I have been whatching these since they were anounced. So glad you did a video on them. Thank you.i hope shelly addresses the issues you talked about before release date. Would be nice of them Keep up the great videos.
I do like the interface and look of these compared to my current ones but as I am already setup and invested in honeywell evohome I wont be picking these up. Although I am glad there are more players in the market that target individual rooms / multiple zones compared to the overrated nest/hive systems that are quite simply... dumb, being only single zones.
very tempted although I have already put Tado's on half my rads. price is pretty much the same and as I have the nest thermostat, the same integration problems are there (easier once I have all the rads with smart TRVs though). I will have to get HA to force the nest to call for heat if a single room's temperature is too low but at the same time, shut off the TRVs on the other rads so that the heat is targeted at that room
I'm ordering it sure, been looking for this solution over wifi and local, hope it will solve my problem. Question, I will be using the link on the video to order them, should I use a code also while ordering? so you can get a sponsor, or is the link enough
I'm using the Tado's for the same project. Having them set up on the Tado app and integrated into HA flawlessy. Then in HA, i'm using Sonoff room temperature sensors for for adjusting the offset on the Tado Valves - works flawlessly. Other automation i'm using is the Sonoff window sensors - when the windows is open, Tado valves OFF. Closed windows, Tado Auto as per schedule.
Genius! What a fantastic workaround. The only reason I hadn't invested in Tado TRVs is that I don't trust a fixed offset and they can't be controlled via a separate temperature sensor. Thanks!
I've been using the cheap £7 electric trvs off AliExpress. They run off mains voltage so can be wired to a plug or sonoff basic etc. I have these all about the house and wired into an 8 way relay board attached to a Pi3 which has an ethernet connection. Definitely a bit of work to do and have it centralised but it's completely rock solid and I've had no issues and it's a tremendous saving.
Looks a well thought-out device and I'm liking the HA integration. I was wondering how quiet they are in operation?. are they likely to disturb your sleep if the are operating in you bedroom at night.? When you use a smart thermostat say for example a Nest controller, the room thermostat switches off the heating when the room gets to the temperature setting and the other radiators in the property can have thermostatic valves to control the individual rooms. My question is, if you fit these thermostatic valves, when all the rooms get to their set point what switches off the heating?
I can't answer for these particular valves, but I have a house full of Honeywell Evohome electronic TRVs. They make a noise and you can hear them, but it's not loud enough to disturb sleep for example (even for our kids who basically wake if you fart too loud).
They have both a "silent" and a "loud" mode and the noise they produce is dependent on which one they're operating in. Some valves need more force to actuate and for those the Shelly TRV will need the more powerful "loud" mode, that uses more power. But, either way, you can rest assured they won't wake up the dead. Also, they are compatible with Google Home, so you could probably make an automation that has the Nest turn off the heater, if all TRVs have reached their set temperatures. And one that has the Nest turn on the heater, if a TRV needs heat.
I have been using the Shelly TRV (and other Shelly products) for a while now and have 8 TRVs. They work FANTASTIC! The fact thta you don't need internet or even an app to configure or use these, is an absolute thumbs up for me. The inegrate great in Home Assistant and it's one of the very few products I woudl give a 5-star rating.
i'm using one for my single-pipe, low pressure steam radiator - it's working with a couple Danfoss adapters (vaccuum breaker, straight vent, 1/8" rad insert).
One thing that I think was missing - how do these actually interact with your heating system? you say you don't need a hub when buying these, but how does the boiler know to come on when one of these has turned on? I have a Drayton wiser system which was £265 with the hub and 5 TRVs, so it's definitely not the cheapest setup of them all
Thanks, I'd probably cover that in a separate video since there are a few different ways you could approach that depending on your setup. The Shellies are very flexible and can work with existing thermostats using automations through Home Assistant with a relay connected to the boiler (this is what I do) or the TRV's can work directly with a Shelly relay connected to your boiler so that they can talk to each other. Hope that helps £265 for 5 TRV's is more than the Shelly, the 4 pack from Shelly is 215 euros which is around £180, plus one more at full price is £230. So still cheaper (at least from what I can see). Also I might be looking at the wrong product but it looks like the 5 TRV Drayton is now £305-325 depending on your boiler so not sure if you picked them up before the explosion in price of all things tech.
@@EverythingSmartHome Don't forget the VAT on that 4 pack :P makes it 260 euros then, plus another 70 for the 5th, so 320 euros for all of them (definitely still a lot cheaper than something like the honeywell evohome system!). Thanks for explaining how they work with the boiler! Wanted to make sure someone wouldn't fall in to a trap of thinking these would work with an existing dumb install
The boiler senses the return temperature and if it's too high it just turns off, as there's no heating demand. The boiler has also an outside air temperature probe to turn on/off according to the global heating demand, as you set a comfort temperature for inside which the boiler expects the thermostats to keep. The pump is also a high power consumption item, and it is usually detecting how much flow there's really needed and turns higher/lower/off depending on that. Sometimes the pump's data is feed into the boiler as well.
@@EverythingSmartHome Keen to learn more about your solution with existing thermostats with a relay and home assistant automations. Looking forward to this video!
Nice, good that they’re fully local and no subscription or hub required. Personally with having a heat pump it’s not something I’m sure I would install as best practice is to run them all the time at a low temperature, and kitting the entire house out if you already have a lot of Wi-Fi devices like Shelly switches and relays is potentially filling up your Wi-Fi address range, but I like them
I've probably mentioned this elsewhere, but If you fancy a bit of DIY, use underfloor heating actuators, which co-incidentally fit on to a radiator trv mount (check the size, mine have always been M19) and cost about £12, a sonoff mini/basic, about £4, flashed with the firmware of your choice, esphome, espeasy, write yor own e.t.c, controlling the power to the actuator, and a DS18B20 temperature sensor (about 70p) connected to the aforementioned sonoff onna long lead and job done for £17. Yes, you need a mains supply near each actuator so definitely a downside, integration is under your control, and cost on the plus side.
I did exactly this, in terms or power use I think this Shelly may save money in the long run. I'm moving to a ne house and don't want wires everywhere there is a radiator. Also like the fact that each stores its own schedule
I really like the idea of these, I tried a pack of lightwave ones a few years ago but felt it was an all or nothing investment which at £65 (not £49) will get very pricey. So with that I wanted to make sure my investment was right, these seem to be the best so far. It would be interesting to see what kind of automation could be done in HA for whole house heating and heat zoning, but im guessing it may be a node red arena for now. Come on Shelly cough up a whole house worth for a full test.
Thanks for the video! I have been using Eurotronic zwave plus Spirit TRV's but they do cause problems from time to time, like not being able to switch them off, battery indication not working and so on. I control them with Home Assistant and specifically the HACS schedular card, which is excellent, since you can do the programming, set different temperatures, etc. I like the Shelly products very mucht, so I think I will switch to make it more reliable
I went with the Drayton Wiser. It is zigbee based and doesn't need the cloud to control it. I am able to schedule both central heating for individual rooms with their TRVs and hot water. To add has HA plugin through HACS.
Fantastic overview as always. However, whilst I understand the need for thermostatic Radiator valves, and I have them on my own radiators, if the valves are not working in unison with the room stat, there is nothing smart about them. They are just convenient and allow you to set room temps using an app or use your voice as part of a smart home. I believe whole house products from companies like Tado are more efficient and work in unison with the room stat and rad valves to heat and understand the whole house temperature . Thanks for the review.
Thanks, I understand what you are saying. You can also have a room stat too with shelly (or any other smart relay for that matter) by using one of their shelly relays. Home assistant can bridge them together quite easily, I use a Sonoff relay in my house with these now which gives.me all the functionality.
I went from Tado to these at the beginning of this year. Currently using 8 of them. They are working very well! With Tado I had the problem that the bridge could not reach all devices in my house, no matter where I placed it. With Shelly they simply connect using WiFi, so I don’t have this problem anymore. Also Tado does not work if Internet goes down, really annoying. Only downside is that you have to manage the main valve of your heating system yourself (something that Tado has built in). I did that using a Shelly Plus 1 and writing some automations in Node RED.
Ah I did not know that. I wasn’t using them with HomeKit, but with Home Assistant instead through the Tado integration. As Home Assistant is using the Tado api, this does not work without Internet.
