Disclaimer: This system was purpose built for my own central heating system. Systems and control methods will vary between different boilers so be sure to research how your own system is controlled rather than simply replicating what I have done here. In particular you would need to take care to determine whether your system uses mains voltage contacts like mine does or if it uses volt free contacts which would require either modifications to the Sonoff or a different model of Sonoff supporting dry contacts to be used instead. If in doubt, always contact a professional before attempting anything like this.

This is awesome. I love the software and the fact it’s expandable

I have hive at home, your system looks so much better even though it’s not “polished”. I like the graph plotting view. Really useful.

Great inspiration! I`ve seen your network installation video after I did some Cat6-cabling myself, and got this recommended today. Some time back I was looking to do something similar to four devices I have. An AC for the whole house(with built-in temp-sensor on the indoor-fan-unit) and with three thermostats(from 2006) for floor heating in two bathrooms and a cellar. Would be great to get an electrican to install some hardware and to tweak around with software to get functions like night and day-time power-saving. But solutions like that cost a fortune.

The UI skills impressed the most :D

Excellent project, and a great video as always. I love the ESP8266 chips, I use them in a few different projects in my home.

I have a very similar boiler to that and can say they absolutely hate being turned off! An amazing video.

That looks great. A fantastic project I could do to implement as my home heating is on a basic controller similar to the one you replaced.

This is great, this looks much more flexible and cost effective than something like Nest. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the video, I've considered doing something like this for a while. Mainly because the timer is broken on my system, but it'd also be neat to switch it on and off from anywhere in the house (and to muck around doing it myself). Also, I have one of those USB serial adaptors and it's nice to see mine isn't the only one with a wonky USB plug :)

I did this a different way. I left the original programmer in place which takes care of the usual temp control and programmed settings but used a 433Mhz relay to override and interrupt the relay that switches the central heating on and off. All of this is controlled using a broad link hub, an old Galaxy s4 with voice control by Alexa. The s4 setup is fully automated using Tasker giving you endless possibilities such as Google calendar intergration, for example, when the phone battery is 100% power to the phone is disconnected and turns back on when the battery reaches 10%. Using Tasker and Alexa your programming options are limited to your ingenuity but best of all, no 3rd party websites involved so if the internet is down you still have full internal control.

This is so cool, I wish I had the ability to do a project like this

Great video and lovely bit of coding and hardware work there, Cameron. Nice neat installation job too 👍👍

Really nice software, good job!

The only thing you need to look out for is with InfluxDB that you set a retention span for your series data (and maybe only store daily averages for anything outside of your volatile per-reading measurement stored data). Nicely done Cameron

The ESP8266 is perfectly fine with 5V signals (it has clamping diodes), it's POWERING them from 5V that kills them. You can use a 5V serial adapter if it's all you have as long as you power the board from 3.3V.

Subscribed; absolute pleasure watching this video

absolutely amanzing! Great thing

Nicely done :D The sensor enclosure looks identical to the Evatron EN30 listed at CPC for £2.18

haha we share the same naming creativity haha. Thanks for the amazingly described video! Stay strong through these hard times, dude, take care!

I'd love to see some videos on setting this all up (software wise)

I was actually just thinking of making pretty much this exact thing this month...

'Im no big Clive' 😂😂 Great comment mate. Great video. Clive is a legend mind😀

I cam in to this video thinking why not use home assistant. Then you got to the software part and found your reasons very valid. Just to expand on the UI being yaml in Home assistant, Home assistant is ment to be just a state machine, the UI is currently a hack on to the state machine engine(Its changing to a purpose built ui thing, that is still configured using yaml and in a fix style). that said it is very possible to use the Web Socket API to make your own UI and keep home assistant as a state machine

Hi, great find! what transistor and LED did u use ?

Great job, keep up that

Hi mate brilliant video your skill level is through the roof 😁 hope you dont mind me asking can the temperature sensor record temp and humidity over time with standard firmware and create graphs

I think it would be cool to install a raspberry pi with touch screen in the hall closet to control this. Though, it would be redundant since you could just use a phone or computer to control it. On the other hand, if you have company staying in your flat for an extended period, it probably isn't that bad of an idea

Nice video , does this device shows temp and humidity readings inside the google home app ?

