Hi Autolog
I've read all the posts that led to your plugin and it's clear you did what I (recently) wanted to do with our respective central heating systems. I take my hat off to you
Some years ago I hardwired thermometers around my house and controlled my antiquated boiler with VB code and a simple on/off relay. Primitive as it was it still saved 30% on my gas bill from just a thermostat...
Now, with a new boiler and an upstairs/downstairs zoned system, I decided to look into using zwave TRVs to micro-manage my heating. I started down a path you had already trudded. Trodded. Er - well, trail blazed, by the look of it.
If you haven't already come across it, you may be interested in a project called openHAB. It seeks to provide a message bus for many disparate systems related to Home Automation and they have bindings for everything from zwave to Sonos, XMPP to MQTT. The point is to link them all together and I think (if you haven't come across it already) that you could make a substantial contribution to what they are trying to do. Or maybe Indigo would be the people to link - not sure. Both, probably.
For me, I was very excited when I saw your first posts about zoning the entire house. This was my Holy Grail. Unfortunately, bit by bit, I saw how difficult it would be for me to translate your efforts into a Windows zwave platform, using the same zwave usb stick, but without a MAC or the programming skills.
I also became a little dismayed by the very nature of battery powered zwave devices. Sleep time, short wake-up times, mesh network rules... Limits on the number of TRVs, limits on zwave device functionality, timing issues... It made me think back to hard-wired devices and just how easy they are to deal with. Ugly wiring, I agree, though if you're a dab hand at internal decorating it's actually not that bad. My ADT alarm installer put sensors all over the place but you can't see any wiring till you go to the control unit in the garage. Of course, their monthly charges were why I cancelled my contract and built my own VB controlled system. Same one that handled heating back then.
I would be faced with all the same challenges as you if I go zwave.
I've been trialing a door contact/PIT/Luminence/temp/battery sensor to see how it performs and already, it seems to miss the odd activation. Probably a timing thing that could be fixed in code but it would need to be fixed. If I want to alarm my house, or use zwave to control my fuel bills I need to be certain it'll do what I want. A smoke alarm is no good if it's not 100% reliable.
I'm not smart enough to fix that.
So sadly, I have decided to re-use all my wired door/window, PIR and glass-break sensors into a new openHAB system with a parallel approach. The Alarm siren will be hard wired but the wire free notifications and Android alarms go off too (a little earlier).
My heating will retain it's existing British Gas wire-free thermostats and receivers - I won't be buying SCS317s, but I will install a few zwave TRVs in those rooms that need a much more binary control. Like "my kid is staying over, her bedroom is active" or "I have friends staying over, spare bedroom is active".
I'm disappointed to be saying this. I really hoped I could (like you) fine tune my presence in my house with my heating system but when I look at the return on investment of time, effort, programming, debugging etc., I just can't do it myself.
I wish you well with your heating project and I firmly believe you've nailed the requirements. I want the same. Push the vendors to allow sleep-time to be programmable. Maybe suggest ways wake-up stays on long enough for transactions to complete. Zwave is always moving forward and it's people like you that are driving the standard. These are real life use-cases, not just envisaged applications.
Have a look at openHAB. Kai Kreuser is the main man and he's very approachable. You could integrate your system into something a lot bigger.
Cheers
Vitch