Airtouch 5 Integration (Aus)

@ItsSimon see the notes here Airtouch 5 Integration (Aus) - #150 by Danzel

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By default when ever the system is set to fresh the dampers are set to 50% open, the only way around that is to set a zone to turbo which drives that zone to 100% and backs the on zones from 50% to lower.

I have mentioned to them that they need to do a little more with that feature.

I appreciate your response and you sharing your expert knowledge of the system to us all, but in my mind itā€™s clear that we have opposing goals. Iā€™m not suggesting that I know what Iā€™m talking about or that you donā€™t, but more a case of as an A/C installer your desire to simplify things for your customers (presumably to make their lives easier and your life in supporting them easier) goes against my desire to have full access to my A/C system, even if it means I may get myself into trouble. I donā€™t presume Iā€™m in the majority though, hence the suggestion of making this an advanced option buried behind a warning or something.

I feel like Iā€™m still missing something key though. Iā€™m not clear on how/why your suggestion of setting up external automations to switch A/C modes from heat/cool to fresh would be better than what Iā€™m doing though, given that damper control seems to work exactly as I would expect when used on a single zone: constant airflow, with the compressor coming on and off as needed to maintain setpoint. Sure itā€™s bypassing basically all of the smarts of AirTouch and falling back to the ā€˜smartsā€™ of the main A/C system, but is that really a big deal for edge use-cases? (As an aside - Iā€™d honestly expect that capability in a smart system, knowing that if it doesnā€™t perform how Iā€™d want, itā€™s obviously not a fault of the smart system, or the A/C installer!)

I take your point on efficiency, manually setting the damper to 45% is obviously not as efficient as the system intelligently managing airflow (as 55% of the ā€˜workā€™ of the compressor is just being dumped in spill), but the actual time the compressorā€™s running is pretty minimal through the night, at least for this time of year, so weā€™re happy to take a slight drop in overall efficiency in exchange for constant airflow through the night. Weā€™ll have to see how this goes in summer.

No worries with all this though, Iā€™m happy to hack my own solution together to expose these capabilities in HA. Again, I just wanted to throw out a suggestion and leave it up to folks smarter than me to decide whether the broader userbase would benefit or not. Thanks again for all your contributions to this thread.

Cheers Danzel, Iā€™ll give it a try. Thanks for all your work!

Message below is too off-topic and is being resolved by Airtouch support.

@Danzel Iā€™m tagging you to see if you can assist. @smitcoracing I know I messaged you a couple of days ago but also tagging you as you have also been of great assistance, however it seems my issue is still present.

I have an Airtouch 5 system connected to my two Mitsubishi Electric AC units (both ducted). 14kw and 10kw, with only the 14kw unit being zoned and the 10kw serving a single large zone.

The problem is that even though supposedly commanded to open by the Airtouch 5 system, three or four of my zones on the 14kw unit will often - but not always - refuse to open when the AC system is turned on. So far Airtouch (Polyaire) has replaced all of my zone motors, and the zone controller. Nothing has fixed the issue.

Polyaire engineering is now working on the problem at the back end, but my current workaround is to set an affected zone to, say, 65%, then turn the zone off, then turn the zone back on, then set it to 100%, and then put the zone back into temperature control. At this point, the zone will work until the next time the AC unit it turned off.

The assistance Iā€™m asking for, if possible, is the ability via HA to perform my above procedure automatically via NodeRED. For context, the logic I am considering is:

* If system turned on AND mode = Heating THEN
* Check state of all zones
* If zone is Enabled THEN set Zone to percentage mode and 65%
* Wait 5 seconds
* Turn zone off
* Wait 5 seconds
* Turn zone on
* Wait 5 seconds
* Set zone to 100%
* Wait 5 seconds
* Set zone to temperature mode

Update: It looks like I can currently only use the integration to close a zone (hvac_mode: off) and force a zone open to 100% (preset_mode: boost). If that at least trips the limit switches Iā€™m hoping this forces the Airtouch controller to get an updated correct state of where the zone dampers are.

Note that I am making assumptions about limit switches here because I hear the motors ā€œclickā€ when they close fully, and there are at least five wires in the zone motor cables.

Stealing some content from the iZone website, they provide reinforcing statements to the above. Sure itā€™s a different vendor but I would say the zome damper control system works the same.

>Airflow percentage control
>The dampers will drive for different times to achieve different percentages closed. These percentages are based approximately on the performance of the zone dampers and a calculation is performed to approximate the airflow percentage not the damper blade position. For this reason it may be observed that the motor drives less or more to achieve a similar percentage airflow change depending where on the operating curve the damper blade is at that time. The iZone system uses the fully open and fully closed micro switches as reset and reference points for the position of the damper blade.

