You might want to look up my Sonoff BSP article in here for comparison – as the L14 device is in many ways similar to the BSP.The Nous L14 is a Zigbee smart water valve.It is compatible with Zigbee2MQTT, Google Assistant, and Amazon Alexa.
Regular readers will know that I received a bunch of devices from Nous some time ago.I’d never heard of them and then all of a sudden out of nowhere Nous appeared all over.I think the thing that got me the most was that their smart switches were really pretty colours but it turns out that their stuff’s also reliable.
So the L14 works on Zigbee 3.0.It uses 4 AA batteries, it has a standard water pipe size (3/4 inch DN20), and a standby current of 41 μA.I’m just reading the spec, and it says operating temperature 5-60°C, watering temperature 1-45°C.
The watering temperature is fine, but operating temperature.I guess I better not use it in the midst of Spanish winter.I’ve hooked it up to my tap outside, which normally goes via the Sonoff unit to a hose pipe.
Now the new unit is going to the hose pipe.You can turn it on and off by a little button on the front, or you can control it by Zigbee2MQTT and hence Home Assistant settings.All of which took me a few minutes to get going.
To start the ball rolling, I put in four new quality AA batteries into the L14 unit.I checked that my existing Sonoff BSP was working perfectly on the outdoor tap and hosepipe, I disconnected that and connected the Nous L14.The unit works immediately.
I short-pressed the button on the side to start the flow of water, and short-pressed again to stop the flow.At that point, I long-pressed the button until it flashed.In my Zigbee2MQTT installation, I installed the new device.
I turned on the water using Zigbee2MQTT, and it started no problem, showing the flow in gallons per hour which I later realised wasn’t an option.It only displays in gallons per hour, but there you go.So as not to be too boring, I’ll skip the bit where I couldn’t get it to work because I didn’t bother to read the manual or any of the information that’s online and there’s lots of it.
So, what have you got? Well, in ZigBee2MQTT and hence if you’re using it with Home Assistant, you’ve got a countdown when you turn the thing on.How long do you want it to stay on as a default setting? The unit is shown below in Zigbee2MQTT control panel… There’s a current switch which isn’t immediately obvious, but the current switch is actually a flow display control.Do you want to see what the water flow is or do you not? You can turn that on and off for reasons I’ve yet to decipher.
There is then a Nous on/off button to turn the water on and off, and there’s a reset switch by which you can reset the total amount of water flow that’s been recorded since the last time the unit was factory reset.I’m going to keep this one short, showing you some pictures, mainly because it just works.It does the job.
There are a couple of things that need a little bit of work: There is a set of information as to how to hook it to Alexa, but there doesn’t seem to be any information as to how to hook it to Google Home.There is a child lock control, so you can set the child lock so that a kid can press the button on the real unit.But the button on the real unit has 2 functions: Short Press is start and stop the water A Long Press actually resets the unit (taking it out of the Zigbee network).
Personally I was thinking it would be nice if the child lock disabled that as well.But then again, how would you actually reset it if you needed to? The three points that I’ve mentioned here are sent back to NUS, and I’ve no doubt in the course of time they’ll be sorted and are minor anyway.Finally, what on earth would you want one of these things for? Well, I’m sure you can think of your own uses, but let me tell you mine.
I have an above ground pool in our garden, and I heat that by solar power, which is generally good enough, but I can’t really get it VERY warm.I can get it kind of warm, so if I want a bit of extra heat, what I do is I take our hose pipe, I have it attached to the Nous (previously the Sonoff unit).I simply roll the hose pipe out on the ground in direct Spanish sunlight, and put the end of the hose pipe into the pool.
Now, of course you can’t run cold water straight into the pool because you’re only going to do is cool the pool down, but if you have an automation running with or without a sensor you can wait until the hosepipe heats up and make use of that.Basically, wait until the water has been sat there heating up in the hose pipe for, let’s say, 10-15 minutes, until it’s REALLY warm.Turn the output on for just a couple of minutes to let the hot water drain out of the hose pipe and then stop it.
Wait until the water in the pipe is hot again, turn tghe Nous back on again, and repeat this cycle.Now, of course, doing this manually would be unfeasible, but if you’re going to use the pool say late afternoon or evening, there’s absolutely no hassle at all to simply take a hose pipe, shove it in the pool, and have a small automation running in Home Assistant which you can control from your phone.By the time you’ve been out for lunch or shopping, the pools nice and warm.
Of interest for my main pool heating I use solar with a pair of cheap stainless-tube sensors to compare incoming and outgoing temperature – but that’s a different discussion.