Property is setup with 32 underfloor heating zone manage through 6 manifold in total scattered in different locations throughout the property. Each manifold have electrical zone valve to open/close hot water circulation through manifold and circulation pump to circulate water in its manifold to cope with heating demand and separate zone valve to allow water the go through this manifold.
Current Setup
Current setup is consist of Heatmiser UF1 zone controller with TRV-N wired temperature sensors to control individual zone with limited central control and no web interface of any kind to access or check status of any zone from any smart device.
Plan
Utilise exiting electric wires, zone controller where possible to reduce electrical waste and keep replacement cost low but at same time commission PiHome Smart Heating to control all aspect of heating and give user control over all 32 underfloor heating zone on all 6 manifold.
Action
All room thermostats are decommissioned from system but leave them on the wall to display temperature and replaced with PiHome Temperature sensors to take temperature readings and send to PiHome over 2.4Ghz wireless network. exiting Heatmiser UF1 Zone controllers are still in good condition and can be used to with PiHome Zone Controller acting as trigger for any zone, by doing this we are utilising exiting zone controller with all the wiring in place.
Outcome
Images of Zone Manifolds, PiHome Controller, Repeater,
PiHome Zone Controler
PiHome repeater
PiHome repeater
Checkout PiHome Shop for all available options for your Smart Heating needs.
5 comments
That’s something similar to what I’m attempting to use Pihome for. I’ve configured a couple of Arduinos for serial gateway via RS485 to a zone controller with 8 outputs and a bunch of DS18B20 sensors on one-wire. MYSController (on a PC) can read the temps and toggle the outputs. Pihome just lists my “RS485 Zone Controller” under the “Node Alerts” tab, but doesn’t report any Node or Sensor. Where do I go from here?
Hi Dave,
i never tried RS485 with mysensors, are you using some custom python script to communicate with your RS485 sensors? in wireless nodes discover process happens when nodes power one and sends all the information to gateway and then pihome process that incoming messages.
but i m not sure how RS485 nodes will report to gateway, but you can always add nodes manually in nodes table.
All it took to make the “Temperature Sensor” example from mysensors work with Pihome (after replacing wireless with “MY_RS485”) was to add “#define MY_NODE_ID 20”. Once I’d done that, Pihome displays that temperature right on the main page (and updated “Last Seen” for node 20 under “Sensors”) .
So I need to edit the “nodes table” at “phpmyadmin/sql.php?db=pihome&table=nodes” and then maybe “zone” and “zone_controllers” and “zone_sensors”?
By the way, any time I browse one of those tables in phpMyAdmin I get this warning: “Warning in ./libraries/sql.lib.php#613
count(): Parameter must be an array or an object that implements Countable”.
Thanks for your help!
Hi Dave,
what if you try to change node id to something else lets say 45 then? i have no idea how RS485 nodes present to gateway,
on phpmyadmin error i will update the img file later in the evening with latest PiHome software as well.
Thanks for your help; I installed the new image (twice) and found my mistake: wrong baud rate to the gateway. Now, three temperatures are being displayed (and updating) from two RS485 nodes. Next step: turn those nodes into zone controllers and get them off the breadboard.