I did quite a bit of looking into the airtouch when selecting our ducted heatpump. I haven't had it installed as yet, but from my research it definitely looks to be the best solution overall. I was given an estimate of ~3-3.5K to retrofit into the 8 duct system.

@scottishbhoy we just moved into our new house that has a Mitsubishi ducted heatpump with a Lossnay heat recovery ventilator attached and we went with the AirTouch 4 zone controller.

It's early days, but the biggest downside for us is that the AirTouch can only see the heat pump. It is completely unaware of the Lossnay and has no control over it.

The other downside is a lack of built in scheduling options. You are basically limited to scheduling on/off. No scheduled mode changes, or fan speed changes etc on the unit itself. You can set these types of schedules up using IFTTT however, which I have done and it works. But you need to be at least a little tech savvy as you need to create a private IFTTT applet for every schedule, and it is Internet based - so if your Internet goes down your schedules don't work. This gives us far more scheduling options than are built in to the controller, but isn't super intuitive to figure out.

Individual temperature sensors in each zone a great feature, and remote access works fine via a phone app.

What exactly is this system, we have a ducted system right now, Daikin 13KW.  Ducted throughout the house.  We have two zones configured ( front and back of house ).  Its very simple set up and we can turn it on or off.  not alot more.  Thats using the diakin kits out of the box.

Interested to know more about this, i assume every room has a damper kit to adjust the volume of air?  that concern with that is back pressure on the unit and more airflow in the vents which results on more noise in some areas?

Love to know more though

thanks

Worth the money will come down to how much being able to fiddle with the heatpump you put value on. I have four zones in my place and find that most of the time I just run all open at 23 degrees. If I know i'm not using a room (lounge for example) I can shut off that zone on the controller. I have bedrooms paired up on zones, then lounge and living as the zones. I have timers setup for morning and any use during the day / night is set depending on what we need. One weekly timer for summer, one for winter. I am all for cool tech stuff, but personally don't see it being much use for me. Cool idea though, if you have the rest of your house automated in some way. Setting zone flow in 5% increments seems to be making things more complicated than they need to be. Some people love being able to fine tune that sort of thing though, so i'm sure it will appeal. I certainly wouldn't be a few grand for it on top of a ducted heatpump cost.

I have been looking at the AT4 system for a while as a retrofit to our Fujitsu ducted system. I had PMed Paul1977 a couple of times about his system so I’m glad Scottishbhoy started this thread.

What I was looking for initially was getting some sort of wireless/remote access for our system because Fujitsu don’t offer anything to achieve that (our system is not IR so things like Pebble won’t work). So I was looking at the AT4 to just achieve that. It would involve using the display, controller and bridge of the AT4 to get remote control of Off/On, Mode, Temperature and Speed. Effectively, the same functions we have now without having to walk to the wired controller (lazy, I know!). It would appear that voice integration is also possible (GA and Alexa). But since the AT4 is designed to work with dampers in the ducts, I’m not sure if it will work without them. I have contacted a local installer with that question but haven’t heard back. I may need to contact AirTouch themselves.

Ultimately a fully zoned system would be great, but the individual wireless thermostats/controllers are quite expensive. There is also the complexity of retrofitting dampers in a system that was designed (and sized) for open flow.

I was a bit disappointed when Paul1977 indicated he was having to go down the IFTTT route to get the programmability he was looking for. I would have thought since the interface is Android, the ability to achieve the desired control would have been relatively simple. I wonder if you could use something like Tasker? That would at least keep it out of the cloud.

Froglotion:

 

Worth the money will come down to how much being able to fiddle with the heatpump you put value on. I have four zones in my place and find that most of the time I just run all open at 23 degrees. If I know i'm not using a room (lounge for example) I can shut off that zone on the controller. I have bedrooms paired up on zones, then lounge and living as the zones. I have timers setup for morning and any use during the day / night is set depending on what we need. One weekly timer for summer, one for winter. I am all for cool tech stuff, but personally don't see it being much use for me. Cool idea though, if you have the rest of your house automated in some way. Setting zone flow in 5% increments seems to be making things more complicated than they need to be. Some people love being able to fine tune that sort of thing though, so i'm sure it will appeal. I certainly wouldn't be a few grand for it on top of a ducted heatpump cost.

