could make it a bit smarter to show which it is, but I just remember when switching between this view and the temperature view.

 

2) Target vs Actual + Power

Target is the target temp you have set i.e. manual override, vacation mode or schedule through the heating panel

Actual is the actual temp reported

Power reports either whether the relay (heating) is on as (ON) or how many degrees above target it is (in which case the relay will be off) (e.g. "+2")

 

3) I have not setup separate temps for days of the week. It's the same all the time for me. I tried changing temp for days of the week i.e. the weekend, but things change too often in my house so I gave up fiddling with it. You could modify and create unique temps by day. It would take a bit of faffing, but it's doable.

 

I apologise if there are any mistakes in the above. I didn't write this thinking I'd share it, as you will see when you go through it. You'll have to take it as it is.

Of course shout out if you decide to use it and get stuck and I'll help out and at the same time update the above to make sure it's clearer for the next person that might want to use it.

 

EDIT: In objects 6 & 7 of the VD you can change the descriptions that show against the heating profiles e.g. for Cool it shows "Cool >10C" on the VD label, you may want Cool to be for a different temp. Please note this temp plays no part in how the VD works. It is for my testing as as description only that I am tuning in getting it ready to automate the VD fully. 

Edited December 9, 2019 by amilanov

[alex88 71]

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I have just pasted the VD. I had to remove kids names. Good luck!

Edited December 9, 2019 by amilanov

[baskalex 17]

Thanks a lot! Will fiddle with it and let’s see what happens