@@sroebert I am sorry I wasn't clear about what I said, I was talking about the Homekit integration in Home Assistant. I too use the TADO integration for most of the control and the additional information available. The homekit integration is available as a backup.
Just what I've been holding out for. A little summer project with time to iron out the bugs before winter! Nice video. Can you mess up the rubrics cube for the next video and solve it for the following one!
This looked totally awesome. I've been trying to figure out how to move away from Nest for ages - stupid thing won't talk to HA consistently. Want to roll a custom heating and water solution with some relays on the boiler, SONOFF zigbee temperature sensors in each room, and locally controllable TRVs. That last part appears to be completely non-existent. I thought Shelley had come to the rescue with this, until you said that it only exposes temperature to HA, and not valve position. For my use case, this is completely useless until they add that feature. Thanks so much for the review though! Love your vids buddy.
I think the Shellies tick all the boxes you want, you can get access to the valve position by using MQTT for now, and I'm pretty hopeful that valve position will be added natively real soon! Thanks, really appreciate it!
Look nice, I like the local-only operation mode. One thing I don't get is how these are of any use without being combined with a smart thermostat to control the boiler? Surely if the boiler is not on, these just open the valves but there will be no warm water being circulated right? Or do normal boilers come on or turn off automatically based on change in the water flow? Also have been told you should not put them on EVERY radiator. Right now I have tado TRVs (combined with their thermostat) in every room except the bathrooms and the utility room (which is where my thermostat is). I was assuming if the TRV in the living room needed heating, it would open up the valve and instruct the thermostat to turn on the boiler, but maybe it doesn't work that way?
So glad there are more options coming to market. I've had a Honeywell Evohome system for maybe 6 years now and it's pretty solid, but the Home Assistant integration relies on a community reverse-engineering of the Honeywell app rather than manufacturer support.
Hi. I'm new to having radiators. I live in USA. This home has cast iron radiators all around the house. Would I be able to use these for zoned heating? Boiler/radiator heating systems are not popular here. Our HVAC guys ays these are the best if household members suffer from allergies. We do. So we want to keep the system, but I want to add zoned heating
i just got a load of direct 230v wax motor valve drivers for about 7euro a pop, plugged those into a regular wifi socket, or a sonoff. no batteries to change, and more important, no temperature sensors right next to the radiator. having a number of sensors dotted around the rooms, you can either make an average temp and control that, have a very local thermostat, or what i did, characterising the room response and calculating the energy needed from the boiler. asking the boiler can be done over OpenTherm that way you can have the boiler on for longer, or have it on a lower setting. both are more efficient. it also save you from having to heat the living room when you're always in the office or something similar. i really detest the assumption that having one thermostat in the living room makes, it's old school thinking that should have died a long time ago also, having these calculations also works for cooling and ventilation. I'm really hoping to build a house in the future that takes all this into account from the start, using a ground source heat pump, a pool for storing heat (and swimming), forced ventilation, vacuum tubes and a wood stove heat exchanger. current land prices make this unlikely in the near future though, so i settle with my current gas fired boiler.
Based on your video I've ordered 2 to replace my zigbee trv's that weren't stable enough for daily use. Installation and connection with HA went perfectly. However it seems that the "operating range" is very small. My old TRV's did about 30sec to open and close, you could also hear it closing as the resistance was building up. The shelly ones open and close in about 2 seconds which seems a bit too fast. I tried recalibrating but nothing changes. As you're using them for longer, could you give more info on that part? Thanks in advance!
These look ace, unfortunately, 4 months too late for us after investing in another smart heating system, maybe a couple can be used where the current system can’t reach, would be good to know how they cope over time in connectivity and what happens when the WiFi goes down, does it remember the schedule or not?
Using Homeatic IP, biggest mistake ever since I have only one radiator and one socket from this brand. Running Homeassistant on a rpi4 with xiaomi, ikea, wled,.. Devices without any problems. Guess next time I'll try the Shelly for sure. Appriciate your content! Greetings from Germany
Since you have a global audience, probably needs to be said that these are meant for the radiators common in Europe and the UK, systems that use hot water and use two loops, one supply and one return. In North America, we usually use steam systems that use a single loop with a single valve that supplies steam and provides a return for the condensate. In these systems, the valve cannot be throttled and must be fully open or fully closed. Intermediate positions will eventually lead to the valve failing and leaking. You can use adjustable vents on these radiators that change amount of steam drawn into it, but I haven't seen wireless ones yet.
So how do they connect to the boiler to switch it on and off when it needs or is your boiler constnatly on? If the TRV needs heat it should be able to turn your boiler on and if warm enough, turn it off otherwise there is no point to turning the temperature up or down on the TRV cause you will still be getting hear through the radiator. I use LIghtwave at the moment and it is not reliable and not local but it does runs on Home Assistant and I can use it with zones and have my calendar to alter the TRV's which the Call For Heat to the boiler
Sorry to be late to the party. The problem with these is that they don't "call for heat" - ie if the boiler and pump are off then opening the valves will achieve nothing. Far better are the Wiser valves from Drayton that work with a boiler controller. So when the Wiser valves call for heat, the boiler fires up. The Wiser valves communicate with the boiler controller via Zigbee, and the boiler controller comunicates with your router via wifi. Wiser have their own android app, and there is a Wiser integration for HA via HACS. It's a brilliant complete solution.
I used 30 euro ones from aliexpress with zigbee. They aren't perfect and a bit difficult to control with the buttons but work fine on HA. Battery's I'm now switching to rechargeable because they drain in approximately 6months
Was given task of smartening heating system at hotels I work at, after several weeks of research and testing and reviews including yours we went with over 100 Shelly TRVs across several hotels. However now am facing some issues that didn't come to light during testing. First issue is home assistant regularly struggles to update the target temperature, get a error about temperature attribute not available... Generally going to the ip address of the valve wakes it then homeassistant can pass the setpoint. I have set valves with static ips and enabled coiot. Weirdly it's not all valves and am yet to find a pattern to the issue. Any ideas? Before purchasing old saw positive shelly reviews, now changing search terms am concerned about the number of people reporting issues with multiple devices having poor connectivity and issues. Now am having to worry that have spent several thousands of pounds on devices that arnt working as expected.
so can these call for heat from the boiler or not ? I use the Honeywell evohome system integrated into HA via the Evohome RF integration an OpenTherm gateway connected to the boiler so total control over both the TRVs and the Boiler to maximize the potential savings if these can't control heat demand like others in the market (evohome, Tado, Dryton etc) then they would not be the first choice for a truly smart heating control system.
This is what I've been looking for. Definitely will be on my shopping list. Would love a second video of how to contol them working HA along with how the heating system knows too come on if only one of these registers that it needs to turn on. Thank you.
I used an ESPHome relay device in place of a central thermostat and just activated a switched live to the boiler thermostat input when required. Home Assistant looks after the automations.
@@EverythingSmartHome I’d love to see a video on setting this up. I’m after some TRVs, but not sure whether to buy a smart thermostat - as technically it’s not really needed??
How do these actually control your gas boiler? I have a Bulex high efficiency boiler and it uses open them. I've been told all boiler van also use a simple on/off bit not sure how this will impact the modulation. It can modulate in 5 steps. 35kw max.
Hi Lewis! I plan on installing one of these in my bedroom and I was wondering if its motor makes any noise and if so, how loud it gets. My room is almost dead silent and the valve is about 3 meters/10 feet away from my bed.
Hey Adam! No these are really pretty quiet, I was surprised! Although I guess it's subjective but IMO it's totally fine, and the longest sound it would make would be for like 3 seconds to go from fully closed to fully opened, doesn't take long!
are they indiot proof? I need the option to limit the max temp on the device. When pushing + , it should be able to limit at 22C. I have a rental home with 15 radiators and people put my TADO radiators sometimes to 25C for the whole weekend ! I would switch in a hardbeat to Shelly if this option would be possible.