Great stuff Cameron - I think a Big Clive teardown would be very useful. I've heard some bad things about Sonoffs (but maybe that's just the cheap Chinese imports?). Keep up the good work! Bruce.

Really cool project, I wonder if I could do the same to my heating system, its not central heating and is ceiling/floor heating with a thermostat? in each room

You could put a 1k and 2k voltage divider on the tx of the USB to ttl converter. You don't need anything special on the RX. You could also use the same voltage divider for the 5v out to power it. So you can use a 5V USB to ttl without a problem

Wow... Your really knowledge able and having the guts to do it. One question, is the sensing were a reused wire from the old timer box?

IMO, the smart meters are the way to go, especially when it's 7 day forecasts, not only can it tell you the temperature outside based on your local weather station but act accordingly due to your preferences it has noticed over the months that you have used it along with zoning appropriately (we all know some rooms are warmer/cooler than others so it's not efficient to treat it like all others)... or even just turning the fan on to mix the air between zones to make it comfortable with the same energy usage as an exhaust fan For predicted hot days, the house should be cooled early rather than later and for cold days the same, for nights it should be turned off or turned down low, most current air conditioner thermostats are so stupid the energy ratings might as well be classified as "abysmal" and smart ones should have the "energy star rating" based on predictive natures Same with Gardening, no point in having a water timer for outside when it's going to rain, and maybe you would like to tell it to water more on predicted hot day mornings. I know it sounds like too much information but bottom line is this. Traditional methods of air conditioning would cost approx $20-30 more per unit above having none, where yours could slash it to approx $2-$10 more per month over having none.. basically the system would pay for itself. Yes there is the privacy issues, but as long as it isn't voice monitoring you should be fine, if it does, don't whisper dirty things into it... some dirt can't be fixed with a filter change.

Satisfying!

i can't get over hearing you say 'sawn-off' for the 10th time now and only later realising you're talking about the switch box and not a shotgun xDDD

I've done the same, but just used Alexa for the timer. Saved writing a new UI :)

have you considered Prometheus instead of InfluxDB? I have heard that it takes a lot of resources. Prometheus 1 was even able to run on a Raspberry Pi

Great project but why change from the Sonoff software?

Possible upgrade: PID control. Depends on the building and the heating system, but it can be much more confortable than two point switching with huge hysteresis. There is no continuously variable input on the boiler to control how much power you want, but you can control the ON/OFF ratio in PWM-like fashion (pulse width modulation). The cycle time should not be choosen too short because it may lower the heating efficiency and may shorten the lifetime of the boiler. 10-20 minutes is a good start.

How did you connect to your boiler did you modify the sonoff to a dry contact or did you use the live from the sonoff to feed the boiler PCB

Fair play I like this project. Done a great job. Think you could get it to work with Alexa or Google Home?

The GPIO Pin will happily drive an LED. Just use a slightly bigger resistor and limit the current on the LED that way. It just means the LED will not be quite as bright, but the LED will last longer :). Great little project. I have a system that uses a 24V drive to the thermostat so I am modifying a SonOffSV to do the job. Great thing about the SonOff SV is it has pins for 3 additional GPIO's on board also :) Have you progressed further with writing your own smarthome hub or did you give in and you to a "premade" one?

You may want to install a dumb thermostatic control switch in parallel to your relay set at 5°C. This would be in place so that if the sonoff fails while you are away for an extended period of time the temperature cannot reach freezing and burst pipes. Heat flux from neighboring apartments would delay that type of failure.

You could also wire up thermostats around the house so you get an accurate 'house/room' temperature and get a real idea of humidity and temperature. This is something even modern thermostats don't do which I think is a massive flaw.

Looks amazing! I'm trying to download your Smart Home Hub via github but I have no idea how github works. Does anyone know how to get the Smart Home Hub working?

How bright is the LED on this unit? I am looking at a ESP8266 controlled thermostat, but it is in the hall way so I was thinking of maybe a resistor to limit the current to the LED rather than switching the full 20mA to it.

Really good video, really enjoy your content. One thing I think would be really interesting to see would be power usage monitoring in a smart home hub like that. It's annoying that the new Smart Meters don't allow you to harvest your usage data from them, this really frustrates me.

I advice you to order another TH16 for backup - I have been running one for about 6 months to switch on/off my desktop lamp, and it suddenly died, maybe I was just unlucky, or maybe they are not that reliable.

