That is how climate entities work in Home Assistant. There isn’t a seperate concept of mode and power. The mode will display as off when the power is off and changing the mode to anything else will turn the AC on in that mode.
Is there a specific purpose or automation you had in mind for changing the mode without turning the AC on?
I see, I also found the same here
Basically, At night when I go upstairs I want to turn certain zones off and certain zones on.
I want to change the mode to dry because it runs lower than low.
When I actually sleep then in summer I want to change it to auto and cool because that’s the only way to dampers will ever shut off completely once it reaches temperature.
And then in winter I set it to heat
I don’t want to change whether it’s running currently.
I’m still working out the details but for example in the afternoons I might change it to dry mode at the end of the day when the solar is dropping and I want it to run under the generated power.
But if I’m out then it’s off originally I don’t want to turn it on.
Back with an update, and a positive support story too.
Polyaire called me a few hours after I submitted the support request. We tried to get rid of the the second (non-existent) NoAC but couldn’t over the phone. They escalated it internally and got back to me today.
The solution: factory reset the console (in the installer settings), turn the power off for a few minutes (removing the control panel off the wall works) and set things up again. Now the 2nd AC is gone, I really only had to label the zones (most other settings were already correct) and the integration is working again in HA. So this can now be a record of events, just in case someone else encounters this bizarre behaviour. Happy days.
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I guess you could check whether the AC is on as a precondition in automations. But the API does support setting the mode without turning the AC on. I might be able to expose a custom service for that feature. It would probably combine well with the turn on/off service which turns on in the last set mode.
All the switching of modes really is not necessary and your are not gaining anything from it.
Just set the system on cooling and let it do its thing.
Here’s why:
dry mode seems to run in a way that only uses 2kW at most. At the end of the day when the solar is dropping or when I just want it to run really low. But it never seems to stop when the zone reaches temperature. I’ve had it set to 22 and the room got down to 20.
The unit is set to economy as you had advised earlier but somehow the dry mode does not wind down once the target temperature is reached.
Cool mode runs at anything up to 5kW. Even on auto it seems to be a bit stronger than dry mode so if we’re sitting somewhere right by the vent it feels very cold. But it seems to correctly turn off zone damper.
But mainly I just want to be able to run the end of the day under what solar is generating because it’s peak hour and otherwise I would pay 7-8x my FIT.
I can’t see or remember that I’ve messaged you before about contacting me to go over setup etc.
Assuming you have a Daikin, if your system is getting colder than setpoint it’s because the system is still using the return air sensor and the factory controller settings haven’t been changed. I also can’t remember if you have a spill zone or bypass zone.
Dry mode is mis understood by many people and most times it shouldn’t be used for the purpose people are using it for. Standard cooling does enough generally and the only time I would recommend dry mode is days where your room temp isn’t too high but high humidity.
You don’t really want the room to cool down too quick but need the indoor coil to remain cold via running the outdoor with low fan speed to remove moisture.
Your welcome to call me either way on 0447 770 989
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I talked on the phone with you last Jul. It’s a Mitsubishi PEA Mr Slim 3 phase
I have a fixed zone with no damper which we have set up as a spill zone in AT5
I have the zone controllers with the temperature sensor in each of the other rooms/zones.
Dry mode is there any mode that does not seem to respond to the sensor temperatures. Its own sensor says 20C and I set to 22C, and it still goes.
Heat/cold is fine.
I’ve released v0.5.0 of the integration which adds a new service airtouch.set_hvac_mode_only. This works in the same way as the built-in climate.set_hvac_mode service, but it won’t turn the air-conditioner on if it is not already running.
You can check the “current” mode that will become active if you call the turn_on service using the new last_active_hvac_mode attribute on the AC climate entity.
Documentation for both new features is available in the README of the integration’s repository:
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Thx
seems to work now and I’m also able to turn off the kids room when they go to school automatically & not turn off the whole system
Could you add a way to turn on a zone w/o turning on the main unit?
After some more investigation I have found the following:
Climate turn on and home assistant generic turn on working in the same way.
If I turn on the zone and it was originally off, it will turn on the zone without changing the power mode.
If I turn on a zone and it is already uncommon then it will turn on the whole air conditioner.
Conversely the turn off will never turn off the power of the whole air conditioner because of a zone. But if you turn off the last existing zone it will turn off the air conditioner.
In a sense it is a little lopsided. The turning off kind of makes sense but turning on is a bit strange.
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The intent was to mirror the behaviour of the AirTouch system itself.
However, I guess I’ve set the logic based on the fact that I have the “Turn AC on when a zone is turned on” setting enabled in the AirTouch zone settings. I’m guessing you don’t have that option enabled (I’m not sure what the default setting is).
For me both cases will turn on the AC.
To me it seems logical that if I turn a zone on I expect the zone to actually start heating/cooling which means the AC needs to turn on. What behaviour do others expect to see?
Great question. In my automations, while the system is off I sometimes set the on/off status of zones in anticipation of someone turning the system on, but I don’t want the system to turn on unless I explicitly tell it to.
For example, by about 9am I might set certain zones and temperatures just in case someone has stayed at home and decides to turn the system on with the on/off button and where I don’t want the settings to be the same as they were at night time when everyone was still home.
In my airtouch panel, I can turn the zones on/off w/o affecting the power.
The strange thing is that the power will turn on only depending on whether the zone is already on or off. So it doesn’t follow “Turn AC on when a zone is turned on”
what it’s doing now is “press once turn the zone on press again turn the power on”
I would hope that an integration will provide the basic features and controls without any smarts. That way we can program the smarts ourselves.
Thanks for the input @spry-salt and @aussie1497.
Yes, that strange behaviour is a result of the mismatch with the “Turn AC on when a zone is turned on” option between the AirTouch and the integration. The integration currently assumes that the option is always turned on. I added handling to turn the AC on when the zone is already on because in Home Assistant the zone will appear as off when the AC is off even if the zone is on (since otherwise it would appear as though it was actively heating/cooling).
As a work-around you should be able to use the climate.set_fan_mode service. Setting the fan mode to on will turn the zone on without impacting the AC state (and likewise for off and turbo). There is some information about the difference between the fan mode and the HVAC mode for zone entities in the README.
I will have a think about whether there is a good way to align the integration with the AirTouch configuration for turning the AC on with zones.
Hi mate, by default the turn on option is off.
Only the auto off is on by default so people don’t have the system running when zones are off.
Thanks. I must have turned the setting on at some point and forgotten about it.
I’ve released v0.6.0 of the integration.
Highlights
- The new version will respect the AirTouch “Turn AC on when a zone is being turned on”.
- A configuration option has been added to change the temperature step if you prefer whole degree steps.
- For those using spill zones, a new sensor is added to report the spill percentage so we can see a better history of how much spill is being used.
- Note the integration needs to be removed and re-added to select spill zones before the new entity will be created.
More info in the release notes and README:
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Hi There,
I just got an Airtouch 5 installed, I tried to install the polyaire Hacs integration but it does not find any zon. It is connecting to my network (no VLAN).
It asks me to chose spill or bypass (i choose spill). then it asks me for a spill zone. but it does not show any zone to choose from and when i click submit, i get an error “not all required fields are filled in”. And i can’t get past this point
Do i need to update the airtouch 5? it’s on version 1.0.
EDIT: Got it , updating did the trick.
Glad the update got it working.
v1.0 is quite old, I would have expected the installer to update during the installation.