Excellent video Lewis 👍🏻 My current thermostat is programmable with different temperatures throughout the day, but I'd love the flexibility of zoned hearing where I have that for each room. Frustratingly there are a couple of issues stopping me from doing that at the moment. I believe I have to get my heating system altered to remove the 'bypass radiator' in the living room, as I don't want it roasting just because I want a warmer bathroom, for example. Like many others I also need find a reliable way to get the valves to 'call for heat' from the boiler to trigger it to fire up when one of the rooms/TRVs senses the temperature is too low. I'd definitely be interested in a follow-up video if Shelly release a boiler controller product that will allow the latter 🙂 Then all I need to do is find a good plumber 😉
You probably have to retain your bypass radiator, sadly, just in case there's some kind of fault that results in a call for heat when all the valves are closed. If the pump can't move water through the system you'd risk breaking all sorts of expensive things. If your bypass rad is a towel rail though, and it's always covered in towels, it won't dissipate all that much heat.
If you use home assistant yaml or nodered you can program this logic into the system. You will need to put a WiFi switch with volts free contacts like a Shelly 1 in parallel with the room thermostat.
I've been waiting for a review of these for the past 2 months :) I'm quite annoyed with my current cheap bluetooth TRVs (Eq-3), as they sometimes stop responding to bluetooth commands. It only happened around 3-4 times in the last 2 heating seasons, but it was always when I needed the remote control the most (trying to heat up the apartement before coming back from vacations)... I'll probably grab a few of these for the next heating season :)
Great video as always. I recently bought a ZigBee 'Drayton Wiser' TRV (no Drayton hub, pure Zigbee ZHA), HA/ZigBee bridge just don't want to work with it. I do have a Z-Wave TRV which works really well... But your video may make be try a Shelly unit 😁👍 ... One question though, if I may, do you have any comparisons with other TRVs, especially when it comes to noise!? Both of my working TRVs are loud when their setpoint is changed, which is made worse if this happens when you're still in bed! 😢
They have both a "silent" and a "loud" mode and the noise they produce is dependent on which one they're operating in. Some valves need more force to actuate and for those the Shelly TRV will need the more powerful "loud" mode, that uses more power. So far, I've tried 4 brands of TRVs and, In its standard "silent" operating mode, it's the quietest TRV I know.
My radiators all have valves bar the bathroom. However, I usually control the temperature via the boiler rather than adjusting the valves. What's your setup for this with your system. Have you set the temperature on the boiler and then adjusting the radiators as you go/suit/schedule? I currently have all the radiators on max and as said adjust the boiler
@@JakubKosik Hey Jakub thank you for taking the time to reply. I haven't made the move yet, I do not have a thermostat, so I'd rely on using Home Assistant to make the adjustments.
These look pretty amazing. Thanks for a wonderful review. Just a question: Could these TRV's be connected permanetly to USB to always trickle charge the battery or do they shutdown when the charger is connected?
You can keep it permanently connected to an external power source, with no problem. It does heat up while charging, which might influence its temperature sensor, but you can either have it use the values from an external temperature sensor or you can open it up and remove its internal battery. It doesn't care where its power comes from and it won't stop working if it detects that you removed the internal battery.
I would really like to see a video on how to use home assistant to control the boiler and integrate these TRV's into the control. The problem i see is how do you stop the boiler when all trv's are closed to prevent short cycling and how often will all trv's be in the closed position.
Most modern boilers have an internal bypass to cover the "all TRV's closed" scenario. However, I'm old school, and still like to see one radiator in the circuit with conventional valves. Somewhere like a bathroom or an airing/drying cupboard, where it really can't be too hot. The short cycling problem is one with so many variables. One of the most common "mistakes" is to have an over specified boiler for the demand involved so that it satisfies the call for heat very quickly. Amongst many solutions, turning the boiler water temperature down and making sure the boiler is adjusted to it's minimum output may help.
@@BerkeleyTowers I have an ensuite and a bathroom which i would leave on conventional valves. I can also fit a temperature compensation sensor on the boiler. I just want to find the right TRV and boiler control that can be run from home assistant at a reasonable cost and is easy to integrate and program. I have a combi boiler fitted which is not my choice as it was here when i moved in. Just had some solar panels fitted so looking to fit a water tank for hot water. The control systems for that will be run from home assistant.
I've been wanting to do this for some time now, but with all radiators, it's a considerable investment. How does a smart TRV manage calls for heat though? Does the "master" thermostat need to be set high enough so that it's always on?
Soo something I have always thought of when it comes to smart trv's is are the workable alongside smart thermostats? I mean the thermostat controls the combi boiler switching it on and off when needed so can I add trv's to the equation and control individual rooms. so say room 1 is too cold and occupied so temp sensor and proffered occupied sensor tells thermostat to turn on boiler and also tells trv temp to set too. room 2 is unoccupied so trv is set to 0 or ambient temp. with the cost of gas the ability to turn off the boiler when not in use is imperative for many households and trv's only control the flow of water through the radiator. Hope this makes sense
It depends on your heating systems, the thermostat you have and the smart home platform you are using, so quite a few variables - but I use a relay attached to my boiler with home assistant and can control every aspect, so yes it is possible!
Thanks Lewis for a straightforward, honest review. (As usual). I will definitely be picking up a couple as they solve my own particular situation very well. It's a shame we have to wait for them but then again, maybe they can add some of the features that we would like to have included in HA. I still find their app to be disappointing despite the recent update and I agree with you about the pairing being somewhat clumsy.
Hi, I am planning to buy some Shelly TRV for radiators and we have a gas heating/ hot water boiler (Protherm) . Any suggestions/ recommendations for smart thermostat (replacement for current not smart Protherm) ? Thank you
Depends on how your current thermostat controls your boiler. If it's one of the old style boilers that can only be on or off and only have 2 contacts for this, then you can simply add a Shelly single channel relay to it. Shelly have stated that they are planning on adding support for grouping devices, which should allow you to simply add the TRVs and the relay in a single group, so that the TRVs can control the boiler directly.
It has google home support, so it can actually work with it. It can, for example, have the Nest turn on the heater, when it needs to warm up a room and then tell it to turn heating off, when it's done.
Thanks! You'll be able to pick them up on the Shelly website and get them that way, or I hope they will be on Amazon soon like other Shelly products once this launches!
Nice video! Will add this one TRV on my list, with the well aligned LTT-keyboard-/mousepad (6:00) 😀 below that. Unfortunately 74 euros is quite some money. As mentioned earlier, Tuya is cheaper, but Tuya.
It'd be wise to check whether your heater / heating system is able to handle these things. My central heating maintenance guy advised against it with my central heating system; not sure anymore though what the reason was...
It's because if the heating is starting, and all the TRV's are closed. The system can't get rid of the warm water and that can damage a lot. So if you do, make sure there is always one open.
Nice, but I have a centra HVAC system, no radiators. Now of you had something I could use to co from the HVAC Vents in each room, that would be something. But, if I did have radiators, I’d be placing my order. These look really nice.
@@EverythingSmartHome wow I need to read my messages before pressing submit. The out correct and my fat fingers seem to respond with the wrong or partial word. Anyway. We need a a really good electric vent that comes in popular sizes so we can close off rooms that are not occupied or we want to turn off or on etc. there’s been a few but most are not impressive and some require the unit to be plugged in and all my upstairs vents are ceiling mounted with no nearby outlets.
They have both a "silent" and a "loud" mode and the noise they produce is dependent on which one they're operating in. Some valves need more force to actuate and for those the Shelly TRV will need the more powerful "loud" mode, that uses more power.
The Shelly TRV hasn't been out for a year, so we can't know, but it uses the same tech as the Shelly Motion and I can confirm that that does last a year on a single charge.
How do folks handle these with the other smart thermostats like Nest etc? Just wondering since these things obviously control the radiators but if the Nest things the location is warm enough and turns off the central heating then these are just useless no? Probably missing something hence the question.
I use Tados for this. The valves communicate with the Tado thermostat to increase or decrease heating. Works great. In theory you could use Home assistant (or something else) to monitor the demand for heating from valves and increase the temperature on the thermostat. Granted you would need to kit out your house with all the valves (with the exception of one else your central heating unit will shutdown).
Admittedly I don't have any Shelly motion sensors, but I have a ton of other Shelly Kit ranging from pretty much every relay to the humidity, flood, and contact sensors. Had I been looking at some TRVs myself (we have hive thermostats with their trvs) I may be interested but my experience of all Shelly battery device is one filled with disappointment. I love all the relays and love what Shelly offer but the battery options aren't for me unfortunately
The Shelly motion and TRV are different from the other battery powered Shelly devices. They have 6500 mA batteries and are designed to always stay connected to wifi. I have both the Shelly motion and Shelly TRV and they are both some of THE most responsive battery powered devices I have. Their response times have always been basically instantaneous and they've never lost connection.