I think I may be adapting this to turn a electric panel heater into a "smarter" heating system

I imagine that the reason the connection to the temperature & humidity sensor has 4 wires is that there are actually 3 different sensor modules you can buy for the TH10/TH16. One is the AM2301 that you used, and that's essentially the same as the very popular DHT-22 temperature & humidity sensor (I have a dozen or more of those around my house!), and Adafruit sell the AM230*2* here: www.adafruit.com/product/393. That uses a 1-wire protocol specific to the DHT11/DHT22/AM230x devices and has accuracy specs around ±0.5°C and ±3%RH. Another option is the DS18B20 which is also popular with hobbyists, also has a ±0.5°C accuracy, and uses the Dallas 1-Wire protocol (Adafruit: www.adafruit.com/product/381). However the third option is the Si7021, which actually uses I2C and therefore requires four connections (Adafruit have it on a breakout board here: www.adafruit.com/product/3251). The Si7021is marginally more accurate, at ±0.4°C and ±3%RH, but one nice advantage of that is that because it uses I2C, and therefore you have the I2C pair of signals at your pretty thermostat box, you could hook up all kinds of other I2C devices in there as well, right in your hallway, e.g. an LED driver, an I/O expander, an ADC, some kind of keypad, even some types of display such as the 1602/2004 character LCDs (connected via one of the typical "FC-113" I2C Philips/NXP PCF8574T I/O expander boards, of course) or the little ~1" OLED modules :) That said, the manufacturers of the AM2301 module appear to fit it with a 4-pin connector with pin 4 as "N/C" as well, so maybe there's another reason! kropochev.com/downloads/humidity/AM2301.pdf It looks like the PCB inside the original AM2301 is the same as yours, so I guess Sonoff just swap out the cable - or probably just get AOSONG to build them with that TRSS cable instead. I've lately been considering doing something like this myself. I live on the top floor of a 3-storey house (rented, of course!) and even though we have dual-zone central heating, the thermostat that affects the top floor is on the middle floor, and so the temperature up here has no bearing on what the thermostat senses - and of course it's not a wireless system so I can't just move the thermostat upstairs! :( My thermostat programmer module removes from its wall mount plate more easily than yours does (there's just a catch you press down with a finger just below it, and then it slides up and out), and the removable unit connects to the wiring via five fairly big, thick pins that stick out of the back of the programmer and slide into matching holes in the mounting plate. So given that this is a rented property and I'd like to avoid messing with the thermostat wiring (although I've already swapped out three lighting dimmer switches for standard switches, because LED lamps really don't like being stuck on non-LED-suitable dimmers, even at "full power"!), I've been considering making a PCB with suitable pins to fit into those connectors, putting it inside a custom-designed 3D printed enclosure to make it look a bit nicer, and then doing something similar to what you have here. Most of the time all I'd need is "it's freezing, turn the heating on for a few hours" or "oh god I'm melting, turn off already!" :) So your software might come in handy! No idea yet if my thermostat has volt-free contacts or not, though! I know that it has mains voltage behind the wall mount, but I haven't looked into the wiring schematic yet!

Cameron: (sat in a 23.8 degree room) "it's too hot, I'm dying" Me: (sat In a 24.3 degree room) "I'm cold" Great video though, I'm a ReactJS software dev, loved the custom dashboard, so much better & easier to use than a prebuilt system, especially since it's expandable to really anything.

I was wanting to do something like this, but then I just got a cheap zwave thermostat and linked it with home assistant.

I've looked into this myself....you have executed it well. However, let's say the compute workload is moved to the cloud. In the event of an outage or loss of connectivity, what happens? No heating? I like the idea of running it on something solid state like a Raspberry pi or Arduino.

nice video, glad to know you from youtube channel,do u want to review smart home?

Do you have an immersion heater in your water tank which you have made 'smart'? I was thinking of adding a Sonoff to power mine on and off from Home Assistant (when I need to), but its a 3kW element I'm not sure if this is sensible.

Boilers have volt free contacts. How did you interface between the sonoff 230v out and the boiler terminals?

C: well executed and presented! You know, that esp8266 is also totally capable of hosting its own web page, no other servers needed. Could send out mqtt & host web page. Also, I'm a fan of 'homie' for esp8266 (on github) as it takes care of bootstrapping network config. and over the air programming.

