Please give me some suggestions on how to create a scene for heating a room.
I connected an IR heater via a Sonoff ZBMINI ZigBee Smart Switch and I want to turn it on at 6 am and turn it off at 9 am. I make a scene with turned on and off and that work properly.
However, I want additional control so that the heater only works in the temperature range of 19 to 23 °C, so I connected a Thermostat and limited the temperature with a new scene to work in that mode. That work properly also.
However, there is a problem because the heater turns on after 9:00 am if it is outside the temperature range.
I tried to define the smart switch’s activity time, but it doesn’t work if it is not 24 hours. I also tried with a timer, but without success because obviously the scene with the temperature regime has priority and is active 24 hours a day, and I want it to be active for a specific time.
I don’t use the web scenes anymore but does it not work if you set a scene turning the heater on if it drops below 23°C to only run between 6am and 9am? I can’t immediately think how to have a temperature range rather than a single limit whilst using the cloud.
Scenes are created in the ewelink interface of the control panel, and are stored in the cloud or ewelink server, which I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter.
When configuring a scene, you first need to select a condition, and then the device or scene that is linked to the condition.
This is the problem because when configuring a scene in which the device is turned on under temperature regime conditions, there is no option to add a time period, although there is an option to select the effective time in the menu, it works for 24 hours, and if a custom time frame is selected, the scene no longer works. However, the scene for the regime from 19 to 21 °C works properly but only 24 hours a day
Not always. If you own an iHost most scenes run locally and are stored locally plus if you own an NS Panel Pro I think zigbee in and out scenes also run locally.
Incidentally, if you are asking for it to only run during a manual time admitting and it doesn’t then I’d raise a ticket in the Help Centre because it should. Maybe you have found a bug. In the meantime why not just set an AND scene to run every ten minutes for the time period: eg. at 6 if cold turn on heater and at 6:10 if cold turn on heater etc. A bit tedious to set up but I think you can now copy scenes.
I’ll write a Ticket and hope to get a concrete answer because I’ve already read about this problem in this forum, but there was no solution. The solution with a copied scene in a time interval of 15 minutes seems complicated to me, but for now it’s the only possible solution, so thank you
It seems that simple thermostat eill do job better. Why there is no such solution to use temp/humidity sensor as a trigger depending on schedule or set temperature range (hysteresis), or both, and simple dry contact relay as an executor, connected to heating/cooling device. Ot is obviiuos silution for heating purposes.
But we have a temperature relay, which is quite incovenient and limited, as it needs wired connection to sensor and to heating device when both are in different locations
On the IF condition, change it to “all conditions are met” and add the thermometer as a criterion too.
But, unlike traditional radiators work by heating the air, infrared heating warms the objects and people in the room, so worth to turn it on only when there is someone in the room.
You are right about IR heating. But ir you leave premises for long time unheated they will be very cold by the time some person comes and it will take quite a time to heat them to comfortable conditions. It is always better to keep minimal comfortable temperature
Thanks for the recommendation, but my experience with the IR heater is different. For example, when we get up at 08:00 and come from the bedroom to the living room, the temperature there is 17 °C, and if the heater is turned on at that moment, it takes at least an hour or two for it to become comfortable to stay in. That’s why I need a time limit, before we use the area, because after breakfast the room no longer needs to be heated.
I think you have the wrong idea because there are heating devices that have a thermostat for limiting the temperature that works in a very narrow regime of a few degrees, and I can, through an independent thermostat that I place in a certain position away from the heater, determine a wider temperature regime, which allows me a comfort zone so that the heater does not turn on every time the door is opened, for example, and the temperature drops briefly, but returns to the set range after ten minutes. You can simply plug such a device into a socket with a timer and limit the time the circuit will be active.
This is also the basis of my thinking about using a smart monitoring system such as ewelink.
Infrared heaters does not warm the air.
In your scenario, they are heating the walls in front of it, then the wall is heating the air in a very inefficient way. That’s why is taking hours to reach a comfortable temperature.
Try to add a convection heater (radiator) turning on before you wake up and then put the InfraRed heater faced towards you, when you are in the room.
Infrared heaters must be always faced towards people, because it not warm the air.
