New thermostat setup: 868mhz or BLE?

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Hi everyone, I am planning to use pimatic to build a new heating setup for my house. I would like to have the possibility to set the temperature in each room indipendently. For now I am unsure between the eQ3 Max! (868mhz) radiator thermostats or the new eQ3 Eqiva (BLE). Which one is more reliable according to you and what are the pros/cons of each one?

If someone has any other suggestion I will also appreciate that!

Thanks a lot to everyone

EDIT 2: thanks to @mwitting and @incmve for clarification on the names and technologies of the radiator valves!

Pimatic can’t handle 868MHz.

@v1per said in New thermostat setup: 868mhz or Ble?:

Pimatic can’t handle 868MHz.

It should now, at least according to this post, using a CUL:
https://forum.pimatic.org/topic/2483/pimatic-maxcul-and-max-cube-with-aculfw-acting-as-cul

@francis i use 868mhz … with q3 max thermostats … this workfine… you can also use “zwave.me” … for both are plugins available.

“Ble” = Bluetooth? … i dont recommend bluetooth.

eQ-3 Max! System:
pro: cheap, easy setup, easy use with pimatic plugin
contra: only thermostats and Window-Contact sensors

zwave.me:
pro: endless devices from endless manufacturers
contra: more expensive

i have both systems in my Pimatic, because i use the Heating over eQ-3 Max! and other devices like PIRs over zwave.

But every important is that your heating valves running smooth, because there Thermostats (no matter wich tech.) as only a certain amount of Power to control the Heating.

i had to switch all my heating valves to get it work properly!

@tehmilcho said in New thermostat setup: 868mhz or Ble?:

@francis i use 868mhz … with q3 max thermostats … this workfine… you can also use “zwave” … for both are plugins available.

“Ble” = Bluetooth? … i dont recommend bluetooth.

Q3 Max System:
pro: cheap, easy setup, easy use with pimatic plugin
contra: only thermostats and Window-Contact sensors

zwave:
pro: endless devices from endless manufacturers
contra: more expensive

i have both systems in my Pimatic, because i use the Heating over 3Q max and other devices like PIRs over zwave.

Hi thanks for the info. For now I’m planning to control only heating so I guess I do not need zwave. As for BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) Max eQ-3 has released new valves that works directly out of the box with an android app (there are already integrations for FHEM, Homeassistant and others), it seemed a good option to me, may I ask you why you aren’t reccomanding it?

Thanks a lot

@francis bluetooth is not that stable as 868mhz. And with 868mhz and the Maxcube you can control your heating over the internet and over Pimatic, with the Pimatic Echo Plugin also over Amazon echo.

To my understanding the Max Q3 is a Bluetooth device, not a BLE device. Bluetooth and BLE are really two different things

@rrooggiieerr said in New thermostat setup: 868mhz or Ble?:

To my understanding the Max Q3 is a Bluetooth device, not a BLE device. Bluetooth and BLE are really two different things

I think you are definitely right, I’ll correct the first post.

modules:composer.user_said_in, @francis, New thermostat setup: 868mhz or Bluetooth?

I think you are definitely right, I’ll correct the first post.

@rrooggiieerr No, I think it is neither BLE nor Bluetooth! The correct brand name is eQ-3 Max!, btw. It uses a proprietary protocol transmitted in the 868 MHz SRD band. See also - http://www.eq-3.com/products/max/max-radiator-solution.html

BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy, aka. Bluetooth Smart) is just a variant of the Bluetooth protocol. Bluetooth runs on 2.4 Ghz.

eq-3 also provides Bluetooth Smart (= BLE) thermostats sold under “eqiva” brand. These products are stand-alone devices, meaning that they are operated independently of the MAX!, Homematic or Homematic IP systems. See also http://www.eq-3.com/products/eqiva.html

Following this, it does not make much sense to have Bluetooth thermostats for use with pimatic unless you plan to have a bluetooth gateway in each room of the house.

EDIT: Note beyond, eq-3 also offers “Homematic” and “Homematic IP” thermostats. These products also run on 868 Mhz while “Homematic IP” is the more recent protocol variant which includes 128-bit AES encryption and IPv6 device addressing. In other words each thermostat has an IPv6 address rather than using a proprietary addressing scheme.

