Is anyone putting multisensors in every room, and gathering/using mean data from it all?

I have this fantasy of whole-house monitoring where there’s a multisensor in every room gathering temperature, light, humidity, etc data. The thermostat only kicks in to maintain the temperature of the whole house by averaging the temperature between each sensor. Perhaps shades rise and fall, or vents open and close. Is anyone doing this? I want to bite the bullet and grab one of the Aeon Labs Multisensor 6’s for every room, but I don’t yet know all the possibilities.

Pretty much you can do exactly this. You can use Keen air vents to have the vents close when each room reaches ideal temp and keeps heating all other rooms until they reach that temp.

You can use CoRE to set it all up or if you get an ecobee you can use
[RELEASE] Initial Setup for Ecobee3, Smart-SI, EMS, Smart-02 thermostats - My Ecobee Device
And the smart apps he made that help make it a little easier to set up.
With those and the temp sensors you can automate the heating of the whole house and even heat specific rooms if no one has been in and room for a while (no reason to heat up guest room if not having guest for a while)
On top of that you can use

To keep all the data on a Google spreadsheet

Another consideration is that the Multisensor 6 can be hardwired with USB power so that it provides instantaneous measurements rather than only reporting when a sufficient change has occurred.

Creating a virtual thermostat is also possible with Nest using the Nest Manager.

I’ve been using Nest Manager for a few months now, and it works really well. Nest Manager also allows the integration of Nest Protect CO and fire detection with SmartThings.

Focusing the temperature to a room that is occupied would be better than tuning the house to an average home temperature. This is one of the integrated features of the Ecobee3, and part of why it became so popular. I haven’t tried to programatically replicate this functionality in SmartThings, but it should be possible.

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Hi,

Please note that I have more sophisticated zoned Heating/Cooling solutions here:

My solutions for ecobee are compatible with MyEcobee device only:

Regards.

Good gravy, this is some high tech stuff. There are 10 rooms in my house, not including 4 in the basement. Engineering and troubleshooting a smart-vent system could take me months. I think I’ll upgrade my 25 y/o HVAC unit first - then start looking at automation.

I’m 15 months in to mine. 15 rooms, 4 baths, 2 hallways, 2 patios, and landscape lighting. Plus a weather station and maybe irrigation control this summer. It’s a tool, it’s hobby, it’s an addiction. Once you get a project done you start looking for the next or how to improve or better utilize what you have.

Warm shaving cream on a cold morning is a great way to start your day.

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I use this, you will need a 24/7 server, I use a rashberry pi3

I currently have six Aeon Labs Multisensor 6 with two running on USB. Need 2 or 3 more to complete the house.

I get stuff like this

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In short, yes. The important thing to remember with the Aeon Labs Mutisensor is to calibrate it. It’s default readings will typically be a few degrees off. TBH, this applies to any temperature or light sensor.

I’m also using this:

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I’ve thought about these possibilities, but decided against them. First, it’s a lot of money for sensors… and then a lot more money for batteries. And in my case, pretty much for nought.

I have a two-zone setup. Downstairs is heat plus AC, upstairs AC only. During summertime, when the upstairs thermostat is triggered then clearly the whole upstairs needs cooling (due of course to blazing sun all across the roof). But that also has a duct into the living room and one into the downstairs exercise room, so it does most of the heavy lifting during summer. Very rarely does the downstairs AC go on.

During winter, the heating system does the entire house. For those times my wife is cold, she has a separate small ceramic heater in the bedroom. The exercise room heat vent is only open about 20%, to keep it cool for when we are in there. The office is also kept nice and cool.

I’ve gone over possibilities for further automation, but they just don’t seem worth the effort since we already have more-or-less maximized the efficiency of our system.

A 4-in1 multi sensor like the Zooz that measure motion, temperature, moisture and light are really great for this because it covers:

Motion automations
Lux automation
Temperature control and automation
Humidity control and automation

All of this in a $30 Sensor that will last 6 months on one battery, or hack it to hardware it.

I have 8 Ecobee Sensors and know that they have helped save a ton of cash. However, if I was to do it again, the OPs idea is spot on.

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do any of you have smartthings temp sensors in your ecosystem at home? if so why don’t you use those ? or can you only use those by not using ecobee3 features and having the logic sit in ST?

I think the big reason is the Multisensor 6 has a ton of different sensors for a marginal difference in price. The more types of sensors, the better… we’ll find a use for them eventually. If you build it, they will come.

How have you managed to get 6 months of battery life out of a Zooz 4-in-1 sensor?

I have installed one in my home and a few in a friend’s house. Even with low sensitivity and update frequency, the Zooz sensor uses about 10% battery per week! This works out to replacing batteries about every 2 months (I try not to let battery get below 20%).

Having burned through several sets of alkaline batteries, I’m trying the Great Lithium Battery Experiment. So far, it’s holding up well after almost 3 months, still reporting 100%. Using default settings of the sensor; not trying to particularly stress the batteries.

(Yes, this is an old thread–but I just thought I’d ask how it has turned out for you, assuming you’re still checking in here…)