Danfoss Ally products with ZHA and BT

[ww-audio]

Hi all
Would like to share my experience. First: It works perfect. Second: Yes, it took me some time.
Well, Danfoss Ally eTRV's with Danfoss Roomsensors and Aqara Window Sensors in every (9) room. No Danfoss API.

In the beginning BT's failed the whole time until I noticed (took me some months) that it is a network problem. So I installed some repeaters ---- no more problems since. Settings are hybrid and AI and Met.no, works like a champ. But you definitely need the roomsensors.

I noticed that the mesh needs quite a lot of time to build up perfectly (up to weeks). So do not loose your temper if something does not work perfect within the first seconds.

I tried Sonoff and Aqara eTRV's, the Danfoss are quiet (my wife disagrees), they sound like a pigeon outside :-)

Good luck and cheers
Werner
PS: I'm unfortunately not paid by Danfoss :-)

[radical-squared]

Great to hear you've got it working! I'm getting increasingly frustrated with my zbt-1/zha/ally/bt setup as my radiators are cold while the room temperature measured by room sensors are two degrees lower than target temperatures. Could you please share settings of your eTRVs?

[wtom]

I also tested a lot with the Danfoss, to the point where I sent back all of them except of one (to keep testing with it). I wouldn't recommend the Danfoss or Popp. I never got satisfying results with them and they are expensive.

I always wanted TRVs where I can set the valve position myself, and switched now to the Sonoff TRVZB.

[wtom]

If you have two Danfoss in one room you also need an extra automation to share the load mean.
This is what I used.

alias: Wohnzimmer Heizung - Load Mean
description: ""
triggers:
  - trigger: state
    entity_id:
      - sensor.wohnzimmer_heizung_load_estimate
      - sensor.wohnzimmer_heizung_erker_load_estimate
    for:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 0
      seconds: 2
conditions: []
actions:
  - action: number.set_value
    metadata: {}
    data:
      value: >-
        {{ (float(states('sensor.wohnzimmer_heizung_load_estimate')) +
        float(states('sensor.wohnzimmer_heizung_erker_load_estimate'))) / 2 |
        round }}
    target:
      entity_id:
        - number.wohnzimmer_heizung_load_room_mean
        - number.wohnzimmer_heizung_erker_load_room_mean
mode: single

[zolakt]

Great... I read some good reviews and thought I was for sure upgrading over the Tuya junk...

I don't even know what "load mean" is. Why do I need to do that?

I don't need anything fancy. Neither of them controls the heating or the flow, and they are on vastly different sized radiators, so I don't need the radiators to have the exact same temperature. They just need to heat the room without underheating or overshooting. It's not a huge room either.

And yeah, they are expensive, but there was a good black Friday deal, and I couldn't help myself :)

[radical-squared]

I figured out most of the settings and it turned out Ally works very well if configured properly. I then moved on to install Ally (TRVs, sensors and boiler relay) in my entire house. If you're using an external temperature sensor (which is generally a good idea) then you need to supply the temperature readout to the corresponding TRV with an automation every couple of minutes. Then there's the average load that needs to be supplied to TRVs in rooms with multiple TRVs. If that sounds complicated I'd use the Ally bridge that does it all automatically. In Home Assistant I use Better Thermostat as a wrapper for the TRV with an external temperature sensor as then the correct ambient temperature is displayed in the entity. Hope that helps!

[zolakt]

Thanks for the suggestion. I kind of get what you are doing, but I don't fully understand how that plays along with BT. First off, I'm not using their bridge or boiler relay. I want this fully local in ZHA, not through some cloud bridge. My system is different than yours. My TRVs don't drive the heating. I have a Vaillant boiler with their central thermostat, which does the flow modulation. That is the only thing driving the heating directly. TRVs are there just to open/close radiators on a schedule, and to open/close the radiators when the target is reached. When a TRV needs to heat, and the central thermostat doesn't need to, I cheat the central thermostat to a higher target temperature until the TRV reaches it's target, and then revert the central thermostat back to it's default. Although I rarely use that honestly, and just for a few selected radiators.

Back to what I don't understand in your setup:

1. basically you are doing the sync with the external sensor manually, not through BT. So how do you set this up in BT? You can only choose between "Target Temperature Based"/"Offset based"/"Hybrid". There is no "no sync" option. Ok, the dropdown after that has options "Normal"/"Aggresive"/"AI Based"/"No calibration"... If I set that to "No calibration" does that fully stop the calibration regardless of what I selected Temperature Based/Offset based/ Hybrid?
2. I still don't get this average load thing. What is that, why do I even need to set this up? How to figure out what values I need to set? There is a "Load room mean" input entity in ZHA, and it's set to -8000 by default. Have no clue what this is. There is also a boolean "Use load balancing" input. No clue what that is either or what should I set it to
3. if you are using BT just as a wrapper to show the ambient temperature in the same entity, and aren't using any of it's calibration options, why use BT at all? Couldn't you get the same thing with a generic thermostat? In my case it would still make sense to use BT, since I want to smash 2 TRVs into the same entity, but I'm just wondering, if you have a single TRV in some room, why drag this through BT at all?

