Independent maker, Florin "VoltLog" C., has just released an ESP32-based, open-hardware design for building a Tasmota-compatible, ten-channel valve actuator for an in-floor heating system.

According to Hackster’s Gareth Halfacree, “this open-hardware board is designed to simplify the control of an in-floor heating system”, while it also “plays nicely with Home Assistant”.

“The need for such a valve actuator circuit started when I installed floor heating into my apartment”, Florin explains, “and if you ask me why I didn't use one of the commercially available options, [the answer is] I don't like them, they’re expensive and they typically only work with their closed-source ecosystem. I wanted something that runs open-source, so I can control and customize various aspects”.

Thus, the solution that Florin came up with is a customised board built around an ESP32 running the Tasmota firmware. This means that ESP32 can easily be integrated into the Home Assistant smart-home platform.

“I have a total of nine circuits and these circuits have different lengths, and the rooms have different sizes, so putting the same volume of water through all circuits is going to result in uneven heating”, Florin writes about the disadvantages of an off-the-shelf alternative.

“This issue can be mitigated by tuning the individual flow valves on the intake of each circuit, but that setting seems to vary with the pressure it gets from the pump and doesn’t allow a fine granular control over the temperature of that room which is what I want to achieve”, Florin explains in a relevant video.

Florin has published his design files and firmware for the board on GitHub under the reciprocal GNU General Public License 3, and has also announced plans to sell pre-built versions of it on Tindie.