Nodon TRV-4-1-00: Zigbee thermostatic valve compatible with Home Assistant and Jeedom

After the great success of the Zigbee modules for electric heating, which incidentally have also been the choice of large companies such as Leroy Merlin and Schneider Electric who have chosen these NodOn modules in white label to offer them to their customers, NodOn now proposes this time, an intelligent thermostatic valve for heating with water radiators.

Why does NodOn TRV-4-1-00 have this price?

The price of the NodOn thermostatic head is higher than other models on the market, which is justified by a high-quality “Made in Germany” product, various integrated features, and the integration of Zigbee wireless technology.

Advantages and disadvantages of the NodOn thermostatic head

Tutorial on how to use the NodOn Zigbee thermostatic valve

Having a smart heating system is one of the most popular aspects of the smart home market.

The reason is simple: it is possible to save up to 30 % in energy consumption and therefore reduce the cost of our energy bill.

General characteristics of the thermostatic valve TRV-4-1-00

To begin with, the packaging says “Made in Germany”, which may be an indicator of quality.

If we open this packaging, we discover the NodOn thermostatic valve.

We also have 2 AA batteries included.

This NodOn thermostatic valve has an M30x1.5 mm format, one of the most commonly used by default in radiators.

But it also includes three adapters (RA, RAV and RAVL), which are very useful for connecting the NodOn thermostatic valve to radiators with other types of thread.

This head is white, being the most popular colour on the market, with dimensions of 62 x 68 x 83 mm.

A weight of 230 grams with batteries in place.

And it has a display at the top that shows the temperature and other practical information.

It also integrates 2 physical buttons allowing the temperature to be raised and lowered locally, without the need to use the phone, at 0.5°C each press or during a hold press every 0.5 seconds.

We can adjust the temperature from 8 to 28°C with this NodOn thermostatic valve.

In front, we have a lid that we can open easily and we can see the inside where we can put the 2 batteries and we also have a reset button to use it in some contexts.

This cover available on the front side offers easy maintenance without having to disassemble the head every time the batteries need to be changed.

And in terms of technology, like the entire NodOn range, it communicates via Zigbee, making it a safe bet for your smart home project, given that all the major brands on the market are committed to this technology.

And, therefore, it allows us to unify our installation and enjoy interesting features such as low power consumption, a mesh network between Zigbee devices automatically increasing the scope of communications, with encrypted communications, status returns among the most important functions.

In terms of compatibility, the company NodOn indicates that this Zigbee thermostatic valve is compatible with Home Assistant, Jeedom, Zigbee2MQTT, WiziNote, Energeasy Connect, Otodo and Alexa.

And in the case of the smart home user who will install this NodOn TRV-4-1-00 device, it uses the Jeedom Luna home automation hub and the Zigbee2MQTT platform.

It should be noted that this user will install several thermostatic valves of different brands such as Moes, Aqara and Schneider Electric.

They all communicate with Zigbee technology so you will have a unified installation with the same Jeedom Luna hub using this Zigbee2MQTT platform that you can also use in Home Assistant, being the most complete option in the market in my opinion.

How to link the thermostatic head NodOn TRV-4-1-00

Now we are going to see how to link the NodOn thermostatic valve and for this, you must put in your batteries.

At this point, a PA symbol should appear and a countdown from 99 starts.

If this is not the case, you can reset the valve by pressing its reset button for 10 seconds.

At this point, you should also put your home automation hub into inclusion mode.

Ready, after a few seconds, your NodOn thermostatic valve should appear in the interface of your home automation hub, so you will now have control of the functions of your NodOn thermostatic valve.

How to install the NodOn thermostatic valve

Once you have added it to your home automation hub, your NodOn smart thermostatic valve should display the AD symbol.

And you can install it on your radiator by replacing your traditional thermostatic valve. You should check if with the default format, your NodOn thermostatic valve is installed correctly on your radiator and if it is not the case, you should use an adapter.

Once the thermostatic valve is in place, you can turn the nut clockwise until it is fully tightened.

Now, you can start the calibration of this thermostatic valve by pressing the “+” and “-” buttons simultaneously for 3 seconds.

And a symbol with 6 lines should appear indicating that the calibration is running. You should wait a few seconds until this calibration is finished.

And now, it should display the temperature meaning that you will have control of your radiator from anywhere in the world on your phone and can optimise the use of your heating.

Detailed functions of the thermostatic Zigbee valve TRV-4-1-00

Let’s discover the detailed functions of this NodOn thermostatic valve.

The first thing I want to point out and which is interesting with the NodOn company is that, unlike some brands that propose their Zigbee devices and their own Zigbee home automation hubs and therefore are not interested in integrations with universal platforms such as Zigbee2MQTT used in Home Assistant and Jeedom, NodOn is very interested in making its devices compatible with different solutions.

