🔥 Advanced Heating Control

[panhans]

Mode Heat is more manual mode. The red colors looks like warnings and implies everything is turned on.
But that’s not the case. It’s only a manual mode and that’s essential to be controlled by another system.
The home assistant scheduler has nothing to do with the one of the tado bridge or the build in of some TRVs. These build in schedulers can be enabled by changing the mode of the valves.

Let’s make it short: To be controlled using home assistant or any 3rd party app without touching the build in heat plan mode heat is always needed.

[sourdistorne (SneakerPimp)]

Many thanks @panhans it’s now working a treat.

[P6Dave (Dave Forrester)]

@panhans

To be controlled using home assistant or any 3rd party app without touching the build in heat plan mode heat is always needed.

That’s what I figured. Just wanted to check. I’m slowly migrating all of my rooms and areas away from the Tado schedule and into a Home Assistant schedule. I just wanted to check what was seeing was as expected.

Thanks

[Powerarmor]

Hi there,
Do you think it is feasible to use heating control for floor heating? I have only one thermostat/valve which I want to control, based on room temperature/ water temperature and/or outside temp.

[panhans]

Try it! I think for floor heating it’s maybe not suitable because they need more time to getting a room to comfort temperature but if you have long periods between heating and not heating in maybe fits for your use case.

[panhans]

I will rewrite the logic again. There is no need for that toggle but I will test every combination before I push this to the main version.

[sben (Ben)]

Trying to improve my setup regarding presence / holiday / … I’m not using persons as we have no trackers available.

That being said I would like to

• force minimum temperature if a binary sensor indicates nobody is home at all (like we’re travelling)
• set comfort temperature with scheduler A for workdays
• set comfort temperature with scheduler B for holidays,weekend,sick at home,…

I’m able to set up the binary_sensors and I understood that I can switch between two schedulers using holiday_mode, but how would I configure the “nobody home” thing? Winter mode could do the trick but I’d need minimum temperature, not “off”.

Sorry I’m a bit lost with the number of combinations of presence, persons being home, and schedulers

P.S.: Should I simply use “Guest” mode to enable heating over all? Might work but feels a bit weird to have heating in my house only as a guest
P.P.S: Or should I combine everything into just one template presence sensor, but there’s so many options that my scenario should be doable within the blueprint…

[panhans]

I am working on a small documentation atm to give an overview over the possible combinations.

Without person trackers I would prefer guest mode, but I think without provide at least one person heating is fully scheduler based atm. So heating is always on without a person when scheduler is on.

So If you want to use guest mode as your indicator you need to provide at least one (dummy) person, who’s always away (not_home), for the moment. (I will add guest mode to count as person if an entity is defined.) Maybe guest mode need another naming.

A 2nd approach is going with a template sensor or a input boolean for presence detection. So this sensor combines your calendar values and other indicators if somebody is home.

Thank you for your thoughts. I rewrite logic for setting comfort temperature atm. I will add the guest mode “issue” on my list.

[sben (Ben)]

I went the guest mode way - guest mode is activated with a binary template sensor “is there anybody home” based on a calendar. For when guest mode is on, there are two schedulers to choose via holiday mode (another template sensor). Just couldn’t test it yet as both schedulers are “off” at this time of day

[panhans]

Did you provide at least on dummy person? I think it won’t work with the current stable version because the guest mode doesn’t count as a person yet.

Without a dummy person heating is always on if heating scheduler is on. Will “fix” this in the next update.

[sben (Ben)]

No, didn’t specify any person. Didn’t understand the “person” concept yet or at least didn’t see how to change a persons status via template.

Anyway, it seems to work as expected: I changed the schedule to have it “on” for a while and then switch “off”.
Debug-log for “on”:

  - state_mode_party: False  
  - state_mode_guest: True  
  - state_mode_winter: True  
  - state_force_max_temperature: False  
  - state_window: False  
  - state_presence_sensor: False  
  - state_temperature_comfort: 21.5  
  - state_mode_holiday: True  
  - mode: heat  
  - active_scheduler: schedule.holiday  
  - is_anybody_home: True  
  - is_mode_holiday_configured: True  
  - is_scheduler_on: True  
  - is_presence_sensor_defined: False  
  - is_presence_scheduler_defined: False  
  - is_presence: False  
  - temperature: 21.5  
  - valves: ['climate.trv_kids']  
  - valves_off_mode: []  
  - valves_without_off_mode: ['climate.trv_kids']  
  - valves_tado: []  
  - trvs_temp_not_set: ['climate.trv_kids']  
  - trvs_mode_not_set: []  
  - trvs_mode_and_temp_not_set: ['climate.trv_kids']  
  - trigger.id: 1

Debug-log for “off”:

