Danfos link + zwave?

[J V]

Hello,

I'm asking a question for a friend of mine, hoping that some people here will have experience.

Is it possible to connect the Danfoss link system to a standard zwave bridge?

Danfoss only supplies an app for the phone, but they claim that they use zwave and that it is a closed standard. Does that add up?

Thanks!

Jörg

[Gast]

Hi Jörg,
I am using / testing a lot with Z-Wave devices, and I already had a look at the Danfoss Link system.

You can only use the Danfoss Link System with Z-Wave Danfoss devices from the Danfoss Link series.
All Z-Wave devices / producer use a defined communication standard, but I seems that the Danfoss Link series does it in modified way, so that other devices with the correct communication stanard can't connect.

[J V]

Thank you for the reply!
From what we have found, it looks like some models of the Danfoss valve drives are compatible with other Z-Wave devices (can you confirm this?), but the Danfoss components such as the wall thermostats and so on indeed seem locked into the Danfoss Link series. It sort of messes up the plan, as the idea was to integrate the central heating with the building management system. The plan now is to get several Razberry pi devices with the z-wave module and address the valve drives directly (it would render the wall thermostats useless).

[Gast]

Yes, I can confirm this. Danfoss also have normal devices which work with the default Z-Wave standard without modifications like at the Danfoss Link series.
There are different products from Danfoss. They have their special Link series and also the normal standard Z-Wave devices.

So I understand regarding you first post, at the moment yor friend uses the Danfoss Link series wall thermostats, and now you want to expand with radiator actors, am I right?

[J V]

Thanks!
(I know it is a bit of topic for the Loxforum; but I know this forum as I have a miniserver and thought that there would be people here that would have some knowledge on related things)

[Gast]

You are welcome.

Is that like I wrote, that your friend already use Danffos wall thermostats?

[J V]

She was asked to help fix an existing infrastructure, where some wrong decisions were made at construction time. One thing is that the central heating system uses Danfoss link, which cannot be integrated with the rest of the building management system; so now they are checking how to get it all operational. reusing as much from what is there. The valve drives seem compatible with zwave, so the plan is to reuse them and add some RaspberryPi into the mix to serve as zwave master and interface with the building management; the installed wall thermostats will not be used (or if possible set as some failback mechanism).

[Gast]

Which building managment system / technic is used at the moment beside Danfoss Link?

[J V]

It is a custom solution. The facility is a research institute which has a nice infrastructure when it comes to devices and the idea is to integrate everything related to energy in the broad sense: heating/electricity/cooling.