One of the thorns in my obsession with automating everything possible was being able to control the air conditioning remotely. Obviously I know an infinite number of systems that allow us to have the air conditioning control, however, my problem is that I have a duct system that controls different areas of the house with motorized grilles. An impossible idea? Luckily I found the people from air zone.
Domotizing a zoned air conditioner
A zoned air conditioning system is a configuration that allows you to have control of different rooms separately, being able to cool one of them while the rest remain uncooled. It's about a very efficient system that helps to control the temperature without wasting energy, since you can close the dampers of the rooms that you do not need, and thus focus the cooling or heating power in a single room.
On the contrary, it is an expensive system, which requires many more elements and a more complex installation, so the initial outlay is much higher, not to mention that for the installation it is necessary to place a central duct that runs through a large part of the house in search of the rooms, so it is not usually an installation that is considered when you already live in the house (it is usually installed in the middle of construction or in major reforms).
But if we raise the level of difficulty a little more, another of the problems posed by these systems comes when it comes to domotizing them. How to intelligently control a set of motorized grilles that depend on individual thermostats placed in each room? Obviously this eliminates any possibility of using simple WiFi adapters or thermostats like Google's Nest. The configuration of the entire system is so complex and requires so many variables that a traditional home automation system does not allow its control.
Airzone: the solution
Airzone is a Spanish company specialized in domotic air conditioning systems, and it has a fairly complete solution in its catalog that allows me to do just what I needed in my case. A switchboard and a wireless gateway take care of control all motorized grilles of my installation, and at the same time send the necessary orders to the original thermostat of the air conditioning so that it works according to the demand.
The installation should be done by a professional (especially the installation of the grilles, the connection of the control unit and everything related to the control of the air conditioning), but if you already have a control system of grilles with local control, you may not have too many problems to place the elements of Airzone on your own, although you must have a minimum knowledge of what exactly you are playing.
The final result is a configuration of very attractive thermostats with a color screen, where each of them controls a room. The wireless gateway (which can be connected to your router by WiFi or by ethernet), is in charge of creating the communication between your mobile and the thermostats, since the Airzone Cloud application will allow you to control the entire home, knowing the temperature of each room , being able to control all the zones individually, and with the possibility of creating schedules so that you have the room acclimatized whenever you want.
What is needed?
In order to automate a ducted air conditioning system with AirZone, you will need to purchase the following products:
- Airzone Flexa 3.0 control unit: It is in charge of managing the openings of the grilles of each room, sending the orders to the air conditioning machine and setting the temperatures individually.
- Control gateway: It is a motherboard in charge of communicating the control unit with the original air conditioning machine that you have installed.
- Airzone Cloud Webserver: This is the wireless adapter that gives life to a network server from which to control all aspects of the Airzone system. It has an RJ45 and Wi-Fi connection, and is compatible with Alexa and Home Assistant.
- Thermostats: Each room must have an Airzone thermostat to be able to control the grilles and set the desired temperature. There are models with a screen and without a screen, although the operation of the model with a color screen is great.
What can be done with the system?
Once you get connectivity with your air conditioning equipment, the possibilities offered by the Airzone solution are many. The application has a pretty good design, and both the response of the menus and the usability of them are quite good. With the profile creation, you can invite other family members so that they can install the application and have control of the rooms, being able to establish permissions on who can control certain rooms or not.
But in addition to the control from the official application, the wireless gateway opens up a huge range of possibilities in terms of more advanced home automation, since the system becomes compatible with Alexa. In this way, it will be enough to make a voice command to turn the air conditioning on or off, something that I have been wanting to do for a long time and that now I can finally execute. And it is that be able to turn off the air in any room from the bed priceless.
As if that were not enough, the system is also Home Assistant compatible, so if you have a server of this type set up, you can include control of the zones in your digital home, and from there create extremely complex smart actions with the rest of the smart devices you have at home. For example, you could schedule the air conditioner to turn off automatically when you leave the house.
A system that does the impossible
In short, the performance offered by the Airzone home automation system more than meets what I expected from a system of this type. Thermostats with screens give a quite interesting touch of modernity to the home, and their operation is also excellent, with a touch panel that responds perfectly and, when not in use, offers information such as room temperature, humidity and the outside temperature with a weather status icon.
It is not a particularly cheap system (an installation for 4 zones, with a switchboard and webserver costs around 1.500 euros), but taking into account that zoning systems are not particularly cheap either, the price is more or less in line with the type of installation and peculiarities of the air conditioning machine. It is basically the best home automation solution for a zoned air conditioning installation.