Hi all,
I’ve been playing around with home automation for a while now because I believe that the UK central heating systems are wasting a lot of energy - and I hate wasting energy.
The main issue that I have is that central heating systems heat the whole house and usually that is unnecessary. Rooms are heated that are not occupied - e.g. bedrooms.
Yes there are thermostatic radiator valves which can limit the temperature but these are manual and nobody goes around the house altering these as required.
There is also the Nest - which just controls the boiler and again heats rooms that are not required.
What I was looking for was a smart system that would only heat the rooms that were occupied.
There are a few options to do this in the UK - evohome, heat genius, etc. but they all require ‘their’ system to be used rather than an ‘open’ system which I prefer for obvious reasons.
So I headed for Smartthings which was z-wave compatible amongst other protocols.
Unfortunately the z-wave TRV’s and central heating controllers that I have been experimenting with are not recognised by the smartthings version of z-wave.
So I am stuck. Currently there are no wireless trv’s that work with smartthings.
However I do have a raspberry pi and a razberry z-wave daughter board that I know does work with my z-wave TRV’s (I have a Stella Z and a Danfoss).
Would it be possible to have my PI and Razberry setup connected to my smartthings so that I could control my TRV’s?
I would really appreciate any help on this because on a personal level, my poor wife is so fed up of me spending money on gadgets that will save us money!
On a more altruistic note - if we can get this working in the UK, it will save a massive amount of wasted energy.
Pete.