Spirit Z-Wave Plus heating thermostat

I have athom homey as my home automation system.I purchased a whole load of popp zwave valves.They are ok but the battery life is not good.The other downside is that the popp valves only wake up every so often to communicate with the home automation hub.The setting is configurable but the more often they communicate with the hub, the worse the battery life.The other downside of the popp valves is that on uk radiators, they are so close the the radiator, that they are terrible at sensing the real temperature of the room.There are massive advantages to the Eurotronic valves. So much so that i have started to replace the popp valves.First advantage is that the eurotronic valves use flirs technology, which means, they react immediately to commands from the hub, without compromising their battery life.Using athom homey, they can be configured to use an external device as the temperature sensor.This can be any temperature sensing device linked to the home automation hub.This means that the temperature sensing in the room is much more realistic and accurate, and immediate.If you had a popp valve on a radiator and that valve is tucked behind a piece of furniture, it means the sensor thinks the room is warmer than it is and the actual room is cold.Main advantagesBetter battery lifeBetter displayFlirs connectivity, meaning the valve responds almost immediately to the home automation controllerCan be configured to use an external temperature sensor elsewhere in the roomIt is not as noisy as people say, I would rather have the room at the correct temperature.Valve can be configured to have its set point set by an device elsewhere in the room.You have complete control over the valve, you can either set it to maintain a certain temperature at its own leisure or set the valve to open to a set percentage.It is really good and much better than the popp, Danfoss, Drayton etc, which are all generic.To be honest, I didn’t like it at first until i realised what it can do.Obviously i have only used it with the athom homey, but i am guessing that all these functions are possible with other home automation zwave controllers.Hope this helpsAlso, forgot to say, this trv seem to work fine with Panasonic eneloop rechargeable batteries.

Great device but the support in OpenZwave (and all the services using it like HomeAssistant) is lacking. Hopefully the manufacturer will work this out with OpenZwave team

Like - looks neatAverage - eats batteries, I've got 11 of them and I get through a battery change every 2 to 3 months.Z-wave stability - not good, once connected random disconnects occur randomly, irrespective of the distance from the controllerPoor - I bought mine in 3 batches and all had the same firmware - but the controller detected them as different items - so what works on one is not there on others! The result you cannot set them up in the same manner or as the same device!!!Dire - build quality - 2 of the 11 screens failed after 12 months - the manufacturer asked for them back (returned at my expense) to "repair or replace" but after 4 months I've still to get them back and now 2 more are showing the same defects.Worse - 12 months later the manufacturer still keeps promising to send replacements for the two they have agreed are faulty but somehow they never make it to dispatch.....I would not recommend these items to my worst enemy!

As a stand alone device, this keeps the room much closer to the selected temperature than the wax-filled Danfoss TRV heads we had before. The open door detection appears to work well, preventing the room from overheating if the door is opened briefly letting in a chill blast. For UK use, where the valve is usually installed at the bottom of the radiator, it is possible to invert the display, however this cannot be done in stand alone mode, but only when connected to a z-wave hub. If you are using open source home assistant software which uses openzwave, you will either need to compile up a custom version or wait for 1.6 to be released and incorporated into home assistant for this device to be recognised - it isn't plug & play until this happens (hopefully by mid to late 2018). Unlike many z-wave TRV devices, this reports the temperate and it's open position. Note that there are some reports of a firmware bug where it only reports the temperate over z-wave if the sensitivity is increased to 0.1degC (which I have done), however, I since wonder if the issue is that the temperate holding is so good (normally +/-0.6degC for me), that at the default 0.5degC setting, it just almost never needs to report a temperature change.

Only works with Smartthings if you use a third party app.

Not impressed as does not communicate temperature or allow remote setback adjustment n Also very noisy, although sensitive. Sent back for refund and purchased Danfoss Living Connect for little extra and it does everything and almost silently.

Very happy with this device. Works very well in Hubitat. Easy to install, I didn’t need any of the 3 supplied adaptors. YMMV.Pairing is easy, and once added, you can use. Z-Wave tool to set the parameters like screen orientation, screen timeout etc.Considering their features, these seem far better value compared to the Danfoss/Popp LC-13 device

Good all-round TRV. with local control! Better firmware than the buggy StellaZ's.Mechanics aren't as quiet or efficient as the Danfoss/Popp devices.Reports temperature. Responds almost immediately to setpoint updates.Usable in the dark and on UK radiators: backlight and LCD orientation are configurable.Minus one star for the high cutoff voltage making these better suited for use with alkaline or lithium batteries.Two installed since March 2018. Looking to replace our remaining 12 StellaZ's with these.