FYI battery operated stats are cheaper than mains operated stats, despite there being the more expensive 3 core and earth installed, they could of installed 2 core and earth for further cost savings

Well done, but as you bought a separate housing for the sensor you might as well have bought a bare dht22 sensor module or ds18b20

Smart.

Hello Cameron, i would like to do this project, but i dont understand the hardware issue. My boiler just requires a simple switch, but the TH16 switches mains to your boiler. Can you advise!

Great video! Have you considered calculating the dew point based on the RH and temperature values?

Hi Cameron , I am interested in using a sonoff with the temp sensor to control a circulation water pump that turns on a pump when a certain temp is reached and off after it runs and the temp falls..basically a pipestat ..can I get live feed back of temp from the sensor and can i set up a high and low set points. Is it possible to hack the software to does this..

super !!!!

i got the sonoff th 16 but im a bit confused as im unknown in this area is the power from the heater that powers the regular thermostat enough for the sonoff? I can't seem to power the sonoff on with the Red Blue wires that run from the heater. Do I need a seperate power supply for it?

While I wouldn't recommend testing the theory, I've read that the GPIO on the ESP8266 are 5v tolerant - and it's only TX (RX on the ESP8266) that would be exposed anyway, not both TX and RX

i think the AAs are so it keeps the programs in the event of a power outage

With the fact that it uses a standard ESP8266, that means it could be reworked to connect to Adafruit IO instead of Sonoff's service, though, to be fair, both services are IFTTT compatible. Also, I can understand if you decided not to replace your existing heating programmer with one of those Nest things, of which the UK version is apparently wireless.

25:16, go easy on your central heating water temperature, higher temps reduces efficiency in condensing boilers like yours.

From where i can get the sensor plastic holder to hide the sensor? thanks in advance

nice man, i want to do something the same this, can you help me ?

Have you had a look at openhab or home asistant?

Can you post a digram of your sonoff wiring please? Thank you

uC can sink more current than source. You probably could get away with 80mA sinking current.

tips for home assistant Integrations

The Honeywell controller would be battery operated in case of power outage I believe.

18:18 I swear that sidebar looks like it was ripped from Cockpit (for managing Linux servers)… 18:56 I really wonder if the web portion of Cockpit actually runs on Flask…

I've recently switched to Home Assistant which has made my work flows so much easier. Have you looked at the new Lovelace UI much more easier to setup and you can now have custom cards on there. Might be something to look at and maybe create a hass.io plugin with your thermostat control. I'm currently working on a thermostat unit that will have a colour LCD to show heating status, set the temp and show currrent temp from a remote sensor in the living room.

Neat solution but running everything on a server seems a little overkill. You've also re-invented the wheel a little and Home Assistant would have been much easier running on a Raspberry Pi. It has a built in Cilmate/Thermostat component and provides graphs etc as standard.

A similar product exists here: openenergymonitor.com/wifi-mqtt-relay-thermostat/ where this can also talk MQTT back to a Raspberry Pi for additional control. I would imagine you could use several temperature sensors around the house if you wanted to, rather than just one central temperature probe.

14 quid for the box? Jesus screwfix must have a massive markup that

For anyone else in the UK who wants to do something like this and who's rightly baulking at coughing up 14quid for a vented plastic sensor enclosure, here's quite a few alternatives equivalents from CPC cpc.farnell.com/search?st=sensor%20enclosure, which are much cheaper, even more so if you buy some other bits and bobs to qualify for free shipping.

Is that i3 + mate?

Not Big Clive, but John Ward had a series of videos on this Sonoff switch (edit: a similar one): kzfaq.info/sun/PLVsHvs2Suqmot1ADJmdhjJX43szPSx3Cj

Why not use a jail instead of using a bhyve instance?

If it has an additional unused GPIO pin, you really should have mentioned it🙄

How is that smart?

whats the point of this? Why do you need to control your heating from the internet?

You should have used a FCU not just a DP switch, the device is not fused! I would suggest buying a Hive or Nest Thermostat instead, as when you sell the flat this all has to be removed. Nice project though.

Сделай мобильное приложение.

You always sound as if you're super cold. So maybe something like this is what you need. 😝

Lol till windows crashes lol

25m video for 2m content

Amateur that’s all I’m saying

You've probably invalidated your buildings and contents insurance policy.