Good thinking, but when you calculate in detail the energy used to heat a space that is used for an hour or two, with a radiator or an IR heater, you come to the conclusion that an IR heater is cheaper, and the comfort is greater since you don’t walk around the entire room during breakfast, but only in a smaller part of it that is illuminated by the IR heater, while the radiator has to heat the entire room, with significantly higher energy consumption.
Look at my monthly cost to keep my 2 bedrooms flat at 22°C during the whole day.
Most of properties I lived before have an undersized heating system.
When I bought my own flat I replaced the boiler to a much bigger one and resized the radiators to double.
The biggest problem is when the heating system is undersized and it keep running all the time trying to reach the set point.
Now, my cost to keep it running all the time is almost nothing.
Come on guys. If you want to feel comfortable in a whole room, you have to keep all things warm all the time. You cannot feel good being surraunded by cool things. IR heating is great for zonal heating, depending on heat source temperature. It is not very good for your head to be under heater which is hundreds degrees celsius.
And do not believe marketing…
you need as many kilowatts of energy as your building looses, depending on inner and outer temperature. Not depending on heating type. To feel comfortable in whole building. But if you need to heat just a couple of square meters you are on alone use IR. But it is offtop I think
I completely agree with you, if we talk about comfort, we cannot put it on the same side as costs, and that is why finding the balance point is different for everyone.
In my case, when I heat my apartment with a wood-burning fireplace that blows warm air throughout the rooms, it is clear that the heating cannot satisfy comfort unless it is supplemented by some other system.
That is why, until the warm air starts to flow, just looking at the fire burning in the fireplace, I want to complement it with a pleasant feeling of warmth on my body, and not in a room that is heated 30°C at a height of 2.7 m, and only 21°C at table height if it is heated by radiators.
The fact that we can program smart devices based on data from heat and humidity sensors, ideally adjust the living space to our needs, is a challenge that requires time and knowledge, so everyone’s experiences are welcome
And presence sensors. I have 6 far infra Red heaters that only turn on if I am there. The central heating keeps a background reasonable temperature but for where I or someone else is gets far infrared photon heating too. Those far infrared heaters work very quick at producing heat energy. You just need several so that you can forget about heating walls, air and just think about people. I have 3 just in my living room.
An interesting chat. Firstly I think it is incredible that we cannot create an effective heating control system with eWelink, it seems an easy solution to add, and also how can it be called a “Smart Home” solution if it can’t do the most basic of functions for a smart home. Anyway on to IR heating -
To say that IR heating does not heat the air is incorrect, it does, I think the key difference is that IR is radiant heat rather than convected heat and as such is not using the air as a heat tranfer medium as most domestic heating systems do. IR offers greater efficiency for a number of reasons, which I won’t go into here. I use IR heat at home, in our offices and I frequently specify it for projects, I have become a big fan of it. But I rarely use a thermostat to control them. IR panels self regulate, I do not recall the correct term but the hotter they get, the less heat they generate and so in theory all you need to do is to correct size the panel(s) and then run them for the periods needed. My preferred method is to use external temperature as the driver and fire up more or fewer panels based on a set of external temp criteria, and run than many panels for the duration, it works well.
I’m glad this topic has interested someone. For a more accurate insight into my example, I don’t have a classic panel, but a 150 cm long panel that I placed above the central part of the room and the dining table as can be seen in the photo.
The heater itself does not have a thermostat, and I wanted to avoid connecting the heater with a cable to the thermostat and switch, so I connected it via a smart switch, and I control the operating mode with a ZIGBEE HT thermostat, which is not fixed, but stands on the table, in the area of heat radiation.
The heater itself has a power of 1000 W, and since I consume energy responsibly, I want to use the system optimally with smart control, by creating a scene that controls the temperature range and ensures my comfort, however, at the moment I can only program the heater’s switching on time, and the switching off occurs after reaching the upper limit of the set temperature, which is relatively fast, considering the functionality of the device.
Unfortunately, there is currently no way to turn it back on, other than creating a new scene with the start time shifted by 15 minutes compared to the first time it was switched on, and creating 10 such scenes that are all shifted by 15 minutes.
This could be avoided if the programming of the effective working time in the user-set time would enable the control of the set conditions in the set time, and not only the first state changes, as is the case now.