 

Pretty much spot on. A zoning system for ducted heat pumps. Turn on and off certain zones/rooms + change the temp/air flow independently of other rooms. Aussie company who don't seem to have sold too many units to date but the product is certainly becoming more popular. 

Dingbatt:

 

I have been looking at the AT4 system for a while as a retrofit to our Fujitsu ducted system. I had PMed Paul1977 a couple of times about his system so I’m glad Scottishbhoy started this thread.

 

What I was looking for initially was getting some sort of wireless/remote access for our system because Fujitsu don’t offer anything to achieve that (our system is not IR so things like Pebble won’t work). So I was looking at the AT4 to just achieve that. It would involve using the display, controller and bridge of the AT4 to get remote control of Off/On, Mode, Temperature and Speed. Effectively, the same functions we have now without having to walk to the wired controller (lazy, I know!). It would appear that voice integration is also possible (GA and Alexa). But since the AT4 is designed to work with dampers in the ducts, I’m not sure if it will work without them. I have contacted a local installer with that question but haven’t heard back. I may need to contact AirTouch themselves.

 

Ultimately a fully zoned system would be great, but the individual wireless thermostats/controllers are quite expensive. There is also the complexity of retrofitting dampers in a system that was designed (and sized) for open flow.

 

I was a bit disappointed when Paul1977 indicated he was having to go down the IFTTT route to get the programmability he was looking for. I would have thought since the interface is Android, the ability to achieve the desired control would have been relatively simple. I wonder if you could use something like Tasker? That would at least keep it out of the cloud.

 

I don't think it works without the dampers. A damper is about $300 each per zone and the control unit is roughly 1.8-2k, so yes not a cheap piece of kit. I have read some mixed reviews - have you heard anything about airtouch affecting the efficacy of the heat pumps themselves? e.g causing them to blow out?

Scottishbhoy:

 

I don't think it works without the dampers. A damper is about $300 each per zone and the control unit is roughly 1.8-2k, so yes not a cheap piece of kit. I have read some mixed reviews - have you heard anything about airtouch affecting the efficacy of the heat pumps themselves? e.g causing them to blow out?

 

@Scottishbhoy What do you mean "blow out"?

Scottishbhoy:

 

I don't think it works without the dampers. A damper is about $300 each per zone and the control unit is roughly 1.8-2k, so yes not a cheap piece of kit. I have read some mixed reviews - have you heard anything about airtouch affecting the efficacy of the heat pumps themselves? e.g causing them to blow out?

 

Yes, that is what I want a definitive answer about. Effectively just operating one zone with the damper set at 100% open (ie not fitted) to get just the wireless control I was originally after.

According to the installers guide, any system designed with the AT4 must have a “surge zone”, which I assume is to avoid ‘blow out’. That is where the professional installation is probably required. But I assume any system that has zones would require something to prevent all dampers to be completely closed at once.

The NZ distributor of the AT4 sells the screen+controller+bridge+connections for approx $1400. Dampers are approx $170-$230 depending on size, and each wireless sensor/switch $173. (All prices retail and incl gst).

Obviously labour and markup by installer on top of that.

Dingbatt:

 

I was a bit disappointed when Paul1977 indicated he was having to go down the IFTTT route to get the programmability he was looking for. I would have thought since the interface is Android, the ability to achieve the desired control would have been relatively simple. I wonder if you could use something like Tasker? That would at least keep it out of the cloud.

