Keen Smart Home Vents

another possibility is humidity. Any chance you have one of those humidity mister systems in your duct work? It senses when humidity is low and mists into the duct work to humidify the house. Maybe even just a room humidifier might create condensation.

No humidity mister to my knowledge. I have only owned the house a year or so though. I assume it would be pretty apparent if you have one of those installed?

All the Duracell batteries that leaked were made in China and had the same date of 06/2015.

Using isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs, I was able to get one of the vents working again. I cleaned up the corrosion. I haven’t tried the others yet. I was able to reset it and get it connected to the new hub. I will say the reset button is very inconveniently located. I cannot press it on the ones in the ceiling which means I have to uninstall them which is annoying. That should have been thought of more when designing.

Now I need an app that will close the vents in certain rooms when a certain temp is reached. I have a very pregnant wife who gets super hot right now and an infant room that runs cold so I am trying to control heating to their rooms.

I have CoRe installed, but couldn’t figure out how to make it work with the keen vents.

Hi,

For some zoned heating/cooling solutions with smart vents, please refer to my previous posts:

If you have very simple needs, there is a ‘free’ version of my smartapps called KeenVentManager:

Regards.

Hello, I am using the DTH and can get the vents to close, but then once closed I always get another alert that the vent is back open to 1 to 3% any way to get the vent to stay closed?

Hi @jasonrwise77, I’ve noticed this behavior with all my vents as well. If I set them to 75% a few minutes later it says 77%. I have no idea why, but the change isn’t a device handler issue, but something with the device. It’s adjusting by itself for some reason.

@yvesracine, have you seen this before?

Yes, it’s normal for the Keen Home vents to have a 3-5% difference with the level you’ve set.

I think that’s related to the firmware… There is nothing we can do on the ST end about it.

Regards.

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Thanks for the quick reply, that’s I thought.

All I did was clean up the battery compartment and put new batteries in. I’ve had several issues with these things. Ive had several of these vents where the magnets are coming off and I have had a few where the plastic part of the frame is not connected to the rest of the vent. These things are cool but aren’t made all that well. Ive only had these for a year and they are already falling apart.

You are not the only one that has reported these issues. My upstairs vents are in the ceiling so I believe that they would be ok there but where I really need them the vents are on the floor. I am concerned that they will not hold up because my family is rough on everything!

There’s a ton of slop in the vent linkage, and the position sensor is a simple potentiometer attached to this linkage, so you sent a command for pct opening xyz, then the unit responds with where it actually ended up.
It’s never going to be that accurate or repeatable given the mechanicals and analog sensor involved.

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Saw the same thing with those batteries. Anyone have a recommended battery to use these days in general for AA replacements ? More and more brands stating leak-proof but we know that doesn’t hold up in most case :slight_smile:

Since its been a while, just wondered which DTH people were using with these vents these day, any new ones, specific features etc ? Thanks

@johnconstantelo
I’ve been using your device type, and I need some assistance.
Sometimes, the vents show temps that are WAY too high…like 137* or something.
Any idea what that’s coming from?

Another question about these vents and their temp sensor…
In order to get the room to heat up to x-degrees, the system has to push air that’s MUCH hotter than that to get it there (likewise when cooling; it pushes air that’s MUCH cooler than the setpoint).
So, since the readings will almost always be erratic like that, why do we care what temp a smart vent says it is anyway?

I don’t, and never have. When I initially wrote Kennect I spent a good solid week trying to make some intelligent use of the on board temp and pressure sensors, in my opinion they are worthless in helping control room temps or static loading. Others have different opinions on this which is fine by me.
Personally, I’m of the opinion that each room with a vent should have a temp sensor that’s been configured to report temp changes of .1 degree (most have 1 degree as the default), these temp sensors then report to whatever app you’re using to manage your vents.

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Hi @sgnihttrams,

On my side, since the Keen Home beta (in all my zoned Heating/Cooling smartapps), I do use the vent temps to check against some safeguards’ values. After some discussions with the main Keen Home Vent engineer, it’s one of the safeguards to be used to avoid any HVAC damage when closing too many vents (and that’s the only usage for the vent temps that makes sense).

Regards.

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Hi @sgnihttrams, like @Mike_Maxwell said, the temp is really useless as a standalone temperature device since it swings so much with whatever your thermostat mode you’re in. What @yvesracine said is also valid in my opinion.

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John, I would like to try you DTH for the vents, but the link says file not found, can you provide the link or the code?