Depends, what Home Automation platform are you using? Or did you want to do it directly? If directly then I'm not sure you would be able to since I'm guessing the Nest won't work with anything else (apologies if I'm wrong, not familiar with that Nest)
@@EverythingSmartHome I use the Google home ecosystem mainly, but I do have home assistant running to try and connect things that don't work directly with Google (such as WLed). Would there be a way to integrate the nest and a set of TRVs to work together smoothly? I'm trying to decide which brand of TRV to get, and if it will even work with the nest being the main heating controller.
I had TADO for more than 4 years now. At that time, It was the only smart TRVs in the market. Their app and support team are amazing. You can excute all the automations from the app (schedules, geofencing .. etc). But It also has a native integration with Homeassistant. nearly the same price of Shelley (could be cheaper on prime day) but It needs a hub!
Got my Tado TRV's back in Sept 2016, it was my first venture into "SMART" home stuff. Its been rock solid - great product and has saved me £££ over the years.
What I do not get is this: how will it switch on the heating unit? The valve could be all open, but if there is no connection to the actual heater, how will hot water flow into the radiator controlled by the Shelley TRV?? There has to be a connection to the unit from every zone. Then the heater will start running on demand. The other zones, that will not need heating, will be choked. So, the heater is running for that single zone. That also means there should be a central system to control an modulating heater unit. To that module the zone thermostats should report demand. The central modulating thermostat will make sure the central heater unit will not run full capacity as in an on/off system but will be down regulated to let's say 1/8 of its capacity in order to keep efficiency high.
I think this MQTT explorer could come the rescue? There is a Mosquitto MQTT broker for linux fro Ubuntu or a Raspberry Pi. Not for the faint of heart, I smell a learning curve.. Interesting but feels like a lot of work..?
This video annoyed me...............coz I already bought a the TADO alternative which doesn't seem to have as many options and is more expensive 😪😪 ah well, its only money! 💸💸 Great vid, love the channel.
I have Tado it's excellent and calls for heat, ie if you only want to heat a room it will and all others are shutdown, it's also weather and presence aware
@@antonzemanek7770 Most boilers, when not connected to a thermostat, will turn on automatically and then run constantly. For a quick and dirty solution, you can use a Shelly 10A or 16A plug socket and have the TRV turn the boiler on and off, as needed, through the Shelly Cloud and the Shelly automations engine. This should serve you well, until you get HA up and running.
Wifi stuff always makes me a bit uncomfortable, but these do look neat. I suppose if they were connected to a separate vlan with no network or internet access they might be alright, could be worth considering
@@EverythingSmartHome Have you tried using this while plugged in, will it still work when charging ? If that USB C port can just be kept plugged in constantly then these have a huge advantage on your average Zigbee valve imo ! I hate changing / charging batteries on dozens of devices.
@@ulrar I have tried it and it works just fine. You can even open them up and remove the batteries entirely, if you want and then just keep them plugged in forever.
@@user-xu2pi6vx7o thanks for the feedback, that's good to know ! We're actually just about to upgrade the house so I might add some of these (or those new aqara one, to be decided) soon
Personally I'd rather pay a bit more to avoid anything Tuya (even if it is ZigBee) - but that's just me. 22 euros is very cheap though so I can see the appeal! What's the battery life like?
@@EverythingSmartHome well, they do have two AA batteries to power them. But I just bought a 3V power supply and wired them up. :) Ah I run one off of rechargeable batteries. It's running for 1.5 years now, battery state is still "normal".
@@EverythingSmartHome keen to understand why if you can share. I have the TuYa TS0601 ones and whilst they’re not perfect (e.g. you can’t set the valve position directly through mqtt) I wouldn’t go as far as avoiding anything TuYa related. Am I missing an obvious flaw?
I hate to tell you but that not a TRV (Thermostatic radiator valve) it's an actuator. The valve is the bit that is connected to the radiator. They have been around long before the internet.
Tado is the way to go. They cost 69 euros a piece whilst the shellies are 74 euros and tado already has proven that they are worth it... they even offer 40% saving or your money back.
I would never get one of these or any other wifi smart crap. Wifi approach is a dead end it's just a big pile of poo. Just think about how reliable is your home smartness when you have one single point of failure your router. What happens if router loses power for some reason (like randomly unplugged by your wife or a kid) all the sudden your smart home turns into a dump fkn crap that is not even a stupid home ))) so yeah good luck with wifi devices. Have no idea why shelly is stuck with wifi though ((
A Zigbee/Z-wave hub has EXACTLY the same problem. Nothing stops that from getting unplugged either. All Shelly devices have the option to switch to a back-up wifi network, if the primary one fails. I don't know of any zigbee/z-wave devices that can do the same. And no, zigbee/z-wave mesh functionality doesn't count. All your smart home smarts are stored in the zigbee/z-wave hub, so if that goes down, then "all the sudden your smart home turns into a dump fkn crap that is not even a stupid home" anyway. Plus, wifi is the undefeated champion of backwards and forwards compatibility. I can take a 20 year old wifi network card and still hook it up to a modern wifi router, with minimal hassle.
Anybody else planning to pick some of these up?! 😅
I have been whatching these since they were anounced. So glad you did a video on them. Thank you.i hope shelly addresses the issues you talked about before release date. Would be nice of them Keep up the great videos.
If I owned my property you know I would! That said if I owned my property I’d have an awful lot more set up than I do now.
I do like the interface and look of these compared to my current ones but as I am already setup and invested in honeywell evohome I wont be picking these up. Although I am glad there are more players in the market that target individual rooms / multiple zones compared to the overrated nest/hive systems that are quite simply... dumb, being only single zones.
very tempted although I have already put Tado's on half my rads. price is pretty much the same and as I have the nest thermostat, the same integration problems are there (easier once I have all the rads with smart TRVs though). I will have to get HA to force the nest to call for heat if a single room's temperature is too low but at the same time, shut off the TRVs on the other rads so that the heat is targeted at that room
I'm ordering it sure, been looking for this solution over wifi and local, hope it will solve my problem. Question, I will be using the link on the video to order them, should I use a code also while ordering? so you can get a sponsor, or is the link enough
I'm using the Tado's for the same project. Having them set up on the Tado app and integrated into HA flawlessy.
Then in HA, i'm using Sonoff room temperature sensors for for adjusting the offset on the Tado Valves - works flawlessly.
Other automation i'm using is the Sonoff window sensors - when the windows is open, Tado valves OFF. Closed windows, Tado Auto as per schedule.
Genius! What a fantastic workaround.
The only reason I hadn't invested in Tado TRVs is that I don't trust a fixed offset and they can't be controlled via a separate temperature sensor.
Thanks!
I've been using the cheap £7 electric trvs off AliExpress. They run off mains voltage so can be wired to a plug or sonoff basic etc.
I have these all about the house and wired into an 8 way relay board attached to a Pi3 which has an ethernet connection.
Definitely a bit of work to do and have it centralised but it's completely rock solid and I've had no issues and it's a tremendous saving.
Looks a well thought-out device and I'm liking the HA integration. I was wondering how quiet they are in operation?. are they likely to disturb your sleep if the are operating in you bedroom at night.? When you use a smart thermostat say for example a Nest controller, the room thermostat switches off the heating when the room gets to the temperature setting and the other radiators in the property can have thermostatic valves to control the individual rooms. My question is, if you fit these thermostatic valves, when all the rooms get to their set point what switches off the heating?
I can't answer for these particular valves, but I have a house full of Honeywell Evohome electronic TRVs. They make a noise and you can hear them, but it's not loud enough to disturb sleep for example (even for our kids who basically wake if you fart too loud).
They have both a "silent" and a "loud" mode and the noise they produce is dependent on which one they're operating in.
Some valves need more force to actuate and for those the Shelly TRV will need the more powerful "loud" mode, that uses more power.
But, either way, you can rest assured they won't wake up the dead.
