IP Radiator Valves

One of my RO home atomation projects controls my central heating and hot water.

The boiler is switched on and off using Energenie Remote Control Sockets (one each for Heating and Hot Water). The hot water temperature and room temperatures are monitored by IP Thermometers.

But I can not find any way to switch individual room radiators. There are plenty of complete systems, but all I need are simple remotely controlled radiator valves.

I want different room temperatures for day and night, so the TRVs do not help. Any ideas?

There are some expensive remote controlled TRVs, but they form part of a proprietary control system. You could have a search around to see if anyone has reverse engineered any of the protcols, or created and open source version.

The actuator featured in this video appears to be compatible with radiator valves, and is mains switched (apply 230V, radiator turns on). That obviously leaves you with a wiring problem, however.

A quick search revealed some that claimed to be “WiFi”, but I’ll leave you to identify models and specifications as I went no further than the Google results page.

IIRC, most of the systems are using Zigbee: you would need to find a Zigbee gateway that you could control, and find out how to control the valves themselves (which will be fun if they’re not “open”, as the system generally uses lots of encryption keys to add some security). Zigbee is a fairly well structured protocol, from what I remember, with standard command blocks for things like this – but how much documentation you could find on it if you don’t have development access to it is another thing.

I’ve written a complete control system for heating and hot water, including controlling 12 TRVs. They are the Max Basic valves, and the interface is a MaxCube.

However, knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t recommend the Max stuff to anybody. Very occasionally, for no discernible reason, one or another of the Max items seems to lose its marbles, often gradually, although a power cycle (be it one valve by taking its batteries out, or the cube by removing its mains) completely cures it until the next time.

I went for the Max stuff because the protocol had been sufficiently reverse engineered to make it possible.

I believe more than one radio TRV system has OpenHab bindings. OpenHab is pretty popular. However, I always found it a struggle to get what I wanted through any of its GUIs. If you get to the stage of wanting something different to happen for one day (you’re going out somewhere) or a few days (you’re off on holiday), you may find it’s excruciatingly difficult, and the Wife Acceptance Factor will be nil unless she’s very techie too.

An interesting question is whether you can come up with a better GUI yourself in RISC OS – preferably with a good WAF – and control OpenHab via JSON (at least I think it’s JSON – it’s a long time ago). I did it, but the lure of a completely home brewed control system was too strong.

The actuator featured in this video appears to be compatible with radiator valves.

Thank you for your time, but I think those are for underfloor heating. A different fit.

EDIT: but at less than £15, I have ordered one just to make sure

I wouldn’t recommend the Max stuff to anybody.

I may yet settle for additional zone valves under the floor.

An interesting question is whether you can come up with a better GUI yourself in RISC OS

Almost certainly not. But I am happy to tinker.

but at less than £15, I have ordered one just to make sure.

It arrived today and it does not fit. Looks like a nice unit though and rapid delivery. I will have a closer look at their site to see what else they have.

I am also looking at adapters too fit my new 30mm actuator onto the existing 28mm Drayton valves.

Edit: further research looks encouraging, so adapter ordered.

One of my RO home atomation projects…

Do you know Thomas Milius !HomeCtrl ?

Yes, I was aware of it. I was not keen because it does not appear to have a web interface. The programming is not the problem I have. The problem is the hardware for controlling the radiators.

But, I will have another look at it. Thank you.

Is there any sort of local ethernet to Zigbee/Z-Wave gateway you could use? I guess a Pi and a USB stick would also do that, but you’d need to something yourself.

When I last looked a lot of them seemed to be cloud based which I really don’t want.

a lot of them seemed to be cloud based which I really don’t want.

I certainly do not want any cloud. I don’t see how I could use any of the Zigbee stuff

I’m not sure that what you’re asking for really exists, or (if it did) it would be the best way to meet your needs. Or maybe I haven’t understood your needs well enough.

It seems to me that manufacturers mostly produce cloud-based systems, and they assume that users will be happy with that. Most people are’t sufficiently techically au fait to understand the downsides. One major downside is that occasionally a manufacturer will disappear and therefore your entire system is permanently bricked. Also all manufacturers occasionally have service outages.

I think you can get at least one system that doesn’t need a cloud, but its local controller assumes just one room – this may not be versatile enough for your needs.

You need proportional control for a TRV – fully open or fully shut won’t give you comfortable control.

The Max valves I have would be great apart from the loss of marbles every few weeks. Each TRV is a control system in its own right, displays its setting locally, signals back its opening percentage, and can be set locally too.

I’ve just seen what looks like identical valves at Screwfix: Cassellie eq-3. The Max stuff is made by eq-3. However, if you use them, you have three choices that I’m aware (to varying extents) of:

1 Use their controller, which wants internet access for time sync but AFAIK isn’t cloud based. I’m not familiar with their controller, I’ve only read a little about it, so don’t take my words as gospel.

