ELV Max! Room thermostat

[Bastiaan]

Today my set of heater thermostat and the cube will arrive but I am also in the need of replacing my main wall thermostat in the livingroom. (Giving up on my IP thermostat that brokedown again.)
I have mailed ELV and they told me a version will be available in January:
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Max! room-thermostat
Part.No. 68-09 91 07
Price: 29,95 € plus transport costs

The Max! room-thermostat is deliverable in January 2012.
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Here is the link to the manual: elv-downloads.de/Assets/Produkte/9/991/ ... C-WMV1.pdf
It seems only to be useful for controlling a group of radiatorvalves not really for directly controlling the boiler or floorheating.
In the manual I found this link: http://www.eq-3.de/index.php?id=777
Also there nothing else than controlling radiatorvalves.

Hope they will extend the program a bit further. I have given up on Zwave and IP for controlling my heater system and this seems a very affordable and nice system now we also have Homeseer control.

Bastiaan

[Digit]

Bastiaan,

This Wall Thermostat (WT) can be used to pair with a Radiator Thermostat (RT). This means the internal temperature sensor of the RT will be overridden by the WT, but nothing else changes! The WT doesn't have the ability to control your boiler...

[Bastiaan]

Hi Robert,

Well you inspired me to buy a set but I am aware of the missing link, that's why I posted.
I've just got another reply back from ELV about it:
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Das MAX System um eine Steuerung des Boilers Heizung zu erweitern ist derzeit nicht geplant
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(Bummer) but looking at their range of products it still keep hoping it might come.....
But I will need an alternative that connects properly to HS soon.

[Digit]

Ah, I see it now, I only read half of your post and thought "oops, this is going wrong", and totally missed the "It seems .." remarks...

[matthijskooijman]

I ordered a wall thermostat some time ago and it arrived two weeks ago, so perhaps they're out of stock. However, I also received a letter afterwards, stating there was some bug in the weekly program of the wall thermostate (I think, the letter was in German and I haven't fully translated it yet) and I think they said that they are working on some kind of fix. Not sure what the bug is exactly (haven't tried the thermostat yet), I'll try to put up a scan of the letter here.

Did anyone else get this letter?

[Bastiaan]

There is info on their forum about the bug. It was the reason to suspend the sales but an update version will be on sale in January. There seem to be a simple work around when you also have the cube.

[Digit]

I didn't get that letter, probably because I didn't buy a WT.
Yes, ELV stopped selling the WT because of "a" bug ("a" because I think there'll be more) and somehow this doesn't surprise me...
Tip: I made myself "Abbonent des ELV Forum" (http://www.elv.de/output/controller.asp ... detail2=31); that way I get all messages by mail and stay informed without using the ELV forum, which is really hard to use.

[Snelvuur]

Too bad my german isn't what it should be, and google translate works fine but since their website has some funky methods of coding you cant do every page (or click through it like you normally can with google translate)

[matthijskooijman]

Tip: I made myself "Abbonent des ELV Forum" (http://www.elv.de/output/controller.asp ... detail2=31); that way I get all messages by mail and stay informed without using the ELV forum, which is really hard to use.

Ah, nice. I haven't been using the forums a lot because of the crappy interface, so thanks for the tip :-)

[blake7]

My question relates to the operation of the wall thermostat. Reading through the information I understand that the radiators should be controlled by the wall thermostat based on the temperature it is sensing / showing. However, when I have the Cube set the room temperature to say 20 DegC, and the wall thermostat is showing a higher temperature, say 23 DegC, the radiators are still on. I've checked that the radiator TRV is working by setting the wall thermostat to a very low setting and the radiators do switch off. I have everything set to Auto mode with only a few time intervals. I have 3 wall thermostats in different rooms, all are doing the same. What am I missing?

[pbrand]

My question relates to the operation of the wall thermostat. Reading through the information I understand that the radiators should be controlled by the wall thermostat based on the temperature it is sensing / showing. However, when I have the Cube set the room temperature to say 20 DegC, and the wall thermostat is showing a higher temperature, say 23 DegC, the radiators are still on. I've checked that the radiator TRV is working by setting the wall thermostat to a very low setting and the radiators do switch off. I have everything set to Auto mode with only a few time intervals. I have 3 wall thermostats in different rooms, all are doing the same. What am I missing?