Also, they are compatible with Google Home, so you could probably make an automation that has the Nest turn off the heater, if all TRVs have reached their set temperatures. And one that has the Nest turn on the heater, if a TRV needs heat.
In Europe They cost about 82€ because You need to include shipping and tax. So not that affordable.
I have been using the Shelly TRV (and other Shelly products) for a while now and have 8 TRVs. They work FANTASTIC! The fact thta you don't need internet or even an app to configure or use these, is an absolute thumbs up for me. The inegrate great in Home Assistant and it's one of the very few products I woudl give a 5-star rating.
do you need to use the shelly app for that ? im looking for some trv's but i want to controll everything 100%local without apps just HA
i'm using one for my single-pipe, low pressure steam radiator - it's working with a couple Danfoss adapters (vaccuum breaker, straight vent, 1/8" rad insert).
One thing that I think was missing - how do these actually interact with your heating system? you say you don't need a hub when buying these, but how does the boiler know to come on when one of these has turned on? I have a Drayton wiser system which was £265 with the hub and 5 TRVs, so it's definitely not the cheapest setup of them all
Thanks, I'd probably cover that in a separate video since there are a few different ways you could approach that depending on your setup. The Shellies are very flexible and can work with existing thermostats using automations through Home Assistant with a relay connected to the boiler (this is what I do) or the TRV's can work directly with a Shelly relay connected to your boiler so that they can talk to each other. Hope that helps
£265 for 5 TRV's is more than the Shelly, the 4 pack from Shelly is 215 euros which is around £180, plus one more at full price is £230. So still cheaper (at least from what I can see). Also I might be looking at the wrong product but it looks like the 5 TRV Drayton is now £305-325 depending on your boiler so not sure if you picked them up before the explosion in price of all things tech.
@@EverythingSmartHome Don't forget the VAT on that 4 pack :P makes it 260 euros then, plus another 70 for the 5th, so 320 euros for all of them (definitely still a lot cheaper than something like the honeywell evohome system!). Thanks for explaining how they work with the boiler! Wanted to make sure someone wouldn't fall in to a trap of thinking these would work with an existing dumb install
The boiler senses the return temperature and if it's too high it just turns off, as there's no heating demand.
The boiler has also an outside air temperature probe to turn on/off according to the global heating demand, as you set a comfort temperature for inside which the boiler expects the thermostats to keep.
The pump is also a high power consumption item, and it is usually detecting how much flow there's really needed and turns higher/lower/off depending on that.
Sometimes the pump's data is feed into the boiler as well.
ignore my VAT comment, shelly website was lying to me! In that case I believe you are correct on them being the cheapest :)
@@EverythingSmartHome Keen to learn more about your solution with existing thermostats with a relay and home assistant automations. Looking forward to this video!
Nice, good that they’re fully local and no subscription or hub required. Personally with having a heat pump it’s not something I’m sure I would install as best practice is to run them all the time at a low temperature, and kitting the entire house out if you already have a lot of Wi-Fi devices like Shelly switches and relays is potentially filling up your Wi-Fi address range, but I like them
I've probably mentioned this elsewhere, but If you fancy a bit of DIY, use underfloor heating actuators, which co-incidentally fit on to a radiator trv mount (check the size, mine have always been M19) and cost about £12, a sonoff mini/basic, about £4, flashed with the firmware of your choice, esphome, espeasy, write yor own e.t.c, controlling the power to the actuator, and a DS18B20 temperature sensor (about 70p) connected to the aforementioned sonoff onna long lead and job done for £17. Yes, you need a mains supply near each actuator so definitely a downside, integration is under your control, and cost on the plus side.
I did exactly this, in terms or power use I think this Shelly may save money in the long run. I'm moving to a ne house and don't want wires everywhere there is a radiator. Also like the fact that each stores its own schedule
The Shelly TRV actually has an option to run as an underfloor heating actuator.
I really like the idea of these, I tried a pack of lightwave ones a few years ago but felt it was an all or nothing investment which at £65 (not £49) will get very pricey. So with that I wanted to make sure my investment was right, these seem to be the best so far.
It would be interesting to see what kind of automation could be done in HA for whole house heating and heat zoning, but im guessing it may be a node red arena for now.
Come on Shelly cough up a whole house worth for a full test.
Haha I mean I won't say no!
You might want to add a bypass pressure valve with a system that has TRVs on every radiator. Do these also have gpio pins?
Thanks for the video! I have been using Eurotronic zwave plus Spirit TRV's but they do cause problems from time to time, like not being able to switch them off, battery indication not working and so on. I control them with Home Assistant and specifically the HACS schedular card, which is excellent, since you can do the programming, set different temperatures, etc. I like the Shelly products very mucht, so I think I will switch to make it more reliable
I went with the Drayton Wiser. It is zigbee based and doesn't need the cloud to control it. I am able to schedule both central heating for individual rooms with their TRVs and hot water. To add has HA plugin through HACS.
Fantastic overview as always.
However, whilst I understand the need for thermostatic Radiator valves, and I have them on my own radiators, if the valves are not working in unison with the room stat, there is nothing smart about them. They are just convenient and allow you to set room temps using an app or use your voice as part of a smart home.
I believe whole house products from companies like Tado are more efficient and work in unison with the room stat and rad valves to heat and understand the whole house temperature .
Thanks for the review.
Thanks, I understand what you are saying. You can also have a room stat too with shelly (or any other smart relay for that matter) by using one of their shelly relays.
Home assistant can bridge them together quite easily, I use a Sonoff relay in my house with these now which gives.me all the functionality.
I went from Tado to these at the beginning of this year. Currently using 8 of them. They are working very well!
With Tado I had the problem that the bridge could not reach all devices in my house, no matter where I placed it. With Shelly they simply connect using WiFi, so I don’t have this problem anymore. Also Tado does not work if Internet goes down, really annoying.
Only downside is that you have to manage the main valve of your heating system yourself (something that Tado has built in). I did that using a Shelly Plus 1 and writing some automations in Node RED.
The Tado trv's show up in the HOMEKIT integration and can be controlled locally. However the app does offer more information.
Ah I did not know that. I wasn’t using them with HomeKit, but with Home Assistant instead through the Tado integration. As Home Assistant is using the Tado api, this does not work without Internet.
@@sroebert I am sorry I wasn't clear about what I said, I was talking about the Homekit integration in Home Assistant. I too use the TADO integration for most of the control and the additional information available. The homekit integration is available as a backup.
Interesting device. My first thought was: what else I can use it for? 🤔😅
Just what I've been holding out for. A little summer project with time to iron out the bugs before winter! Nice video. Can you mess up the rubrics cube for the next video and solve it for the following one!
Hi, Thanks for review ! Does the Shelly TRV make noise ?
Gilles
This looked totally awesome. I've been trying to figure out how to move away from Nest for ages - stupid thing won't talk to HA consistently. Want to roll a custom heating and water solution with some relays on the boiler, SONOFF zigbee temperature sensors in each room, and locally controllable TRVs. That last part appears to be completely non-existent. I thought Shelley had come to the rescue with this, until you said that it only exposes temperature to HA, and not valve position.
For my use case, this is completely useless until they add that feature.
Thanks so much for the review though! Love your vids buddy.
I think the Shellies tick all the boxes you want, you can get access to the valve position by using MQTT for now, and I'm pretty hopeful that valve position will be added natively real soon!
Thanks, really appreciate it!
@@EverythingSmartHome Oh right. Excellent news!! Game changer then. Thanks again!
Look nice, I like the local-only operation mode.
One thing I don't get is how these are of any use without being combined with a smart thermostat to control the boiler? Surely if the boiler is not on, these just open the valves but there will be no warm water being circulated right? Or do normal boilers come on or turn off automatically based on change in the water flow?
Also have been told you should not put them on EVERY radiator. Right now I have tado TRVs (combined with their thermostat) in every room except the bathrooms and the utility room (which is where my thermostat is). I was assuming if the TRV in the living room needed heating, it would open up the valve and instruct the thermostat to turn on the boiler, but maybe it doesn't work that way?
So glad there are more options coming to market. I've had a Honeywell Evohome system for maybe 6 years now and it's pretty solid, but the Home Assistant integration relies on a community reverse-engineering of the Honeywell app rather than manufacturer support.
