Z-Wave Danfoss thermostats

[lwillerton]

Hi

I have not found the danfoss thermostats to be the best z-wave device ever and I have not programmed any responces in comfort. However, I want to start looking in to this now.

Currently I use the main controller vera lite to set temprature levels at different points of the day e.g wake up, day time, evening and night time.

Vera seems to handle this ok, but I believe that when a change to value is sent from vera to the valves it hogges the network for a while due the the fact the danfross valves are not bidirectional and only check periodically for changes. I suspect the logic is to save batteries.

So before I start to look at programing in comfort and clogging up the z-wave network  I just wanted to know if anyone else had any luck sending commands to the danfoss devices via comfort and what (if anything) is the effect on the z-wave network.

My Scope

If the alarm is in away mode the valves are set to a lower value then if the security system is off or day mode.

If we are in a room for a set period it turns up the levels in that room while turning down the valves in other rooms.

If you have any suggested code then please share.

Regards

Lee


 

[juwi_uk]

Lee
I see Vesternet are advertising these new ones;  Are these the ones you are using or the previous generation?
http://www.vesternet.com/z-wave-danfoss-...thermostat
The things seem pretty expensive though to invest in for every rad.
Julian
 
 
 

[lwillerton]

Hi Julian,
I got the same email 
I have the previous model £48..... you would have thought they would have developed a bi-directional unit this time but no which os very disappointing.
At present I am using vera to run a few programs on 3 stats to in lounge one in bedroom all my other rooms are kept low unless someone turns the manual valves up. 
morning  bed 22 lounge 16
work bed and lounge 16
return bed 18 lounge 22
you get the idea.
I have not move in to programming comfort yet, but what I would like to do is if the alarm is still set at away mode then the temp is reduced, or if I walk into a room for more than a few  minutes the temp is turned up. I am sure the programming will be easy just need the time to figure out the logic. Only thing that I an not sure about is how comfort will manage the valves as they only wake up occasionally to check for changes.
That said the changes seem to work well from vera. 
I want to compare the number gas units used december - march last year in comparison to this year. If there has been a reduction then I will consider buying more, but the biggest savings for us was always going to be the 2 rooms we have done.
By next winter I will have control4 working now there is a driver or will purchase the comfort Heatmiser UCM as it will be easier to control heat at the boiler and then do a little zone work with the stats. Basically it doesn\'t matter if the rad valves change value from 16 - 22 if the central Heatmiser stat is off.
All the best 
Lee 

[ident]

We have not used this Danfoss but if it is most asleep and wakes up occasionally then Comfort may not be able to send commands to it

[juwi_uk]

Presumably because it is battery powered?

[gaynorc]

I am interested in using the Z-Wave Danfoss Living Connect Radiator Thermostat in combination with my Comfort system.  However having read the above am somewhat confused as to whether the two could be combined.
The manual for the Danfoss device is available from a supplier at http://www.vesternet.com/z-wave-danfoss-...thermostat# .
It seems to me that the Danfos device attempts to communicate with a permanenlty listening controller at (default) 5 minutes.  Surely Comfort would detect this and enable an appropriate response?
These are the relevant extracts from the manual:
1) \"living connect®\" [=Danfos Device] will turn on radio communication for short periods of time at specific intervals in order to communicate with its controller, .... When radio communication is not needed by living connect® it will turn the radio off to conserve battery life.
2) The nodeID set in the WAKE_UP_INTERVAL_SET command must be for a permanently listening device which reponds to the commands sent from living connect®. This means PC\'s with USB sticks will only work if the PC is never turned off. If the controller is turned off for extended periodes,living  connect® will use the batteries too fast.

3) To preserve battery - Wake_Up_intervals should not be set to less than 5 min. Increasing the time between intervals will increase battery life but can reduce user satisfaction due to long reaction times.

[ident]

Z-Wave is actually quite complex to implement
It has many different Devices Classes each with Command Classes which must be implemented by the receiving device
The danfoss documentation for Living Connect lists the command classes
http://heating.danfoss.com/PCMPDF/Z_wave...amcent.pdf

In order to know that the device has woken up, the Wake Up class must be implemented
Then there is the Setpoint class which allows the setpoint to be read and changed

But I dont see any command class for actually sending the temperature
How is it supposed to work?

[ident]

The information can be found at http://www.vesternet.com/z-wave-danfoss-...thermostat

It is no use for you as this does not send its temperature out