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Just to say that I had recently received some feedback from one of our customers on their experience of using Shelly TRVs under a Cortex automation scheme (via Cortex API) - from the point of view of effect on battery life. Although one sample doesn't make a statistic it sounds like it may not be impossible to get a year or more (obviously depends on set point profiles and general activity). They were still using their existing wired framework for the rest of the system but obviously with the new WiFi modules it would be possible to achieve a totally wireless configuration - as I have illustrated in a document linked to by another thread. Anyhow, document updated to clarify this alternative seeing as it sounds like it could be viable for some. See: http://www.idratek.com/public/docs/g...%20example.pdf
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Last edited by Karam; 27 June 2023, 04:03 PM. -
As it so happens ... I saw this post (only this week I'm afraid) and it sparked me to check up on my TRV's to see where they're at battery wise.
For context, I've got 1 TRV that I bought a fair while ago, as a trial device .. then the rest of the house (Barring 1 rad that I still need to change the physical valve on to accommodate it) had them installed more recently (10 TRV's).
Looking at my oldest device;
This was for a while setup to follow it's own temperature curves, but later I changed it to be dumb - and only operate based on API inputs, was actually finally dead; I'd not noticed with it being summer and the heating having not been on for a couple of months.
Charging it back up, I've checked the temperature history to remind me when it was installed, and I can see its history goes back to end of March, early April 2022, and cuts off just 3 weeks ago. With this, the battery has lasted a little over 16 months.
The remaining 10 TRV's across the house;
These were installed in Dec '22, and they're all sat at about 60% charge on average .. with the lowest being 49%, most at 61%, and one at 67%. My assumption on the lowest battery level device, is that it's in the least well insulated room that gets the coldest, so is likely to have had the most actuations as that room demands more heat naturally.
The downside of having battery life this long is it's easy to forget they might need a charge! I'm intending to solve this problem, by once every now and again (Monthly maybe?) poll the API for battery status, then sending a push notification to my phone (Can this be made a native feature for an iOS device Karam please?
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The setup I've used with this can now be revisited because Cortex now has outputs that weren't there when I did this, and the logic I'm using could probably be finessed as it was a simple "all open" or "all closed" deal .. where I think there's the possibility of a "Half closed" state that might smooth things out better when the temperature is rising, but not quite at the set point to limit some "overshoot" ... but that said, it's worked really well as is.
I also intend to figure out how to change the logic so that for upstairs, I can "pre-heat" the bedrooms for the hour before bedtime (per room), then from that point, only base it on presence to heat. So if the kids have sleep-overs elsewhere, the heating in those rooms won't needlessly heat, and my upstairs office will only continue heating if I'm working late / tinkering with tech, but not if I'm not.
All in all - very pleased with the Shelly TRV's - would definitely recommend them. -
You could perhaps just use a bump in the unoccupied setpoint profile to achieve the pre-heat?Comment
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