Hi. I'm new to having radiators. I live in USA. This home has cast iron radiators all around the house. Would I be able to use these for zoned heating? Boiler/radiator heating systems are not popular here. Our HVAC guys ays these are the best if household members suffer from allergies. We do. So we want to keep the system, but I want to add zoned heating
I have the same, and interested in this answer as well!
You can add zoned heating from either their app, or some third party controller like Home Assistant.
i just got a load of direct 230v wax motor valve drivers for about 7euro a pop, plugged those into a regular wifi socket, or a sonoff. no batteries to change, and more important, no temperature sensors right next to the radiator.
having a number of sensors dotted around the rooms, you can either make an average temp and control that, have a very local thermostat, or what i did, characterising the room response and calculating the energy needed from the boiler. asking the boiler can be done over OpenTherm
that way you can have the boiler on for longer, or have it on a lower setting. both are more efficient. it also save you from having to heat the living room when you're always in the office or something similar. i really detest the assumption that having one thermostat in the living room makes, it's old school thinking that should have died a long time ago
also, having these calculations also works for cooling and ventilation. I'm really hoping to build a house in the future that takes all this into account from the start, using a ground source heat pump, a pool for storing heat (and swimming), forced ventilation, vacuum tubes and a wood stove heat exchanger. current land prices make this unlikely in the near future though, so i settle with my current gas fired boiler.
Based on your video I've ordered 2 to replace my zigbee trv's that weren't stable enough for daily use. Installation and connection with HA went perfectly. However it seems that the "operating range" is very small. My old TRV's did about 30sec to open and close, you could also hear it closing as the resistance was building up. The shelly ones open and close in about 2 seconds which seems a bit too fast. I tried recalibrating but nothing changes. As you're using them for longer, could you give more info on that part? Thanks in advance!
These look ace, unfortunately, 4 months too late for us after investing in another smart heating system, maybe a couple can be used where the current system can’t reach, would be good to know how they cope over time in connectivity and what happens when the WiFi goes down, does it remember the schedule or not?
Using Homeatic IP, biggest mistake ever since I have only one radiator and one socket from this brand.
Running Homeassistant on a rpi4 with xiaomi, ikea, wled,.. Devices without any problems.
Guess next time I'll try the Shelly for sure.
Appriciate your content!
Greetings from Germany
Since you have a global audience, probably needs to be said that these are meant for the radiators common in Europe and the UK, systems that use hot water and use two loops, one supply and one return. In North America, we usually use steam systems that use a single loop with a single valve that supplies steam and provides a return for the condensate. In these systems, the valve cannot be throttled and must be fully open or fully closed. Intermediate positions will eventually lead to the valve failing and leaking. You can use adjustable vents on these radiators that change amount of steam drawn into it, but I haven't seen wireless ones yet.
Yeah just like all the US/NA based Tech tubers do for US only shit ..... #not
So how do they connect to the boiler to switch it on and off when it needs or is your boiler constnatly on? If the TRV needs heat it should be able to turn your boiler on and if warm enough, turn it off otherwise there is no point to turning the temperature up or down on the TRV cause you will still be getting hear through the radiator.
I use LIghtwave at the moment and it is not reliable and not local but it does runs on Home Assistant and I can use it with zones and have my calendar to alter the TRV's which the Call For Heat to the boiler
Mine has now been in operation for 4 months. One is on constant power which works fine and the others are only on 98/99% battery!
Sorry to be late to the party. The problem with these is that they don't "call for heat" - ie if the boiler and pump are off then opening the valves will achieve nothing. Far better are the Wiser valves from Drayton that work with a boiler controller. So when the Wiser valves call for heat, the boiler fires up. The Wiser valves communicate with the boiler controller via Zigbee, and the boiler controller comunicates with your router via wifi. Wiser have their own android app, and there is a Wiser integration for HA via HACS. It's a brilliant complete solution.
I used 30 euro ones from aliexpress with zigbee. They aren't perfect and a bit difficult to control with the buttons but work fine on HA. Battery's I'm now switching to rechargeable because they drain in approximately 6months
Was given task of smartening heating system at hotels I work at, after several weeks of research and testing and reviews including yours we went with over 100 Shelly TRVs across several hotels.
However now am facing some issues that didn't come to light during testing.
First issue is home assistant regularly struggles to update the target temperature, get a error about temperature attribute not available...
Generally going to the ip address of the valve wakes it then homeassistant can pass the setpoint.
I have set valves with static ips and enabled coiot.
Weirdly it's not all valves and am yet to find a pattern to the issue.
Any ideas?
Before purchasing old saw positive shelly reviews, now changing search terms am concerned about the number of people reporting issues with multiple devices having poor connectivity and issues.
Now am having to worry that have spent several thousands of pounds on devices that arnt working as expected.
Do Shellys work without using their App exactly never? Can I set them up in HA without?
You can get metal ring adaptors, new radiators don't need them though
so can these call for heat from the boiler or not ?
I use the Honeywell evohome system integrated into HA via the Evohome RF integration an OpenTherm gateway connected to the boiler
so total control over both the TRVs and the Boiler to maximize the potential savings
if these can't control heat demand like others in the market (evohome, Tado, Dryton etc) then they would not be the first choice for a truly smart heating control system.
This is what I've been looking for. Definitely will be on my shopping list. Would love a second video of how to contol them working HA along with how the heating system knows too come on if only one of these registers that it needs to turn on. Thank you.
I used an ESPHome relay device in place of a central thermostat and just activated a switched live to the boiler thermostat input when required. Home Assistant looks after the automations.
@@smarthaus-tech Thank you
Thanks! I also use an ESPHome relay for the boiler thermostat 😅
@@EverythingSmartHome I’d love to see a video on setting this up. I’m after some TRVs, but not sure whether to buy a smart thermostat - as technically it’s not really needed??
How do these actually control your gas boiler? I have a Bulex high efficiency boiler and it uses open them. I've been told all boiler van also use a simple on/off bit not sure how this will impact the modulation. It can modulate in 5 steps. 35kw max.
have they improved home assit integratio for it since the release?
I bought a Shelly TRV but it is very noisy. I can hear her in the next room as she closes. What is your experience?
Hi Lewis! I plan on installing one of these in my bedroom and I was wondering if its motor makes any noise and if so, how loud it gets. My room is almost dead silent and the valve is about 3 meters/10 feet away from my bed.
Hey Adam! No these are really pretty quiet, I was surprised! Although I guess it's subjective but IMO it's totally fine, and the longest sound it would make would be for like 3 seconds to go from fully closed to fully opened, doesn't take long!
I'd be interested to know how loud these are also. I've had some 'ok' and 'bad' TRVs over the years
are they indiot proof? I need the option to limit the max temp on the device. When pushing + , it should be able to limit at 22C. I have a rental home with 15 radiators and people put my TADO radiators sometimes to 25C for the whole weekend ! I would switch in a hardbeat to Shelly if this option would be possible.
Excellent video Lewis 👍🏻
My current thermostat is programmable with different temperatures throughout the day, but I'd love the flexibility of zoned hearing where I have that for each room.
Frustratingly there are a couple of issues stopping me from doing that at the moment.
I believe I have to get my heating system altered to remove the 'bypass radiator' in the living room, as I don't want it roasting just because I want a warmer bathroom, for example.
Like many others I also need find a reliable way to get the valves to 'call for heat' from the boiler to trigger it to fire up when one of the rooms/TRVs senses the temperature is too low.
I'd definitely be interested in a follow-up video if Shelly release a boiler controller product that will allow the latter 🙂
Then all I need to do is find a good plumber 😉
If your "call for heat" requests are done by contact closure, the Shelly 1 can do,that for you.
You probably have to retain your bypass radiator, sadly, just in case there's some kind of fault that results in a call for heat when all the valves are closed. If the pump can't move water through the system you'd risk breaking all sorts of expensive things. If your bypass rad is a towel rail though, and it's always covered in towels, it won't dissipate all that much heat.
If you use home assistant yaml or nodered you can program this logic into the system. You will need to put a WiFi switch with volts free contacts like a Shelly 1 in parallel with the room thermostat.
Hi Lewis, how does this interact with a regular thermostat?
