I’ve written at some length about my use of MAX thermostats and most recently the sad news that the product line has been entirely canned. This has immediately set up a supply problem and I had great difficulty in getting hold of another when I added a radiator and I actually had to get one shipped in from a contact in Germany, When it arrived I tested in briefly and it powered up so put it on a shelf until I got round to fitting it.
Today was the day, and I was extremely dismayed to find that when I tried to install it, it immediately failed with an F1 error. The motor would run for a fraction of a second before stopping. The manual states that this is error relates to the motor running slowly.
I have stripped these down before, and the gearbox is a fairly simple mechanism but still has quite a few plastic cogs. To open the casing you need a small Torx T5 screwdriver with quite a long reach to get the four main screws out (under the battery cover). It’s quite awkward inside with the wires from the battery box and the motor, although you can lift the motor and gearbox out.
I had a look at the gears and they did move although it does take quite a lot of effort. However looking closely at it I could see some damage to a different set of wires that go from the board to the motor assembly. Inside there gearbox one of the cogs has four reflective dots on it and there is a light sensor in the housing. This is used to measure the speed of the motor, and it struck me that the most likely reason for the error was that it wasn’t reading anything from this sensor and thought the motor wasn’t moving at all.
As an aside, I also remove the PCB from the housing with the screen and the buttons because I thought it would make things easier – but my advice is, don’t do this! The screen is not fixed in and there is a sandwich of plastic and other bits which took me ages to get back together again.
The wires that were damages are part of a 3-way ribbon cable which connects pads on the board to the motor housing. This cable is very stiff and only just long enough and I couldn’t strip enough insulation off the broken end to reattach it. So I ended up removing the cable entirely and replacing it with new wires. The pads on both ends are very small and tricky to solder on to, and I struggled to clean then off. I also found that the unit wouldn’t boot if there was a short.
I used some solid cores out of an old Cat5 cable which were thin enough and easy to solder. Rather to my surprise I was finally able to do so and put it all back together again, and then it worked perfectly. So it’s definitely worth persevering with these, they aren’t hard to repair but the internal wiring is definitely a weak point.
Universal Discovery Methodology 
Hey, not posted here for a while. If you are looking for a replacement I have gone down the Schneider Drayton Wiser system of smart TRVs.
Ive got a raspberry PI running home assistant which is connected to my Texecom alarm via serial and the Wiser hub via WiFi.
With a little Node Red this lets me put the heating into away mode when the alarm is set and ensure that only the rooms where PIRs are active are heated etc.
Definitely worth looking at if you need something else to try.
Thanks so much for this (and welcome back!). I’d not heard of these before, and they do look interesting. The heads are perhaps a little more expensive than I’m used to but I’ve got to get over that because there is nothing at the MAX end of the market any longer. The main issue for me is still that I am wedded to the Fhem platform and this doesn’t seem to support the Wiser range as yet. This is one of the issues with Fhem as it so tied to the European (and specifically German) market, and you don’t really get anyone more internationally developing for it. I need to look into Home Assistant again as quite a few people have recommended it to me but it would be a big effort to change.
I definitely need to look at using the PIRs to influence the heating, so far I’ve got them switching the lights on but nothing else. Thanks again for your reponse!
As a marker installing and setting up home assistant on the pi, integrating wiser and the ikea lighting hub and doing the serial processing for the texecom crestron protocol only took 6 hours ish total.
It basically auto detects everything, you just need to install HACS into home assistant for the wiser plugin.
In terms of cost wait for the wiser stuff to be on sale with Amazon. 2 valves, a room stat and the hub is £86 total from time to time.
I still have the reverse engineering of COMIP I did before, can’t remember if i sent you the python code? Its a bit rough around the edges….
Thanks. I’ve looked at Home Assistant again but it doesn’t have the breadth I need at the moment. Doesn’t really support the MAX devices from what I can see and I am still heavily invested in those. The rest looks good though… hmm I suppose I could run FHEM just for the heating and something else for the rest. Yes you did send me the code I think although I didn’t really get to use it, I think I got a Smartcom around the same time. That reminds me… need to review that.
Ah yes, how are you finding smartcom? I’m itching to give it a go an integrate more home automation stuff but cant quite justify the price when what I have works!
I’ll write a proper review but the headlines are that it definitely makes life easier in terms of installation and management but there are some compromises, most obviously in the speed of uploading / downloading from the panel although that’s not really a big deal. I’ve got a few of the Texecom Connect plugs etc too although can’t really think of a use for them as I can do the same thing slightly more easily by other means.
As for the Texecom Connect plugs, myself included couldn’t think at first of a use for them.
The first thing that came to mind, due to the time of year, was those blasted Christmas Tree lights! I always despised crawling behind the real tree getting stabbed by pine needles, latterly by the twisted steel wire of the artificial tree!
Providing you set your alarm at night, why not use them to switch off the lights if the system is part armed! – In conjunction with Texecom Connect and an appropriate Recipe, or even more cleverly using a custom output!
More recently, I had set them up alongside some perimeter detection. – Texecom Premier TD-W.
Again, in my case I have used some cleverly designed custom outputs combining timers, areas being armed and driveway detection, all overridable with a PC Control!
At present, there is no way to integrate a PC Control to the Recipe of Texecom connect, but you can still manually override the plugs from within the application.
My driveway detection is also hooked to up my CCTV! – So All in all, if you approach 1 of 4 areas on my driveway, the PTZ Camera will move to a certain location, turn on the Lamps in the Window and chirp my alarm panel, providing the area is armed. If I forget to arm myself, a handy control timer takes care of that for me!
Can you think of a use now?!
Best Regards,
John G!
Now that has got me thinking… I love the perimeter detection idea, need to look into that a bit further. I’ve got some Blink cameras which are OK so far as they go but I think I could do with something a bit more permanent. I’ll have a look at those TD-W sensors you mention