Aprilaire Thermostat 8800 any MODBUS experts?

I tried to adding the integration again, specifying the IP of the 8476W but I get “An unknown error occurred”. I tried both port 7000 and 8000. I know on the 8920W I had to go into the contractor menu and enable automation mode but I don’t know if the same needs to be done on the 8476W (or if that’s even an option). Enabling debug logging gives “[Errno 111] Connect call failed (‘192.168.0.22’, 7000)” and “[Errno 111] Connect call failed (‘192.168.0.22’, 8000)”. Which I believe supports the thought that automation mode isn’t enabled.

Ya, definitely looks like it’s not in Home Automation mode. I tried to look up the installers guide and didn’t see anything in there about it, and I don’t see any other info.

My recommendation would be to email Aprilaire and just ask how to turn on Home Automation mode on your model.

I emailed Aprilaire as you suggested. Turns out I was wrong about the model numbers of both my thermostats. Guess that’ll happen when you’re just guessing based on the pictures on the manufacturer’s website since the model number isn’t anywhere on the thermostat or in the app. Once I had the right model numbers, a quick search for the installation guide provided the instructions to enable automation mode for the second thermostat. Everything is working great now. Thanks again for all your work on this, @chamberlain2007 !!

Great news! Glad it’s working!

For future troubleshooting/documentation would you mind sharing what your model numbers are and the steps you had to do?

I am running the 8840 on the first floor and the 8810 on the second floor. Instructions for enabling Automation Mode on the 8810 are in the Installation Guide (https://jacksonsystems.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Aprilaire_8810_Installation_Guide.pdf). The short version is press Mode until system is Off, hold Mode and Up for 3 seconds until screen shows 00 in center and 00 in the top right. The big 00 is the setting you’re on, the smaller is the value of that setting. Big 00 is Automation Mode, with little 00 being Aprilaire Cloud and little 01 the Automation System. Automation System is necessary to get the thermostat to show up in Home Assistant. The 8810 also uses port 8000.

Hi, new to the thread.

Turns out Aprilaire makes a non home automation thermostat named 8920W which doesn’t have an option to turn on Automation mode in the Contractor settings.

Both 8840 & 8920W look similar. That’s what the Aprilaire support person told me.
Did anyone really configure the 8920W model or because both of them looks similar it seems to be the case ?

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I’ve spent the last hour and a half trying to follow this thread and troubleshoot before I finally get to your post and see that I’ve also got the 8920W (I think, anyway) and that’s why I can’t find the Automation setting…

@scotscotmcc
I’m trying to mitigate that problem of not having home automation in contractor settings by making sure I connect Alexa & Google assistant to Home Assistant to change temperature or modes for Aprilaire thermostat and for reading values of thermostat. I have been notified that we can’t parse the response of any Alexa | Google assistant if asked with a question of “Hey Google, what is the thermostat temperature?”.

So in order to read whole house temperatures, I’m gonna either try to utilize my 5 Alexa Echos with inbuilt temperature sensor or buy Temp, humidity Zigbee sensor for easy connectivity to the Home assistant to display that value on a Generic Thermostat widget.

That’s my plan for this weekend. :stuck_out_tongue:

Partly was able to create a generic thermostat for Aprilaire 8940 by connecting Google Assistant SDK.

So now have a slight problem of how to create custom thermostat UI with buttons to call specific scripts which internally communicates with Google Assistant API.
New question posted here

Thanks again for all the great work and amazing progress!
I have 7 of the 8820 thermostats and 6 of them seem very solid, but one looses connection to HA and Wifi every so often.

I am getting the below error. All 7 thermostats are centrally in the located in the garage with wired remote thermostats. There is an access point in the garage also. At times I can ping the thermostat but it shows disconnected in HA. Most of the time unplugging the re-plugging the thermostat or messing with the wifi settings will resolve it.

This error originated from a custom integration.
Logger: custom_components.aprilaire
Source: runner.py:179
Integration: Aprilaire (documentation, issues)
First occurred: April 13, 2023 at 1:59:20 PM (120 occurrences)
Last logged: 9:02:30 AM

Received NACK for attribute 7
Received NACK for attribute 3

Thanks

Glad you’re having success (partially).

The Wi-Fi connection on the thermostats is extremely flaky in general, so I wouldn’t rule out something related to that. If you’re using a router than can do this, I would make sure when that happens that the Wi-Fi settings (2g vs 5g, which AP, etc) is as expected. Could be that you just need to adjust some settings.

If that’s not the case, it’s tricky to get diagnostics. Those NACKs are good but in the protocol it’s not possible to correlate back to the failed request. If it’s showing unavailable that most likely means that it didn’t get a response on the identification call.

if you turn on debug logging for the component (I believe there is a description of that in this thread), and send the previous couple of minutes before an issue, I can have a closer look.

FYI folks, the latest Beta release on HACS has support for humidifier/dehumidifier, air cleaning and fresh air ventilation. If anyone has these devices and would like to install the Beta and provide feedback, that would be much appreciated!

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Yes, I think you are correct,. it is probably due to a flaky wifi connection. After playing with it for a while it connected again and the 7 thermostats have been mostly reliable. Generally, I only have connection problems with one or two thermostats after a restart of HA. The rest of the time they are fine and don’t randomly disconnect.

if any one can get this to work with aprilaire 8920w or even some how put it in HA please tell me its been 20 days trying to figure this out

Per others in this thread/Aprilaire support, it doesn’t appear that the 8920W supports home automation mode. Someone above suggested they could do it through the Google Assistant API, but you’d have to look at that thread. The integration I built is specific to Aprilaire devices which support a local home automation connection.

I have done it with it but i cant seem to link it to a thermostat Screenshot 2023-06-08 at 12-11-49 Overview – Home Assistant
this is how it is im using this thread Custom Thermostat UI + Trigger Google | Alexa command scripts

I can’t believe I forgot about the WiFi devkit and a month later someone made a whole integration using it. This is incredible @chamberlain2007 ! You should make a separate thread for this under Share your Projects! - Home Assistant Community and submit it for inclusion in the HACS default repository.

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Glad you able to make use of it! I do currently have a PR in to the main HA repo to have it as an official integration Add Aprilaire integration by chamberlain2007 · Pull Request #95093 · home-assistant/core · GitHub , but I am having trouble getting it over the line with a lack of reviewers.

Any chance you could send me the documentation as well? I have a split system with the main thermostat downstairs and a secondary controller upstairs. I can control the downstairs without any issues, but I would really like to find a way to control the temperature upstairs controller.

Sadly, there isn’t anything in the documentation on how to control a second zone. I’ve been tinkering with it in my off time (which hasn’t been a lot recently) for a while now with no head way. Shoot me a DM and I’ll send over the documentation to you.