Therefore, the compatibilities of their Zigbee devices with platforms such as Zigbee2MQTT are usually complete and they also offer OTA updates, so if we use Zigbee2MQTT with Home Assistant or Jeedom, we will be able to update our devices over time.

To begin with, “Child Lock” is used to lock the physical buttons on the device so that children cannot manipulate them. You can unlock them at any time.

You can also lock the physical manipulation directly by pressing the “+” and “-” buttons simultaneously for 3 seconds and the other way round to unlock.

“Local_temperature”: is the current room temperature measured by the thermostatic valve.

You will be able to follow the temperature of this room over time thanks to a measurement history.

“Pi_Heating_Demand”: shows the percentage of valve opening from 0 to 100%.

“Local_temperature_calibration”: is a temperature compensation setting if you think that the temperature sensor does not measure correctly. The adjustment range is -12.8 to +12.7 °C in 0.1 steps.

“Occupied_heating_setpoint”: allows the heating temperature to be set from 7.5°C to 28.5°C.

“Unoccupied_heating_setpoint”: also allows the heating temperature to be set from 7.5°C to 28.5°C.

What is interesting is to be able to distinguish 2 commands, occupied and unoccupied, which can be very practical for some scenes, for example, setting a temperature of 20 degrees for the “occupied” command and 17 degrees for the “unoccupied” command. Thus, depending on our presence or absence, this heating could be adjusted automatically using one of these 2 commands.

“System_Mode”: is the operating mode of the device, OFF, Auto or Heat.

OFF turns off the NodOn thermostatic valve and you can also do it physically by pressing the “-” button until you have the symbol with 2 lines that appears on the interface.

“Mirror Display: This simply reverses the display of the thermostatic head, which is useful in some installations where you have the NodOn thermostatic head installed upside down.

“Battery: This is the battery level of the thermostatic head from 0 to 100%.

“TRV Mode”: Defines how the radiator valve is controlled. “Auto” is an automatic control based on temperature. This means that if you set your thermostatic head to a temperature of 20°C, it will automatically open or close the valve.

“Valve_Position_Mode” is a manual control by percentage, i.e. in this case, we manually adjust the valve opening percentage. “Manual” is similar to “Valve_Position_Mode”, i.e. we manually adjust the valve opening percentage but also disable the buttons of the device so that nobody can manipulate them.

Although the thermostatic head can automatically adjust the heating, it can be interesting to do it manually for different reasons such as having your own heating control logic, if you have presence sensors, if you open windows, if you have temperature sensors in more strategic areas that measure more accurately the temperature of an area or a centralised system.

“Valve Position”: This is the manual position that you can set on the valve from 0 to 100% if you have TRV Mode in “Valve_Position_Mode”.

And “Link quality” is the quality of the link of the device, it is an interesting information to know if our NodOn thermostatic valve has good communication range with our hub and if it is not the case, we can value the purchase of Zigbee signal repeaters knowing that a great advantage of Zigbee is that any device connected to the current such as plugs, modules or Zigbee bulbs can automatically act as signal repeaters.

Of course, with the interface of your home automation hub, from your phone, you have an easier interaction of your thermostatic valve being able to adjust the temperature, see what is the current measured temperature and activate or deactivate the valve being the most important functions for everyday use.

And the magic of a smart home is to be able to combine different smart devices and criteria to create scenes.

As a simple example, we can create a calendar where we are going to set the thermostatic heads to “Auto” and set them to 17°C from Monday to Friday from 8h to 17h when we are away from home and from 0h to 5h when we are all in bed. And 20°C from 5h to 8h and from 17h to 0h when we are active at home.

At weekends, we can simply adjust the heating ourselves from our phone when we leave or return home as we tend to have different and variable schedules.

This is surely one of the simplest and most effective ways to make energy savings.

Perhaps it would have been interesting to have time programming directly accessible on the NodOn thermostatic head, as is possible with other models on the market that DO integrate this function and do not depend on a home automation hub.

But by having a home automation hub, you can programme these heating times and settings from the hub itself.

And if we want to further optimise the energy savings, we can create another scene, e.g. if we open the window detected by our window sensor, the valve is automatically set to “Valve_Position_Mode” at 0%, i.e. the heating is completely cut off.

And it returns to “Auto” mode when the window is closed, so it will return to the automatic setting of our configured heating.

It is also possible to create scenes based on local control from a physical Zigbee thermostat and this is the case for the user who is going to use a Schneider Electric thermostat so that, in addition to a calendar-based control of his heating, he can also control all the Zigbee thermostatic valves at all times from this physical thermostat at home.

Generally purchased together

Buy now your thermostatic head TRV-4-1-00