[radical-squared]

BT and temperature syncing within Ally are two separate things. When the radiator and TRV is covered, the TRV's internal temperature sensor tend to show much higher temperature than the room’s ambient temperature. You need to feed the TRV with the external temperature sensor value so that it knows what the room temperature is and adjusts the valves accordingly. Even having fed the TRV with the ambient temperature, the corresponding climate entity in Home Assistant shows readout of the internal temperature sensor. That’s why the BT wrapper comes in handy. No calibration is necessary on the BT side. Just a wrapper to have climate entity showing proper temperature. There are automation blueprints available for both temperature syncing, load balancing, time setup etc. I’m sure you’ll able to find them.

[zolakt]

Ally TRV just uses the generic thermostat integration to make a climate entity. You can configure your own instance however you want, giving you the same result as you are doing with BT now https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/generic_thermostat/#full-yaml-configuration-example

[radical-squared]

Looking at the PI heating demand sensors, Ally TRVs use a more sophisticated valve control algorithm than the simple on/off heating switch of the generic thermostat you’re suggesting. The BT/Ally combination works very reliably in my case — the modulation is smooth and stable.

If you’re happy with the on/off behaviour of a generic thermostat, then hey — whatever gets the room warm. 😉

[zolakt]

Honestly, I'm loosing your point constantly. Either it's BT controlling the valve or it's the valve itself. If you sync temperatures and do load balancing etc manually, BT has nothing to do with it.

You said you are just using it as a wrapper, so you see the external sensor in the same climate entity. And now you are talking about modulation...

Generic thermostat has nothing to do with on/off or modulation. It won't magically change how the valve behaves on it's own. It's just a template/helper entity built from existing entities, the same as the climate entity created by BT.

The point of BT is that it also provides control/calibration as well. But from what I understood you are not using that, and doing it directly on the TRV with automations. Honestly, still not really following how you configured BT

[radical-squared]

Did my best to explain. Hopefully others will benefit.

[wtom]

@zolakt i also didn't understand how the config is.

[zolakt]

I've been doing some testing, without BT or any automations. Just enabled external sensor and messing with the current and the target temperature manually.

This thing just seems plain awful. I don't see how can this be even barely functional. I mounted it on a spare valve and blowing air into it. I set the target to 23C and ambient to 20C. It's open but not fully. I decrease ambient to 22.5C and it pretty much closes completely. It shows "pi heating demand" as 7%, but basically no air gets through. That is way too soon, no way that it will reach target just from the residual heat. Maybe if you have extremely hot flow... I don't. The only time it opens fully is if the difference in temperatures is 5C or more, basically if you crack it to around 30C. Everything bellow that, it's opens 50% at best. It will take forever to heat a room like this, and then it will close and never reach the target...

Maybe I'm just stupid to configure this, or it doesn't fit my system. I have low temperature heating with oversized radiators. Also, I have M28 Hertz valves, so I 3D printed a M28 to M30 thread, that fits into the original M30 adapter, and I had to make a small pin extension as well. Maybe it doesn't adapt to this valve properly, even though it can fully open and close it.

What a waste of money... I got it more than 50% off and still overpaid... Need to see if I can return it, otherwise it's going in the garbage bin. The Tuya junk looks like an engineering marvel compared to this

[wtom]

Yes, same experience. I also have mostly very big radiators and very low flow temperatures.

Test with one Sonoff TRVZB and the new MPC calibration, that I've implemented. That keeps the temperature spot on. Learns over time and does a prediction for the future and adjusts the valve position to hold the temperature.

[zolakt]

Thanks for the suggestion, that will be my next buy for sure. Wish I knew sooner :) Need to see if I can send back the Danfoss first.

Even though I'm reconsidering if I need an adjustable valve at all, or I'm better off with just on/off. In the meanwhile, I managed to get my old Tuyas working perfectly with the config suggested here.

I don't have problems with limited flow, and with low flow temperatures I don't really have problems with overheating either. So it's mostly fine for me if they are just 100% open most of the time. The one use case where I would actually want explicit percentage control is that I'd like to set some radiators, that are rarely used, to 5% open, just so the water circulates, waste doesn't accumulate as much and air bubbles go back to the boiler. Can something like that be done with the Sonoff and BT? I guess it would need to be some separate idle/eco mode. Otherwise, when I want real heating BT does it thing, as normal.