 

@Dingbatt There will be ways of keeping the control local I'm sure. I'm going to have more of a look into at some stage, but aren't in a huge rush as after testing a bit IFTTT is usable enough for what I need at the moment. Mitsubishi's own WiFi control stuff is all cloud based as well, it's just not on a 3rd party platform like IFTTT. The cloud thing doesn't bother be since the only sensitive information being stored on their servers is my AirTouch password (which is different to any other password I use).

IFTTT was also a bit easier than I had initially thought, and is quite quick once you've figured it out.

I can see why they've gone this route. They can add triggers and actions without requiring local firmware or software updates.

The only thing I can't do (at least not that I can see) is to use multiple combinations of triggers before performing an action. E.g. IF T and T T T. Although you can put exclusion filters in, but it requires JavaScript filter codes which are a bit out of my comfort zone at the moment - but that would allow IF T T T unless X.

Dingbatt

 

Yes, that is what I want a definitive answer about. Effectively just operating one zone with the damper set at 100% open (ie not fitted) to get just the wireless control I was originally after.

 

According to the installers guide, any system designed with the AT4 must have a “surge zone”, which I assume is to avoid ‘blow out’. That is where the professional installation is probably required. But I assume any system that has zones would require something to prevent all dampers to be completely closed at once.

 

Our is set up with 2 spill zones. They can configure as many or as few as you want (but I don't know if it warns you if you haven't set up sufficient spill zones for the size of the heat pump) - that's probably why this bit is in the password protected "Installer Menu".

@Dingbatt it would be quite a lot of money to just get WiFi control. Does it have an IR remote, or is it all set on the hardwired control panel? If it has an IR remote, could you look at hooking an IR transmitter up to something to also you to send IR commands over WiFi (and Internet) - it wouldn't be 2-way communication, but you could send commands.

What is your specific requirement for needing wifi control?

Hard wired only I’m afraid. Otherwise it would have been relatively straight forward with something like PebbleAir.

$1400 is comparable to other control systems like Intesis. Over half the $1400 for the AT4 is the cost of the Android controller (tablet) and it is running Android 6.
The Fujitsu installer quoted me $1100 to add wireless when they were touting for additional business last year, but never got back to me. I may enquire with them again, although I’m not that impressed by their after sales service.

I see IFTTT have introduced a ‘Pro’ version requiring a (quite expensive) subscription. While they have cushioned the blow with a “make us an offer” deal for twelve months, it will affect a lot of home automations as the free version only supports 3 applets.

The danger of relying on cloud services I guess.

Dingbatt:

 

I see IFTTT have introduced a ‘Pro’ version requiring a (quite expensive) subscription. While they have cushioned the blow with a “make us an offer” deal for twelve months, it will affect a lot of home automations as the free version only supports 3 applets.

 

The danger of relying on cloud services I guess.

 

Well, that sucks. And their make us an offer won't let you offer less than US$1.99 a month.

It sounds like the Pro version will give more options and flexibility, but US$9.99 a month seems excessive.

I'm looking at getting the Airtouch 4 with a Daikin ducted heat pump, which all going well will replace a Panasonic unit we're not happy with. We have four zones (living area, bedrooms 1 - 3), with one bedroom heating turned off unless we have guests staying.

A few questions:

• Are people generally happy with the Airtouch 4 units?
• Does individual room temperature control work ok? We're not expecting perfection, just pretty good.
• Do you need the expensive Android tablet they supply, or can you control it completely with an app on your phone?
• Do you need the heat pump manufacturers keypad / controller easily available? Blizzard says they normally put it in the ceiling if an Airtouch is installed as the Airtouch controls the heat pump. I tend to want things to work exactly as I want them to work, so I wonder if I would want this easily accessible. For example maybe it would give me access to additional settings that could be handy (quiet modes for example), additional timers, and general configuration.
• I understand the timers on the Airtouch are fairly limited. Are they good enough for basic control like turning on and off a couple of times a day?

Tagging @Paul1977 because I know you're knowledgeable about this sort of thing :)