Update: I had to strike out some of the above text. The Airtouch controller completely ignores the open and closed limit switches. Completely! I set a really slow damper speed rate (0.5) in the console and then set one of my zones to fully open and fully closed. Then I went and monitored the drive LEDs on the zone controller PCB (red for closing, green for opening). The zone driver just kept on sending a close command, even long after the zone had closed, triggered the limit switch (you can hear the ā€œclickā€ when this happens), and stopped the motor. Meanwhile the controller had the red ā€œcloseā€ light going for a good 5-10 seconds after that.

This confirms that the Airtouch 5 system ignores motor limit switches. IMHO this is utterly bonkers because it means there is NO closed loop confirmation of ANY zone damper status. It is all complete assumption!

You could make an automation do those steps.

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Thanks @Danzel

Anybody know if thereā€™s a shortcut to reporting on the Airtouch entity attributes other than configuration.yaml editing that looks like this:

  - platform: template
    sensors:
      bedroom1_current_temperature:
        value_template: "{{ state_attr('climate.bedroom1', 'current_temperature') }}"
        unit_of_measurement: "Ā°C" # Or 'Ā°F' if you use Fahrenheit\
      bedroom1_set_temperature:
        value_template: "{{ state_attr('climate.bedroom1', 'temperature') }}"
        unit_of_measurement: "Ā°C"

I extract them in Node Red using:

  • a Poll State Node with the ā€œclimate.main_bedroomā€ node, followed by
  • a Change node that sets the Payload to ā€œmsg.data.attributes.current_temperatureā€ (or ā€œattributes.temperatureā€ for the set temperature), followed by
  • a Call Service Node to save the value to an input_number
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Hi All,

When I add this integrated I can only see my room sensors. There isnā€™t any function for turning the unit off or changing the mode. I can start the unit from any of the sensors.
I do have a device called ac_0 but all that shows is a disabled climate entity that canā€™t be enabled.

Do I need to change some configuration on my airtouch?

Sorry if this has been discussed in the thread and Iā€™ve missed it.

Thanks in advance.
Kind regards,
Roger

Hi Smitco,
How did you resolve the issue of ac0 being disabled?
Kind regards,
Roger

Hey Roger have you installed the latest version? As itā€™s still not officially part of HA yet you need to manually keep your custom ingegrations up to date. Note that @Danzel has submitted the integration request but he has to wait for all reviews and approvals before it becomes built in to HA.

The update post was on August 10th, and links to the Github:

Mine is all working fine, I just had a little issue because mine has features that arenā€™t public Airtouch release as yet.

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the response. I did have this (Release 0.2.8 Ā· danzel/airtouch5py Ā· GitHub) installed. I deleted it all then copied it in again and restarted HA etc and this time it works. Not sure what I screwed up before.

Works like a treat :slight_smile:

Hello guys,
I have installed this custom integration however Iā€™m unsure what to put into host if.?
I put my consoleā€™s ID and it fails to connect is this correct ?

I recently moved into a newly built home with air touch 5. The installer gave no handover and I believe everything has been left as defaults .
The main issue I am having is with my kitchen zone it has 3 outlets and always struggles to cool down the big area.
I have changed from temp sensor ac1 to auto which has helped a little.

I only have fan options for low, medium and high

I have temperature sensors in every zone.

On a hot day the kitchen will be set to 20 and the temp will hang around 26.

Any tips ?

I will send you number, please call me and we will go over everything.

Those fans speed should not been changed or messed with.

You also need the tablets ip address and not the id number to connect

FYI the fan speeds are tied to the physical motor in the unit. Just learnt that from the installer.
I just have low/med/high and asked about enabling quiet. You can add auto only if you give address of 0.

The fan speeds are not tied to the motor.
The gateway picks up what fan speeds are available from the indoor PCB.

If a brand of unit like some Daikins donā€™t have Auto as standard then enabling auto will not work.

The gateway picks up what fan speeds are available by default so if the system doesnā€™t have turbo, quiet etc they wonā€™t work.

Thatā€™s why I have mentioned previously above that these should not be played with or adjusted.

How do I get the damper position of a zone that is spilling?

The zone that is spilling (binary_sensor.zone_name_spill = ā€œonā€) is ā€œfan_onlyā€ (climate.zone_name) with a current_position (cover.zone_name.current_position) of zero - yet very obviously, the damper is open because thereā€™s lots of air coming out.

Anyone know how to get the real damper position of a spilling zone ?

I donā€™t think you can mate, the spill and bypass are either on or off even though they both use the same ports as what the zone motors do and move in percent amounts like the zones do.

Though, I donā€™t think that information is really necessary other than to possibly data log as it canā€™t really be interferes with, controlled or manipulated if that makes sense.

Actually, you could work it with equations because it works like the following, bypass works in the same way, I might try this as I only thought of it now.

Eg,

if you only have 1 zone on and itā€™s 90% open then the spill will be 10% open.

If you have 2 zones on and they are both 40% then the spill is 20% open.