Yes my choice was between the eQ3 Max! valves (which however I would be using without the whole IP system, but only with a CUL and the relative pimatic plugin) and the Bluetooth Eqiva valves (and I leave to you the discussion on wherever these are BLE or not). From my understanding the first system would work better in term of walls penetration, while the second one would be simpler, needing only a wall mounted tablet with a Bluetooth dongle controlling the valves (radiators are all within a 10mt range from it, and in case the whole thing won’t work, I will still have the opportunity to use the phone to command them). The second one is also cheaper (except in Germany where you can get the eQ3 valves for less than €20 each).

One thing is sure: I don’t want to use the Max! Cube as it is another power consuming device to add to the house and its interface is old looking and utterly complicated.

Despite that, everyone here seems to be suggesting the Max! eQ3 solution so maybe it is the right choice, but I think with this last post I expressed my intentions better (hoping that this topic would be useful to anyone who wants to improve their heating controlling system).

@francis I think the eQ-3 Max! product line is recommended in this forum as it is relatively cheap and it is known to work. Considering your setting (as you say radiators are all within a 10mt range from the BT dongle) the bluetooth setup may work fine for you, but I won’t bet on this. If you give this a try please let us know about your findings. Maybe you can start off with single thermostat and test the connectivity in each room for robustness.@rrooggiieerr might fit in here regarding the integration with pimatic as he is currently working on the BLE integration for different device types (smart tags, Xiaomi Mi plant monitor).

As said earlier you may also want to have look at “Homematic IP” which is more expensive than Max!, however.

Apparently, the eQ-3 Eqiva thermostats currently have serious security leak! According to the following source, anyone within the Bluetooth LE range of around 40m can control and therefore hijack the thermostat.

https://github.com/BGaunitz/eq3-security-leak

I stumble upon this while I was looking for an API description which I found here: https://github.com/Heckie75/eQ-3-radiator-thermostat/blob/master/eq-3-radiator-thermostat-api.md

Ok, so the EQ3 is also a BLE device after all. On a side note Bluetooth and BLE work in the same frequency, but the protocols are very different.

Does any of the forum/Pimatic users have an EQ3 eqiva?

EQ-3 is the brand.
They produce the Max! line which operates on radio 868Mhz
They also have the eqiva which operates on Bluetooth.

I have several Max! radiator thermostats and use a nanoCul to operate them.

@rrooggiieerr said in New thermostat setup: 868mhz or Bluetooth?:

Does any of the forum/Pimatic users have an EQ3 eqiva?

See also my previous post containing a link to the reverse engineered eqiva API. I am considering to buy an eqiva, however,I am concerned about the aforementioned security issue

I think your security concerns are valid. Regarding the BLE support, I think that’s not to difficult to implement, you could take the iTag plugin as an example

Hi, thanks to everyone for the help!

@mwittig I won’t be using the Homematic IP platform as it is expensive and in the same price range there are way nicer product (e.g. the Danfoss valve which looks so good to me). I’m not really concerned about the security part of the BLE thermostats as those aren’t my email or my bank account… They are just thermostats… I doubt anyone would be so weird to try to blackmail me using a radiator valve

Anyways for now the best solution seems to be using the Max! thermostats with a nanoCUL… Anyone knows if the code can be easily ported to work with one of those inexpensive ESP32/SX1276 boards? I’m also tempted to buy a Eqiva one and see how the BLE actually handles the situation.

If anyone wants to share some more opinions or suggestions I’ll be happy to read your posts!

By the way, have you guys seen this one:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/313176179/novo-the-smartest-radiator-valve

@rrooggiieerr said in New thermostat setup: 868mhz or BLE?:

By the way, have you guys seen this one:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/313176179/novo-the-smartest-radiator-valve

I don’t like cloud solutions… if the cloud-service is dead your hardware is waste. I wonder that they make a kickstarter founding because in the video is also a logo from EON…

@rrooggiieerr said in New thermostat setup: 868mhz or BLE?:

By the way, have you guys seen this one:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/313176179/novo-the-smartest-radiator-valve

Price!! Without display?