I've been waiting for a review of these for the past 2 months :)
I'm quite annoyed with my current cheap bluetooth TRVs (Eq-3), as they sometimes stop responding to bluetooth commands. It only happened around 3-4 times in the last 2 heating seasons, but it was always when I needed the remote control the most (trying to heat up the apartement before coming back from vacations)...
I'll probably grab a few of these for the next heating season :)
Bluetooth can often be pretty frustrating
Can you flash Tasmota on it?
Great video as always. I recently bought a ZigBee 'Drayton Wiser' TRV (no Drayton hub, pure Zigbee ZHA), HA/ZigBee bridge just don't want to work with it. I do have a Z-Wave TRV which works really well... But your video may make be try a Shelly unit 😁👍
... One question though, if I may, do you have any comparisons with other TRVs, especially when it comes to noise!? Both of my working TRVs are loud when their setpoint is changed, which is made worse if this happens when you're still in bed! 😢
Thanks! Noise for me personally is very quiet , but I guess it's subjective to a point so you may disagree!
They have both a "silent" and a "loud" mode and the noise they produce is dependent on which one they're operating in.
Some valves need more force to actuate and for those the Shelly TRV will need the more powerful "loud" mode, that uses more power.
So far, I've tried 4 brands of TRVs and, In its standard "silent" operating mode, it's the quietest TRV I know.
My radiators all have valves bar the bathroom. However, I usually control the temperature via the boiler rather than adjusting the valves. What's your setup for this with your system. Have you set the temperature on the boiler and then adjusting the radiators as you go/suit/schedule? I currently have all the radiators on max and as said adjust the boiler
Hi Mike, I have same set up. I put valves on radiator to max and adjusting thermostat . Did you make any changes / upgrades to smart heating?
@@JakubKosik Hey Jakub thank you for taking the time to reply. I haven't made the move yet, I do not have a thermostat, so I'd rely on using Home Assistant to make the adjustments.
These look pretty amazing. Thanks for a wonderful review.
Just a question: Could these TRV's be connected permanetly to USB to always trickle charge the battery or do they shutdown when the charger is connected?
Thanks! Errr you probably could, I'm not sure if they shutdown or not sorry!
You can keep it permanently connected to an external power source, with no problem.
It does heat up while charging, which might influence its temperature sensor, but you can either have it use the values from an external temperature sensor or you can open it up and remove its internal battery.
It doesn't care where its power comes from and it won't stop working if it detects that you removed the internal battery.
Now this is something I don’t need but I’m 100% getting! 🤣
I would really like to see a video on how to use home assistant to control the boiler and integrate these TRV's into the control. The problem i see is how do you stop the boiler when all trv's are closed to prevent short cycling and how often will all trv's be in the closed position.
Most modern boilers have an internal bypass to cover the "all TRV's closed" scenario. However, I'm old school, and still like to see one radiator in the circuit with conventional valves. Somewhere like a bathroom or an airing/drying cupboard, where it really can't be too hot. The short cycling problem is one with so many variables. One of the most common "mistakes" is to have an over specified boiler for the demand involved so that it satisfies the call for heat very quickly. Amongst many solutions, turning the boiler water temperature down and making sure the boiler is adjusted to it's minimum output may help.
@@BerkeleyTowers I have an ensuite and a bathroom which i would leave on conventional valves. I can also fit a temperature compensation sensor on the boiler. I just want to find the right TRV and boiler control that can be run from home assistant at a reasonable cost and is easy to integrate and program. I have a combi boiler fitted which is not my choice as it was here when i moved in. Just had some solar panels fitted so looking to fit a water tank for hot water. The control systems for that will be run from home assistant.
I've been wanting to do this for some time now, but with all radiators, it's a considerable investment. How does a smart TRV manage calls for heat though? Does the "master" thermostat need to be set high enough so that it's always on?
It depends on if you have a a smart thermostat or not?
Soo something I have always thought of when it comes to smart trv's is are the workable alongside smart thermostats? I mean the thermostat controls the combi boiler switching it on and off when needed so can I add trv's to the equation and control individual rooms. so say room 1 is too cold and occupied so temp sensor and proffered occupied sensor tells thermostat to turn on boiler and also tells trv temp to set too. room 2 is unoccupied so trv is set to 0 or ambient temp. with the cost of gas the ability to turn off the boiler when not in use is imperative for many households and trv's only control the flow of water through the radiator. Hope this makes sense
It depends on your heating systems, the thermostat you have and the smart home platform you are using, so quite a few variables - but I use a relay attached to my boiler with home assistant and can control every aspect, so yes it is possible!
So I assume trv’s only work if your thermostat is on? If so do you just have it on all day then the trv’s do everything else?
It's entirely dependent on your heating setup - I'm no expert though so best to check with one!
@@EverythingSmartHome ok no problem, thanks. I have no idea either how heating works 🤣
Thanks Lewis for a straightforward, honest review. (As usual). I will definitely be picking up a couple as they solve my own particular situation very well. It's a shame we have to wait for them but then again, maybe they can add some of the features that we would like to have included in HA. I still find their app to be disappointing despite the recent update and I agree with you about the pairing being somewhat clumsy.
Thanks Ian! I agree not a huge fan off the app myself but luckily you don't ever need to use it!
These look dope, but i have a question. How long can it go on a full battery?
Quoted at 2 years based on a 5 month heating cycle - I covered battery life in the video
Hi, I am planning to buy some Shelly TRV for radiators and we have a gas heating/ hot water boiler (Protherm) . Any suggestions/ recommendations for smart thermostat (replacement for current not smart Protherm) ? Thank you
Depends on how your current thermostat controls your boiler. If it's one of the old style boilers that can only be on or off and only have 2 contacts for this, then you can simply add a Shelly single channel relay to it. Shelly have stated that they are planning on adding support for grouping devices, which should allow you to simply add the TRVs and the relay in a single group, so that the TRVs can control the boiler directly.
How would something like this work alongside a smart thermostat like nest? Or would they conflict?
It has google home support, so it can actually work with it.
It can, for example, have the Nest turn on the heater, when it needs to warm up a room and then tell it to turn heating off, when it's done.
Awesome! Best place to buy in the UK? :)
Thanks! You'll be able to pick them up on the Shelly website and get them that way, or I hope they will be on Amazon soon like other Shelly products once this launches!
Nice video! Will add this one TRV on my list, with the well aligned LTT-keyboard-/mousepad (6:00) 😀 below that.
Unfortunately 74 euros is quite some money. As mentioned earlier, Tuya is cheaper, but Tuya.
You're, ultimately, only buying them once and they're worth it for what they offer.
It'd be wise to check whether your heater / heating system is able to handle these things. My central heating maintenance guy advised against it with my central heating system; not sure anymore though what the reason was...
It's because if the heating is starting, and all the TRV's are closed. The system can't get rid of the warm water and that can damage a lot. So if you do, make sure there is always one open.
Maybe slightly controversial. Will it work with nest ? Without HA. I.e if I turn on the trv will nest then turn boiler on?
It has google home support, so yes, you can use it with a nest.
Nice, but I have a centra HVAC system, no radiators. Now of you had something I could use to co from the HVAC Vents in each room, that would be something. But, if I did have radiators, I’d be placing my order. These look really nice.
Thanks Richard, that is indeed a whole other set of challenges to overcome!
@@EverythingSmartHome wow I need to read my messages before pressing submit. The out correct and my fat fingers seem to respond with the wrong or partial word. Anyway. We need a a really good electric vent that comes in popular sizes so we can close off rooms that are not occupied or we want to turn off or on etc. there’s been a few but most are not impressive and some require the unit to be plugged in and all my upstairs vents are ceiling mounted with no nearby outlets.
I read somewhere, that Shelly's TRVs are quite loud in action comparing to the others. Is it true?
For me they are very quiet, but I guess it's all subjective to a point so your mileage may vary!
They have both a "silent" and a "loud" mode and the noise they produce is dependent on which one they're operating in.
Some valves need more force to actuate and for those the Shelly TRV will need the more powerful "loud" mode, that uses more power.
Good review!
Two years battery life being a WiFi device? Is that true?
It looks much time...
Saludos!
Time will tell but we shall see! 😁
The Shelly TRV hasn't been out for a year, so we can't know, but it uses the same tech as the Shelly Motion and I can confirm that that does last a year on a single charge.
