Proabably, as most of newbies I’ve completely messed topic creation. so sorry.
Right, now to the situation.
Im from UK, but english isn’t my main language. I’m looking into starting to build z wave controlled home, Smart things hub seems good enough although i would like something less cloud dependant like Hubitat.
My first project I’m researching is in home heating. I do understand trv (smart radiator valve) side of things and there is plenty of choices. Hub does all the thinking and controlling while connected (or listening) to all the devices. And it seems that ST hub supports many devices including trv’s. But the problem I’m having is boiler controlling side. It seems like there is only those Secure thermostats and boiler receivers witch are favoring Vera hubs. After some reading, seems like people also having a lot of trouble connecting ST to Secure systems. And only way is to do some changing in software. Am i not finding something or is the market choices is that bad?All i need to find is zwave combi boiler controller witch would connect to ST Hub for zone controlled heating without to much of the trouble. Right now i have simple Salus programmable 5/7 day room thermostat (Rt501rf(tx)).
Plus im planning on creating seperate wifi and ethernet network for house controll while im at home (don’t care about any away from home stuff) there would be almost no access to internet except sometimes i would to update software. Would this be a issue with ST since it does part of its “thinking” on cloud?
I know this is a lot of reading and it might be hard to understand, sorry and thank you in advance for those who had enough patience to go through it.
Yes, this would be a problem. Smartthings is primarily a cloud-based system. Without the cloud, you cannot even use the app even if your phone is on the same Wi-Fi as your hub. The phone always talks to the cloud, then the cloud talks to the hub.
Without the Internet, you cannot change modes, you cannot arm or disarm the security features, you cannot use the app to control your devices, and any device using custom code will not work.
I’ll let others comment on what boiler relays will work well with smart things when the cloud is available, but for your situation, you are probably better off with a system which is not cloud dependent for daily operations. ( although it might require Internet access for initial set up.) That would include vera, hubitat, Homeseer, homey, Apple Homekit, Indigo, and quite a few others.
Smartthings didn’t have to design their system to be so cloud dependent, but they did.
https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/209979766-Local-processing
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Ok. that wont work then. I wonder what people do if their connection goes down for a day or two…
Go back to plan B. See the community FAQ:
How to: Planning for Outages
Went through that topic about outages… If to be honest. it seems that i might delay smart home bit for now, or at least until something better appears, just too many flaws in smart home enviroment for my eyes. As for currently existing hubs. I think i might go for hubitat after all . It’s harder way to start smart home but its doesnt brake the bank and I’d rather bang my head to the wall couple of times while setting it up and later have peace of mind.
Thanks for the help, ill be checking in in this topic just to see if there is any ideas in fixing this lack of good boiler receivers.
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