  - state_mode_party: False  
  - state_mode_guest: True  
  - state_mode_winter: True  
  - state_force_max_temperature: False  
  - state_window: False  
  - state_presence_sensor: False  
  - state_temperature_comfort: 21.5  
  - state_mode_holiday: True  
  - mode: heat  
  - active_scheduler: schedule.holiday  
  - is_anybody_home: True  
  - is_mode_holiday_configured: True  
  - is_scheduler_on: False  
  - is_presence_sensor_defined: False  
  - is_presence_scheduler_defined: False  
  - is_presence: False  
  - temperature: 17  
  - valves: ['climate.trv_kids']  
  - valves_off_mode: []  
  - valves_without_off_mode: ['climate.trv_kids']  
  - valves_tado: []  
  - trvs_temp_not_set: ['climate.trv_kids']  
  - trvs_mode_not_set: []  
  - trvs_mode_and_temp_not_set: ['climate.trv_kids']  
  - trigger.id: scheduler-off

Can you see why it works despite you expecting it “shouldn’t”?

[panhans]

Haha ok… Sry, had a look in the code right now. It should be working like you expected. Maybe I am a little confused because I rewrite this lines atm.

But never mind. Here is a preview of the documentation. Maybe it helps to understand a bit more. But it’s not final.

[FiveVoltLogic]

Great blueprint. I was using 3.4.4 and had a couple of issues with temperatures not updating quickly, both at the end of schedules and when they are updated with the input_number, which led to the heating being on all night in one room (it was the bedroom, so not like I was pissing heat into the void). Since the update to 3.6 it seems to be more stable. Sorry I can’t offer traces for the issues I had.

As there has been a bug with the physical controls updating the temperatures I have instead opted for the physical controls to start the ‘Party Timer’ (which I renamed “Manual Override”) for an hour or so. I have also opted to remove the option to set the temperature in the UI. This works for me anyway. - One question… With party on, will this turn off heating when no one’s home? I figure it won’t, but I suppose that if the timer is only for an hour and I forget, then when the schedule kicks back in, it will notice that no one is home and not fire when the schedule comes on.

I’m also not using TRVs - I have no gas in the house which is expensive and the reason why I need more control over the heating. Instead I have 3 Ecostrad iQ Ceramic heaters which seem to have all the same sensors and controls as TRVs.

I would really like a blueprint that would offer this much control for other devices that I would like to schedule such as my water heater, or fans which are simply on/off. I tried stripping back the blueprint, and building it from scratch but there’s just so much of this one it all got too much very quickly. I will give it another go though and see how far I get.

Finally, a tip - I have Octopus as my energy supplier and use the saving session binary_sensor as a window contact - turning my heating off when there’s a saving session and saving me some money.

Thanks so much for this! so far, apart from the night when the heating didn’t update, it has saved me money.

[panhans]

Thank you for your feedback. First sorry for the inconvenience. With v3 the whole blueprint got a rewrite from scratch and many here helps me to debug this piece of code. Testing is really painful since there is no possibility for test automation.

And yes: The party timer overrides everything and heats if nobody is home. But immediately after timer ends the default logic gets called and temperature will calculated as determines by your plans.

It doesn’t matter which end devices stay behind the climate entities. And for your other devices I could provide custom actions for v4 and passing some useful variables. So everyone can add it’s own action / logic when the default processing branch of the automation got called.

If you can’t wait simply create a template based binary_sensor and compare the set temperature of a climate with the state of the comfort temperature input_number entity. If they are equal your heating plan is active (or party is on).

[panhans]

ADVANCED HEATING CONTROL ^v3.6.2

Changelog

• FIX: typo in presence scheduler which resulted in not triggering automation if presence scheduler changed

[sben (Ben)]

Still a bit confused, not sure what exactly I had tested that night - today it didn’t work as expected, seems I really have to define a dummy (“always away”) person to make the blueprint take the guest mode into account. Without that person, the schedule alone will activate the heating, guest mode has no effect in that case.

[panhans]

Here is a test version with new logic for setting temperature. Guest mode entity is now treaten like a person if an entity is set.

Feel free to test and give some feedback. I tried all combinations and it works for me.

[panhans]

Sry, there was a typo. I’ve updated test version right now:

panhans/HomeAssistant/blob/2241c85bc5584160f8737de2b202ae51184efb5e/blueprints/automation/panhans/heating_control.yaml

//EDIT: sry, one last time

[panhans]

I’ve updated the example of the calendar based holiday sensor because with version 2023.12 of home assistant the service call and its return value got changes.
Keep in mind to update your sensor until June 2024.

[Meerhoven]

Hello Panhans, I just started with your great blueprint. Thank you for creating it, this is just what I’m looking for. After setup I run into some strange behaviour. I have 4 thermostats with two different time shedules (multiple shedules created in the helpers for morning, afternoon and evening). Most of the time the thermostats start as planned, but when I look in the dashboard the thermostats go to the minimum temperature instead of the comfort temperature. But the time shedule is still active. Now the very strange thing is that when I update the yaml files the correct temperature for two valves comeback, but the other two valves go from the comfort temperature to the minimum temperature. Any idea what could cause this and any idea how I can fix this?