I don't know how long ago you purchased the equipment, but the thermostats are self learning PID controllers. So they do need some time to settle in. However, I would say that should not take more than a week or so.

Furthermore, do you actually háve a temperature of 23 degrees whilst the setpoint is set on 20 degrees? This because the fact itself that the valve does not shut entirely is correct. Because of the PID controller, the valve opening will hardly ever be entirely closed because it tries to keep your room temperature as steady as possible. In one of my rooms for example the valve is almost always around 25% percent or so when the temperature has been reached. The thermostat has 'learned' that with that setting the temperature remains more or less constant. Of course this also depends on the outside temperature. So when it suddenly gets cold, or less cold, outside the thermostat again needs some time to adjust to the new situation.

[blake7]

Thanks for the reply and the information. The devices have been in for several weeks but overall don't seem to be settling down. There are times in the day when the setpoint is say 20 degrees but the actual boiler is switched off, therefore no hot water circulating. During this time it doesn't matter if the temperature drops. Would this effect the PID on how it learns the room? Once the boiler comes on I'm expecting the temperature to even out. For now I've set all devices to a 19 degree setpoint and left the boiler on. I'm hoping it can keep the house at a constant temperature throughout the day. I've not read through the complete forum yet but I was hoping there was a way to ping the Cube / TRV / Room Thermostat to see if it will reply with the actual temperature from each device and then build up a history over time. Will see how the current setting gets on. Thanks again.

[Massi]

Yes, i have to confirm that the behaviour of the valves changes through time. But for sure if the T is something like 3 degrees higher that the T set, valve must be closed.
I graph daily the Tset, Tactual and valve aperture of every room in my house, and if T set is 16° and Tactual is 19, valve aperture is strictly 0%
But it's true that with the same delta Tset-Tactual, in different rooms valve aperture can be different..

A question for you pbrand: do you know if the "self learning" of valves get's cleared in any way? i mean, is it cleared if i remove batteries? Or do i need to re-setup the valve to reset it?

btw, saying "radiators are still on" isn't the right way of checking them. MAX! valves are not "binary", they have a very granular aperture, so you should get the valve aperture in percentage to control them.. even with a valve aperture of 20% your radiator will be "hot"..

[pbrand]

Thanks for the reply and the information. The devices have been in for several weeks but overall don't seem to be settling down. There are times in the day when the setpoint is say 20 degrees but the actual boiler is switched off, therefore no hot water circulating. During this time it doesn't matter if the temperature drops. Would this effect the PID on how it learns the room? Once the boiler comes on I'm expecting the temperature to even out.

If I understand you correctly you are saying that at some times in the day you have the thermostat on, at say 19 degrees, but the boiler off? I would say that certainly affects the PID, because it tries to keep the room at 19 degrees, which it can't because the boiler is off, so no heat available. It will then turn the valve more open, measure again if it gets warmer, then turn the valve even more open etc. The PID then learns that the room is difficult to heat up, so it will keep the valve open all the time. It would advise that you turn the thermostat down (16 degrees or so) when the boiler is off. I think that will help in settling in the PID controller the right way.

Even better, I think, would of course be to switch the boiler on automatically when heat is needed and turn it off when no heat is necessary. I am intending to switch my city heating system (which more or less equals a boiler) on/off with ZWAVE, controlled by the opening of the MAX! valves. If one, or more, of the valves is opened say at least 15-25% then the heating is turned on. That way the thermostats always get hot water when needed

If you don't like to do it with ZWAVE or something, I believe one of the forum members here, has built an arduino with shield, which monitors the MAX! system and then switches on a relay. You could use that too.

[pbrand]

A question for you pbrand: do you know if the "self learning" of valves get's cleared in any way? i mean, is it cleared if i remove batteries? Or do i need to re-setup the valve to reset it?

I'm not certain for the MAX! system, Massi. But with its predecessor, the FHT80b, you had to remove the batteries for some time (a few minutes), which was the equivalent of a reset. I guess this could work for the MAX! system as well