How noisy? I'm using Danfos heated wax valves because they are totally silent and only £14 !
How do folks handle these with the other smart thermostats like Nest etc? Just wondering since these things obviously control the radiators but if the Nest things the location is warm enough and turns off the central heating then these are just useless no? Probably missing something hence the question.
Yeah it's entirely dependent on your thermostat and also smart home platform you are using - a ton of variables unfortunately
I use Tados for this. The valves communicate with the Tado thermostat to increase or decrease heating. Works great. In theory you could use Home assistant (or something else) to monitor the demand for heating from valves and increase the temperature on the thermostat. Granted you would need to kit out your house with all the valves (with the exception of one else your central heating unit will shutdown).
Admittedly I don't have any Shelly motion sensors, but I have a ton of other Shelly Kit ranging from pretty much every relay to the humidity, flood, and contact sensors.
Had I been looking at some TRVs myself (we have hive thermostats with their trvs) I may be interested but my experience of all Shelly battery device is one filled with disappointment. I love all the relays and love what Shelly offer but the battery options aren't for me unfortunately
The new WiFi chip is pretty impressive tbh but I get it!
The Shelly motion and TRV are different from the other battery powered Shelly devices. They have 6500 mA batteries and are designed to always stay connected to wifi. I have both the Shelly motion and Shelly TRV and they are both some of THE most responsive battery powered devices I have. Their response times have always been basically instantaneous and they've never lost connection.
If I have a nest, how would I get them to communicate to turn on the heating when each TRV needs it
Depends, what Home Automation platform are you using? Or did you want to do it directly? If directly then I'm not sure you would be able to since I'm guessing the Nest won't work with anything else (apologies if I'm wrong, not familiar with that Nest)
@@EverythingSmartHome I use the Google home ecosystem mainly, but I do have home assistant running to try and connect things that don't work directly with Google (such as WLed). Would there be a way to integrate the nest and a set of TRVs to work together smoothly? I'm trying to decide which brand of TRV to get, and if it will even work with the nest being the main heating controller.
I had TADO for more than 4 years now. At that time, It was the only smart TRVs in the market. Their app and support team are amazing. You can excute all the automations from the app (schedules, geofencing .. etc). But It also has a native integration with Homeassistant. nearly the same price of Shelley (could be cheaper on prime day) but It needs a hub!
Got my Tado TRV's back in Sept 2016, it was my first venture into "SMART" home stuff. Its been rock solid - great product and has saved me £££ over the years.
@@jonathancrawford2181 Exactly! It is one of those things you set it once and forget it, leaving it running in the background
Apple HomeKit support?
What I do not get is this:
how will it switch on the heating unit?
The valve could be all open, but if there is no
connection to the actual heater, how will
hot water flow into the radiator controlled by the Shelley TRV??
There has to be a connection to the unit from every zone.
Then the heater will start running on demand.
The other zones, that will not need heating, will be choked.
So, the heater is running for that single zone.
That also means there should be a central system to control
an modulating heater unit.
To that module the zone thermostats should report demand.
The central modulating thermostat will make sure the
central heater unit will not run full capacity as in an
on/off system but will be down regulated to let's say
1/8 of its capacity in order to keep efficiency high.
I think this MQTT explorer could come the rescue?
There is a Mosquitto MQTT broker for linux fro Ubuntu or a Raspberry Pi.
Not for the faint of heart, I smell a learning curve..
Interesting but feels like a lot of work..?
This video annoyed me...............coz I already bought a the TADO alternative which doesn't seem to have as many options and is more expensive 😪😪 ah well, its only money! 💸💸 Great vid, love the channel.
Haha you had me in the first half not gonna lie! 😅
Thanks buddy!
make a comparison with TADO please!!
What do you wanna know?
I have Tado it's excellent and calls for heat, ie if you only want to heat a room it will and all others are shutdown, it's also weather and presence aware
Is it possible to automatically turn off heating when nobody is at home and vice versa?
With the Shelly app alone or with home assistant?
@@EverythingSmartHome both. I want to set up home assistant, but have not done it yet.
@@antonzemanek7770 Most boilers, when not connected to a thermostat, will turn on automatically and then run constantly.
For a quick and dirty solution, you can use a Shelly 10A or 16A plug socket and have the TRV turn the boiler on and off, as needed, through the Shelly Cloud and the Shelly automations engine.
This should serve you well, until you get HA up and running.
Wifi stuff always makes me a bit uncomfortable, but these do look neat. I suppose if they were connected to a separate vlan with no network or internet access they might be alright, could be worth considering
Yes they will work without internet access so no problems there! But I hear ya!
@@EverythingSmartHome Have you tried using this while plugged in, will it still work when charging ?
If that USB C port can just be kept plugged in constantly then these have a huge advantage on your average Zigbee valve imo ! I hate changing / charging batteries on dozens of devices.
I haven't tried yet actually as they came with full charge, I'll test it!
@@ulrar I have tried it and it works just fine. You can even open them up and remove the batteries entirely, if you want and then just keep them plugged in forever.
@@user-xu2pi6vx7o thanks for the feedback, that's good to know !
We're actually just about to upgrade the house so I might add some of these (or those new aqara one, to be decided) soon
Buying 3 shortly.
Nice, enjoy!
Those feel a bit expensive compared to the Zigbee ones from TuYa I got (TS0601), which are €22 per unit. 🤔
Personally I'd rather pay a bit more to avoid anything Tuya (even if it is ZigBee) - but that's just me. 22 euros is very cheap though so I can see the appeal! What's the battery life like?
@@EverythingSmartHome well, they do have two AA batteries to power them. But I just bought a 3V power supply and wired them up. :)
Ah I run one off of rechargeable batteries. It's running for 1.5 years now, battery state is still "normal".
@@EverythingSmartHome keen to understand why if you can share. I have the TuYa TS0601 ones and whilst they’re not perfect (e.g. you can’t set the valve position directly through mqtt) I wouldn’t go as far as avoiding anything TuYa related. Am I missing an obvious flaw?
I'm sure they're a good alternative to other smart TRV's, just a shame that these things look HUGE :(
You said that it works with Google home but does it work with Google Nest?
I'm not sure sorry I don't use or have a Nest to try with
Suggest you check the Genius Hub system, which is Zwave and has a Home Assistant integration
Gowah8. Do you have any experience of the system with H.A.? Do you have any feedback?
If only your sponsor retailer had the discussed device in stock ...
Interesting, but why is it necessary to play music in the background (hearing impaired have a difficultty hearing the speaker 😢)
for what? if we have tuya from ali, cheaper and good quality
cool ...if you have radiators...most modern homes in the US don't .
They can also work as floor heating regulators.
Price is wrong for the UK, it's £65
Can you let me know where you see that? Thanks
Battery life is 5 months with daily use.
👍🏻
Thanks for watching!
I hate to tell you but that not a TRV (Thermostatic radiator valve)
it's an actuator. The valve is the bit that is connected to the radiator. They have been around long before the internet.
#2 comment poggers
Haha appreciate you!
Tado is the way to go. They cost 69 euros a piece whilst the shellies are 74 euros and tado already has proven that they are worth it... they even offer 40% saving or your money back.
I would never get one of these or any other wifi smart crap. Wifi approach is a dead end it's just a big pile of poo. Just think about how reliable is your home smartness when you have one single point of failure your router. What happens if router loses power for some reason (like randomly unplugged by your wife or a kid) all the sudden your smart home turns into a dump fkn crap that is not even a stupid home ))) so yeah good luck with wifi devices. Have no idea why shelly is stuck with wifi though ((
What do you propose instead?
Yup ZigBee would be better. But is the same if the ZigBee dongle died
A Zigbee/Z-wave hub has EXACTLY the same problem. Nothing stops that from getting unplugged either.
All Shelly devices have the option to switch to a back-up wifi network, if the primary one fails. I don't know of any zigbee/z-wave devices that can do the same. And no, zigbee/z-wave mesh functionality doesn't count. All your smart home smarts are stored in the zigbee/z-wave hub, so if that goes down, then "all the sudden your smart home turns into a dump fkn crap that is not even a stupid home" anyway.
Plus, wifi is the undefeated champion of backwards and forwards compatibility. I can take a 20 year old wifi network card and still hook it up to a modern wifi router, with minimal hassle.