Keen Smart Home Vents

External sensors. The temp at the vent is only usable to know that you’re blowing cold/hot air (hvac is working as expected maybe), but using it for any decision making to shut vents down is useless.

Thanks, that’s what I remember Mike saying, but was hoping that someone found a way to use them…

Hi, my smartapps use the vent temp sensor to check if the temp inside the vent is not too hot or too cold indicating that there are too many vents closed within a zone.

That’s it, I use an external temp sensor to get the actual room temperature as the vent temp sensor is affected by the airflow.

Regards.

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Yup, for sure they can tell you the furnace is running…

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Is there not a pressure sensor on the vent? I thought they measured backflow pressure to verify they weren’t closing to many vents…

See my earlier post here:

The pressure sensors are not really useful under the ST platform for the reasons explained below.

Continuing the discussion from Advice for using one of the compatible thermostats in a dual zone house?:

Continuing the discussion from Keen Smart Home Vents:

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Now that’s a good idea. I’ll have to add that to my to do list.

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If they put so much analytical work into their hub, then it sounds to me that is worth paying 40 bucks for the hub, just for safety purposes. And still control the vents via ST. Did anyone take their hub for a spin?

i just ordered my stuff with the hub. So will play with both once the arrive at the end of the month.

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The temps reported by my vents range from 110F to 127F, so it would be pretty much impossible to relate that to room temperature control…

I asked @NateKeenHome to clarify how the pressure protection worked and this was his response,

The Smart Vent has built-in temperature and pressure sensors that allow
them to track pressure in the system while simultaneously monitoring
your comfort preferences. If pressure exceeds between .5 and 1.2 iwc,
the Smart Vents will open enough to relieve it. We wrote a blog post on
this topic, which you can read here. Given that the sensors are in the Smart Vents themselves, using a SmartThings hub shouldn’t affect this particular feature.

So it sounds like they’re saying no hub required and that the logic is each vent itself. I’m not sure how that works, only having the one sensor and thus no relative differential, but I’m also not a HVAC guy. Just thought I’d share.

trust me, this logic does not exist in the vent.
the pressure sensor is capable of resolving changes as little as 75Pa, .5InWC = 124Pa, 1.2inWC is about 300Pa.
So in theory the raw sensor should be able to resolve these changes, however I continue to see normal changes within a room, and room to room on the same floor with the vents completely open that are within the range that’s we’re trying to track for excessive back pressure. So I ask again, how can the vent sensor readings be used to prevent back pressure when the readings with a vent being fully open can easily exceed the 125Pa that we’re trying to track?

Do you have any open discussions with them about how this is supposed to work, or are you just not worried about the lack of automated protection? I’d really like to get some vents but I worry I’ll do something stupid and cost more by shortening the life of my system and running inefficiently then the value of my marginally increased comfort.

I haven’t bothered discussing directly with them, as I doubt they are going to divulge how their algorithm works.
They do have an ST community account, they’ve posted here before, all I can presume is they don’t have anything to add to this discussion.
If you’re worried about ganking your system, get their hub, you can always toss it later and join the vents back with ST.
From my POV I haven’t done any automations with them yet as I’m still designing a smart app that will do something beyond simplistically slamming them shut when the room’s temp threshold has been exceeded.

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Hi Scott,

Based on my discussion with Keen Home, I’ve created several smartapps which implement some safeguards to avoid closing too many vents and check the temperature inside the vent (based on the vent’s temp sensor) to make sure it’s not too hot or cold.

If you need more explanations and use cases scenarios, please refer to

  1. http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=EcobeeSetZoneWithSchedule

Specially designed for ecobee thermostats (works with My Ecobee device only), smart vents, any ST connected temp & motion sensors.

The smartapp can not only control your vents’ airflow (based on some calculations to find the optimal setLevel inside a given zone), but also can average out your rooms’ temperature to offset your setpoints at your main thermostat (and much more).

It does basically the same thing as ecobees3’s follow me feature but with any connected ST temp and motion sensors. And, you can specify your own presence timeout in minutes for each room (as opposed to the ecobee3 which will detect your presence or absence only around 2 hours after as a general setting).

You can create multiple schedules and associate them to your ecobee climates/programs for your ultimate comfort during the week.

  1. http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=ScheduleTstatZones

For any ST connected thermostat(s), smart vents,and any ST connected temp & motion sensors
Same as ecobeeSetZoneWithSchedule, but works with Nest, Lyric, any z-wave or zigbee thermostat(s)

  1. http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=ScheduleRoomTempControl

For any ST connected thermostat(s), smart vents,and any ST connected temp & motion sensors.

This smartapp will just open/close your vents inside a given zone (which may include one or multiple rooms) based on some temp (cool and heat) thresholds.

The wiki describes different use case scenarios for each of these smartapps.

You can download them at my store;

http://www.maisonsecomatiq.com/#!store/tc3yr

Regards.

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…and use their hub as zigbee repeater, I might add. I ordered their hub today, so I’ll report back the hands on experience when I get it.

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I’ve got a pair simple but useful rules for the Vents.
Problem: I have a ceiling-mounted register in a bathroom. Lots of very hot airflow, but if you close the register enough to keep the room at a moderate temperature, none of it ever warms the cold, cold floor.

Solution: one rule uses the temp of the vent itself to trigger - when the vent cools off to 95F between heat cycles, it opens the vent to 100%, to ensure that when heating starts again, it will blast warm air down all the way to the floor, until…
The second rule: if the temp of a ST sensor in the room is below a threshold, the vent remains open 100%, until it hits the the threshold and closes to ~20%, to continue circulating warmed air while the heat is on. If the room is above the threshold, it leaves the vent wide open for 10 minutes anyway to warm the floor before closing to 20%.

This works reasonably well in responding to the bathroom door Open/Closed state, and it does get the floor comfortably warmer.

Yeah thanks Yves, My Ecobee Device still disconnects too much to integrate my thermostat with the vent. I appreciate the suggestion though. Even without the Ecobee/SmartThings cloud problems I’d prefer to stick with the native protection as advertised by the manufacturer, just wish I knew how (or more importantly if) it works. :smile: No biggie though, I can wait until the technical comparisons between Keen and Ecovent come out to see if they’re accomplishing the claim of automated safety features.

@SBDOBRESCU, sounds great looking forward to your take on it!

I finally have begun working on a Keen vent app.
The app is zone centric, minimally each zone consists of one or more vents, and one temperature sensor other than the sensor in the vent.
Each zone has configuration settings for an offset (± from) your main thermostat set point, this becomes the local set point, minimum vent opening and maximum vent opening are also included.
The control algorithm is currently very simple.
Your main thermostat calls for heat, each zone responds by looking at it’s local set point, if not met, open the vent to the max setting.
Once the local set point is met, the vent closes to the min value for that zone.
As I move though this development process I expect to include the following additional features
-Optional inactivity set backs via triggered switches, contacts and or motion in-activity
-Some sort of safety too many vents closed thingy, be that by pressure, temperature, whatever I can create a deterministic algorithm for.
-zone activity logging to the parent app main page

It’s too soon to release publically, but if a few of you are interested in playing along with me while this app is being developed, please PM me if interested or with questions.
There will likely be a release every day or so while these features, and probably others are implemented.

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Sign me up. I have been using rule machine but want to have the room temp control calls for heat or cool