SmartThings Air Exchanger

Does anyone know of indoor/outdoor air exchangers that work with the ST air quality smart app? They have a feature that exchanges the air depending on the quality of indoor vs outdoor air, but I can’t seem to figure out where to find these for home use. I have only found commercial units for office buildings.

I would also like to find an air quality sensor that measures CO2 and hopefully has an edge driver. The Netatmo setup looks neat for indoor/outdoor, but I don’t know if it works with this app.

In the US, this is often combined with an ERV (energy recovery ventilator), and attached as an add-on to the air conditioning system. When used in this way, it becomes an “accessory“ typically controlled by a smart thermostat. For example, there are a number of different brands of ERVs that will work with an ecobee. The Honeywell T6 Pro series also offers ERV controls. But I believe the nest models do not. :thinking:

Were you looking for something completely standalone?

I don’t have central air where I live, so the air doesn’t move much. I was looking to get a standalone ERV. I have Honeywell T6 Zwave thermostats, but I’m not sure the ST service supports ERVs connected in that way. I’m guessing it has to be a Samsung ERV.

I also wanted to pair indoor CO2 sensors with it to automate the air exchange.

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As far as I know, the only current devices that work with the air service in the app are the Samsung branded ones.

Awair used to have an official integration for their sensors, but they decided not to create an edge Driver version. There are some community members who have come up with a custom integration for the Awair sensors, but they’ve specifically said those don’t work with the air service. Just as regular devices.

Also, historically, there have been some people who took a regular dumb ERV and wired it to a couple of relays to act as switch controls for it. It was a little clunky, but it did work if you’re interested in anything like that. That would give you a lot more Device candidates. This is really the same idea as hooking it up to a thermostat as an add-on device, so you can usually get good wiring diagrams.

Here’s one project report as an example. Obviously, all of the stuff about Groovy is out of date, but the basic concept and the wiring examples still hold.

So you’re really looking at some very different questions.

One) what devices work with the “air“ service in the smartthings app, and as far as I know, at this point, that’s only the Samsung branded devices

Two) what air quality sensors are available that work with smartthings? There are actually quite a few of these that already have edge drivers/new architecture integrations. As I mentioned, there’s a community built one for. Awair. And there are some other standalone devices that people have built integrations for, including a couple from Tuya.

Three) is anyone using ERVs with smartthings, and I think the answer is definitely yes, but they are mostly either wiring controls to dumb ERV’s so it looks like a set of switches, or are using smart thermostats so it typically looks like a fan.

There used to be an SmartThings integration for ecobee that could handle this, but that author has gone on to a different platform, and didn’t create edge Driver equivalents.

Hopefully other people who are doing this will chime in with useful details, I’m just noting that it’s definitely being done by some people.

As another example, Lennox has a wellregarded dumb ERV that can work with the iComfort thermostat which in turn has a lot of integrations, including Ifttt.

Four) are there any standalone smart ERVs that don’t work as part of an air conditioner setup that would work with smartthings? I don’t myself know of any, but maybe someone else does.

Five) any other options? Well, Hvac is one of the Matter device classes, so it’s entirely possible that within about a year there will be either a thermostat or a smart ERV which works with matter and can be brought into smartthings that way. But we aren’t there yet. :thinking:

Are there any of those approaches that you want to definitely rule out?

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Thanks for the thorough response. For # 2, I was looking for sensor that would work with the Air app and the ERV functionality. Sounds like the best short term answer is to get a standalone sensor, standalone relay and standalone ERV :slight_smile: I think I may wait as you mention though since HVAC is part of the Matter 1 spec. There is a good chance companies will jump at it.

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Netatmo It worked before edge thanks to a smartapp, now nothing works unfortunately

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The only devices that work with the Air Care app are Samsung devices as Samsung is using the “walled garden” approach to sell devices to those who want the functionality

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@TAustin has just added a new edge driver for the purpleair sensor. It still doesn’t work with the smartthings air service, but it gives you another alternative to awair and Tuya.

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Great to know. Even the sensor would be useful. Then I could at least create an automation to a normal relay.

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Here is another viable option for an air quality sensor. I personally use this sensor. It is cheap and remarkably accurate and works great with Wesley Menezes driver here. [ST Edge] Personal Tuya Devices - Generic EF00 Device

This sensor can be found on AliExpress. Now, this also doesn’t work with the Air Care app but as you said, a means to an end to use with automations.

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It looks like the Netatmo brand still exists under linked services. I would expect them to work if setup through netatmo and then linked back to ST. Some of their devices look pretty nice.

The official integration has been problematic from the beginning as both companies want the other company to create a full featured integration. There has been much discussion of this in the forum. I know @Diegocampy has been one of the people participating in those discussions.

So the linked services integration exists, but it’s not fullfeatured. It’s also limited to only a few devices. :thinking:

Here are some of the existing conversations about the brand:

Netatmo thermostat integration with the new Smartthings app
.
Edge Driver for Netatmo Weather Station? - #3 by Diegocampy

For those who have an Ifttt account, that integration has some triggers that the official smartthings integration does not, particularly for the WeatherStation, which would be relevant to this particular thread:

So this is another one of those situations where the first rule of home automation applies: “the model number matters.“

btw, Netatmo IS one of the companies participating in the smartthings early access matter program, so maybe we will see more integration in the future at least with the netatmo models that work with matter. But we will just have to wait and see.

The integration you see in SmartThings is only for the thermostat. by the way it’s bad, it updates the data every 6 hours, useless… for the weather station they just say they supply bees :man_shrugging:t2:. there will be no integration a matter for the sensors of the Weather station. so says the assistance. I really don’t know what they are going to do. I definitely won’t buy their other products… and thinks that I’m the creator and moderator of the Netarmo group on facebook in Italy :sweat_smile::speak_no_evil:

(Answer to @JDRoberts and @blueyetisoftware )

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That’s too bad. I think I am narrowing this down. I am convinced I need a ductless HRV or ERV system. The install seems pretty straight forward. Doesn’t seem to be much reason to automate most of them as they typically work on schedules. The ST services are so walled off, they are almost useless. Not sure why they even bothered to build them since they don’t work with anything in some markets.

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