Smart Plug Range Extender and Room Thermostat

[TomLaird]

Hi,

I have a couple of questions regarding the smart plug please:

1. If the plug is off, is it still acting as a range extender. I have a solid blue indicator.

2. How do I know if the nearest radiator valves are connected to the smart plug rather than direct to the hub?

3. Do I need to link my smart plug range extender to specific radiator valves or does anything within range find it?

4. I cannot find the RF signal level indicator for any of the devices except the hub. Can you advise?

5. I have a room thermostat called Garden Room. In it I have 2 radiators each with a valve called Garden Room 1 and Garden Room 2. Could you tell me how to get the room thermostat to control the two radiator valves please?

Thank you and best regards

Tom Laird

[PhilHornby]

I think :-

1. Yes. Solid Blue just means that the outlet is ON.
2. This information is not shown in the Android app. It is accessible via the programming API as ("ParentNodeID").
3. No. However, Zigbee (as used by Wiser) seems to have a mind of its own. It seems to be luck of the draw, as to how the network connects. The best advice I have seen, is to move the device close to the desired Repeater (or the hub) before pairing. It might be enough to move it and power-cycle it by removing the batteries. Ultimately, the iTRV or Roomstat decides...(and mine occasionally change their minds!)
4. Detailed information is returned by the API, but it is currently not displayed in the App (6.1.0)
5. They all need to be defined as being in the same "Room". IIRC it asks you this at the initial installation time, but you can move them after the event. ("Devices" in the app). (From what I can see, when there is a Roomstat, its temperature reading is used in preference to that reported by the iTRVs. If there is no Roomstat, but multiple iTRVs, it appears to use an average of their readings).

[TomLaird]

Hi Phil,
Thank you.

1. I will take another look at the smart plug and try to understand it better. The instructions in the box ask for the hub to be turned off then on again, but of course there is no on/off switch on the hub, and there is a danger that these instructions are way out of date. Maybe the “Setup” button can be used as an on/off button.

2. Thanks for the pointer on the API. If you can post a link to a suitable starting point I’ll take a look at it and see if I can understand it enough to get some useful information out of the system. I know enough about programming to get my head around it.

3. I’ll try linking the 2 radiators to the smart plug and see if they stop dropping off the network, though first I need to make sure the smart plug is actually in extender mode.

4. Hmmm. Probably the most useful piece of information and it is not displayed. Typical 🙂

5. Ok, I’ll put them all in the same “room” and test it tomorrow.

[PhilHornby · Accepted solution]

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@TomLaird wrote:

2. Thanks for the pointer on the API. If you can post a link to a suitable starting point I’ll take a look at it and see if I can understand it enough to get some useful information out of the system. 

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I believe I started here: https://it.knightnet.org.uk/kb/nr-qa/drayton-wiser-heating-control 

(There is quite a lot of stuff on github as well - people have been adding interfaces, so that the hardware can be managed by OpenHab, NodeRed, Smartthings etc. (None of which set my heart on fire 😗)

The starting point is to press the "Setup" button on the HubR, so that it creates an SSID (Wiser_xxx) to which you connect. Then 

access http://w.x.y..z./secret  to obtain the 128? byte authentication string that has to be sent with every request. (The HubR can be returned to normal mode, once this 'secret' has been obtained).

From there, something simple like :-

curl -s -H @HeaderSecret.txt http://wiserheathub/data/v2/domain/ -o OutFile

should return something useful. (You'll need a JSON viewer!)

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[TomLaird]

Hi Phil,

That link looks pretty useful. I'll work through it and see where I get to.

thanks

Tom

[Grtman]

I would confirm Phil Hornby's point 3 above when adding new devices to a Wiser system with smart plug repeaters already installed.  Go close to the best of the hub or the smartplugs and the new device will use that signal source.  Wiser dont document this point very well.  If you add smart plugs to an existing system, you can consider removing existing devices with poor signal strength and then re-installing as Phil suggests.