2 Use OpenHAB, either directly or with your own GUI telling OpenHAB what to do.

3 Write your own control system, using the reversed engineered protocol information that’s out there on the internet. That’s what I did, but it’s a lot of software if you want a full feature set. I did break it up into modular apps: RelayLink to control the relays for the circuit valves and boiler, MaxLink as the interface between Ethernet and the valves, HeatControl as the GUI, and HomeAutoGW as the web interface and for voice control.

You seem to be doing some of the programming yourself, so I recommend looking at OpenHAB and maybe talking to their community even if you don’t end up using OpenHAB.

Another thing: you really don’t want to be implementing the control loop for an individual radiator, unless you have studied control engineering. With a big transport delay and a big thermal capacity, it’s asking for instability.

You seem to be doing some of the programming yourself, so I recommend looking at OpenHAB and maybe talking to their community even if you don’t end up using OpenHAB.

It seems as if OpenHAB supports Zigbee, so that might well be the way to go – if only for inspiration. There’s a list of Zigbee coordinators there, which you’ll need to bridge onto the network, and the page even mentions it being known to work with a “Eurotronic Spirit Thermostat”, so it seems that there’s a precedent.

If you don’t want to use OpenHAB, you may at least be able to reverse engineer the appropriate bindings.

I’d say people should worry about things like security exploits involving ZigBee, but then again – RISC OS

I’d say people should worry about things like security exploits involving ZigBee

Better not get a pair of smart meters, then… :-)

Thank you all for your contributions.

I’m not sure that what you’re asking for really exists

I am now fairly sure that Internet Protocol valves I originally asked for do not exist. But equally I am now fairly confident that I can turn indidual radiators on and off with the 240 volt actuators discussed above. (My 28mm/30mm thread size adaptors arrive tomorrow morning)

One major downside is that occasionally a manufacturer will disappear and therefore your entire system is permanently bricked.

I now know that there are many manufactures of the actuators.

You need proportional control for a TRV – fully open or fully shut won’t give you comfortable control.

Maybe, we are happy with the comfort control provided by simple on/off. My system has been running for a while now switching the whole boiler on/off on the basis of the IP thermometer in the lounge. The IP thermometers report to a tenth of one degree. This has kept the lounge comfortable (maybe, at the expense of eratic temperatures for the rest of the house!) Further testing as winter approaches will be interesting.

You seem to be doing some of the programming yourself, so I recommend looking at OpenHAB and maybe talking to their community even if you don’t end up using OpenHAB.

I have kept the programming to a mimimum by letting a web server (WebJames) perform all of the switching (of Energenie switches) with a few simple CGI scripts and using a simple browser (Netsurf) to deal with the user interface. No need to write s/w to deal with RO windows. One simple task, with no UI or configuration, provides the clock tick to keep everything running.

I’ve just seen what looks like identical valves at Screwfix: Cassellie eq-3

I will follow that one up. But, tomorrow will see two, perhaps three, on/off actuators installed in the lounge, dining room and hallway to work with the existing IP thermometers.

I’d say people should worry about things like security exploits involving ZigBee

I will not be using any cloud based system and this particular WebJames can not (yet) be seen from the internet. But my experience with other WebJames projects is that we do not need to worry even using standard ports which I am not.

voice control

Maybe. but that would be a whole new project for long winter nights in lockdown.

Better not get a pair of smart meters, then… :-)

The meters (and one did get converted) are in an outward facing cupboard. So any hackers wishing to know how much electricity I’ve used also have the option of opening the simplistic latch and reading the meter. For gas, they must use the manual procedure.

Of course to hack the smart meter they need to hang around close to it and people who hang around near school¹ gates get a reputation…

¹ Upside: there’s a lot of attention on the immediate area, downside: The little ones don’t seem to have working legs and need driving to and from the door so the dead end road gets busy several times a day.

For those interested in an integration solution for various SmartHome standards like EnOcean (fancy energy-harvesting stuff, i.e. IoT without batteries), ZigBee, Z-Wave, Google Nest and Apple HomeKit, there is a cool Raspberry Pi based product available in Germany: http://enocean-gateway.eu/en/

I have the prototype at home, but never got around tinkering with it…some old friends from University are behind that project. Not sure how far the project is currently progressed beyond the EnOcean support which was already very complete in 2017/2018.

But, tomorrow will see two, perhaps three, on/off actuators installed in the lounge, dining room and hallway.

That turned out be very optimistic thinking. I now have three different makes of actuators and none of them will work with our existing Drayton radiator valves. There is simply too much pressure needed to close the Drayton valves.

So back to the drawing board. I will re-read all of this topic and do a lot more research. Thank you all for your contributions.