A basic setup to control a Daikin ducted/zoned airconditioner

There are numerous settings and controls which could be put in place to control a ducted airconditioner with Zennio KNX equipment. As a complete novice my mind boggled with the range of possibilities and complex options as I read through the various Zennio manuals. Fortunately with guidance from an experienced integrator a relatively simple arrangement was setup. This page describes that setup. These were the components used to implement this:

• Z41

• KLIC-DI

• TMDs

• MAXinBOX Shutter 8Ch V2

• Daikin Ducted Aircon unit

• Zone Dampers

A summary of what will be achieved

The diagram below summarises the communications and controls in place. The key component is the KLIC-DI which controls the aircon unit - and by instructing the KLIC-DI it subsequently controls and monitors the airconditioner via a two wire connection. In a single zone operation the control for the system could be manually selected from the Z41 device, and there would be no need for the TMD thermostat function or the zone dampers. However, this ducted setup requires zone dampers to control conditioned air flow to the zones. As such we need a way to control the zone dampers and that will be done via a thermostat assigned to each zone.

As indicated initially there are many ways that climate control could be configured for this type of setup. Many of these ways could be very complex, but the setup described here is quite simple. It's simple because all zones will have the same setpoint temperature, we will manually turn the aircon on or off, manually set the mode (heat or cool) and manually set the fan speed of the central unit. All these controls (setpoint, unit on/off, mode (heat or cool) and fan speed) are manually set at the Z41 and communicated to the KLIC-DI. The setpoint and mode (heat or cool) are also concurrently communicated from the Z41 to each of the thermostats. The thermostats have a responsibility is to try to maintain the setpoint. To achieve this each thermostat can send a "control variable" group object to the MAXinBOX shutter device to either open or close the damper. Therefore if the system is in heating mode and the room is below setpoint then the damper will be opened. Where the system is in heating mode and the room is above setpoint the damper is closed.

What I didn't do

One aspect I didn't initially understand about zoned air-conditioning was that I thought the aim was to allow for zones to have different temperatures. To some extent that is certainly possible. However, with a single source of conditioned air, it is clearly only possible to set different temperatures within a certain range. For example it clearly wouldn't be possible to heat one zone while actively cooling another. In the setup described on this page the aim is to maintain all zones at the same temperature - which is achieved by turning on and off airflow to each of the spaces. With such an arrangement it means that the setting of the setpoint is simple - with just one setting made on the Z41 which applies everywhere. If we were to allow for different setpoints for each zone, we would need to devise and apply some complex set of rules where different zones were allowed different settings within certain ranges. In such an arrangement, while different zones might have different setpoints we still need to calculate a single system wide setpoint to be set on the airconditioning unit. This again would require some calculations as to what that temperature may be. It may also be necessary to use a more sophisticated way to calculate the 'reference temperature' and the fan speeds to best achieve the desired outcome.

At a later stage I will likely look at how we can exclude some zones from the airconditioner and allow for some limited variation in setpoints between zones, but for now (and on this page) the setup is about all zones achieving the same temperature (Setpoint).