Re: And on, and on, and on, it goes
All you need in a remotely-controllable TRV head is, ...
There's your problem, that's NOT what they are building.
Each head is self-sufficient and self contained - it determines for itself what the room occupancy is, learns for itself what the occupancy patterns are, and it controls the setpoint on it's own. That is, you buy on, pop batteries in it, pop it on the valve - and that's about it.
it's aimed at people who don't tend to read TheRegister - the sort of people who don't understand the controls that so many houses have. By not setting their controls (such as they even exist) well, they are wasting money on heating. Hardly any "non-geek" house has per-room controls beyond the basic TRV.
Using the wireless is optional. But you can link the valve heads to a boiler interface so the boiler can run just when a radiator is needed to heat it's room and turn off otherwise - IMO this would be the default installation mode.
So they aren't aiming at geeks with (in general, and on average) a reasonable disposable income - but at (for example) social housing (and private sector) tenants with little disposable income. They can't go modifying the system, so being able to fit these without modification, AND take them with them when they move on (without needing to pay someone to install/remove stuff and fix any damage) is an important selling point. And a key point of their target market is that many people (my elderly mother included) really don't "get" timers and programmers, let alone have any ability to drive them.
And AIUI their target price is to be significantly below the current cost for this sort of product.
Oh yes, and you can as a geek hook up a receiver to your computer and log loads of stats and stuff. But for the target market, you don't need to do anything complicated, or sign away your privacy, or ....