Auto heating control - not easy :)

[Mutt (Muttley)]

Really? I thought the “Saga of Jiran” would become an international bestseller
The number of people dropping by here just to see what other idea has popped into his head today

[SteveDinn]

I don’t have any time triggers, unless you count the 1 second timer that I use to wait before sending the command for my heart pump. Everything happens pretty much in real time.

[Mutt (Muttley)]

That’s even better !

[Jiran]

BUMP HASS up and running with hassbian latest

[Jiran]

Small step for every proffesional heater controller but BIG JUMP for me

[Mutt (Muttley)]

Jiran, what are the names of your rooms ?
and which are the 3 that set house heating to on ?

Edit: just clarifying some points: -
You say if fire boiler > than 50° then use that - why ? is not 40° useful as well ? ie these are not serial systems - They are in parallel only ? and heater valve ‘on’ diverts from ‘tank’ to ‘heater’ ?
The pump pushes into both the tank and the heater, but flow only goes through the non bypassed item ?
What is emergency ? tank > 70° ??? and emergency resets at 68° ??? (I think these figures need to be hard coded.
It is also safer to open ALL valves (even if rooms are unoccupied) during an emergency to maximise heat loss

[jazzyisj (Jason)]

Phil is definitely a Home Assistant legend. I also have several of his posts bookmarked.

At some point someone clued me into the whole startup state change thing. Most of my automations now take this into account but I have a couple based on template binary sensors where the only way to fix the issue (that I could come up with) of automations firing on a restart was to delay them on a reboot long enough that the binary sensors have registered the proper state. I’ll have a good look at that post and see if there’s a method there I didn’t think of.

Which leads me to another thought. There are a handful of very, very informative posts in the forums. I can think of several by @Tinkerer, @pnbruckner, @petro, @finity and even a couple from yourself that have helped me out immensely since I started out.

Some of these posts obviously take a lot of time and effort to put together, yet they get missed because they sit in a thread with an unrelated obscure title. I think it would be great to have a special section for these posts similar to r/bestof on Reddit. Not the whole threads - just the relevant post. We could have some kind of voting or nomination system to highlight posts that we think should be added to the mods.

I think it would be very helpful to have all these “best of” posts in one place that’s easy to find and reference and also to point new users to. It might also save a lot of the repetitive questions on here.

BTW the “TOP” sorter doesn’t really work for this, it really just displays the most active posts.

Thoughts?

Edit: If I’ve forgotten any of you other HA guru’s on the list here it wasn’t intentional! (@Mariusthvdb, @Mutt, @ludeeus, @thomasloven )

[Mutt (Muttley)]

Jason you shouldn’t tag people with a shotgun
I’ve not had time to read the above (he says engaging in a novella) but I will soon… but…
I’m not a guru, I barely have started learning yaml, I’m just a selfish b4574rd who helps others so I can learn more.
Phil has been at HA for just over a year now, surprising isn’t it ?
Taras only uses HA so he can help on this forum (he uses another platform)
Finity Tom, and Petro are the other notables in my book, but that’s because I’m only slightly qualified to answer certain questions and I overlap with those goys, there are many, many more I have yet to interact with properly like ggravlingen who has written the Ikea blind integration - these ALL are smart guys who donate their time for others (or maybe they just wanna learn too) Taras says it’s because he doesn’t have a life but I secretly (not so secretly actually) think it’s because he likes puzzles and us dumb schmucks are certainly that. They have all helped me tremendously and I’m just doing a bit to help payback (giving the likes of Phil more time to support his life360 component and maybe some other stuff)

Edit a 2nd part of novella - I love your idea, but I think it would be almost impossible to implement. I’ll paint a usage case, what I thought was a diamond idea a year ago, I may think was just common sense today. To be helpful it needs to be pertinent to its readership and I don’t know I need a template to answer this I just need a dang light to come on. So I’ll search on that (some users don’t even search)
How many times have you come across a thread that says, “somebody has probably asked this before… How do I turn on a light ?”
When I come across a piece of code I don’t understand or I think will be useful, I copy it into a “neat stuff.yaml” file just in case. I peruse that (after I’ve been puzzling a solution but before posting a question l I guess everyone is different though.
I would point out though that truth is not democratic ie. It’s very rarely what the majority of people think it is. So the same would apply here. You, me and Taras may think “this post” by finity is absolute genius, but Phil may argue that its not explicit and could cause errors if capricorn is in ascendancy over McDonald’s, and he’d be right but voted down.
I think instead that a training manual on HA would be more useful, but again that’s a moving feast as HA only changes if there’s a ‘y’ in the day.
I dunno, I really don’t have any answers
I like your sentiment but we are constrained by the mechanisms of the forum platform we use, I’m no longer interested in what platform it is (unlike other forums in the past) it’s a given, we aren’t gonna change it easily, so I just live with it. Probably why some people take stuff to reddit.

TL;DR : - In Summary,
I aspire to be as helpful as Phil, Teras, finity, petros and the like, not because I want to be a guru but because I’m selfish and want to be able to solve any problem that HA throws my way (cheques should be made payable to …)

[HorizonKane]

Did not read the whole thread through, tooooo long but here is my heating approach (in Node-RED):

Problems with Homematic Thermostats - solved, now includes individual heating system

Hi sota, thank you for the input I prefer to not use the CCU to set schedules as I find it is uncomfortable and not suiting all my needs. I created everything Node-RED, even boost mode, linked it with armed_away status to save heating energy etc. I don’t send regular temperature changes to the TRV (I guess that means the thermostats), I only set the temperature once at defined times / events while they stay in Manu Mode, the valve is controlled by thermostat itself. It is work…

[123 (Taras)]

@jazzyisj

At some point someone clued me into the whole startup state change thing. Most of my automations now take this into account but I have a couple based on template binary sensors where the only way to fix the issue (that I could come up with) of automations firing on a restart was to delay them on a reboot long enough that the binary sensors have registered the proper state.

I expressed my opinion on this issue elsewhere. In a nutshell, the fact some aspects of Home Assistant behave differently at startup, thereby requiring explicit mitigation in automations and template sensors, is a deficiency requiring attention before a 1.0 release. (IMHO)

I must sound repetitive and boring to some people by now but here I go again: startup is handled better in Premise (the software I’ve used since 2008). I wasn’t even aware of potential startup glitches until I began exploring Home Assistant (and openHAB). To be honest, I’m not certain of the technique Premise employs (I’ve had never a reason to investigate because there are no special concerns at startup). At startup, I’ve never had things come up in an unexpected state (or no state) thereby leading to the triggering of automations for unanticipated reasons. It’s just not a “thing” in Premise. Anyway, the upshot is that users shouldn’t have to mitigate for the software’s ‘unique ways’ occurring at startup. The hurdle may be that implementing the solution may be too disruptive to Home Assistant’s architecture.

[petro]

We really just need a built in resume-state on startup that doesn’t trigger a state change.

[jazzyisj (Jason)]

Jason you shouldn’t tag people with a shotgun

Lol. I normally don’t but this was just a handful of folks who I’ve noticed have had really helpful posts over the couple years I’ve been at this now. Since they are some of the most active and informative I thought some of them might have pertient thoughts about it. I also didn’t realize “shotgunning” people was bad etiquette. It has been noted. I’ll go stand in a corner for a while and reflect on my sin.

what I thought was a diamond idea a year ago, I may think was just common sense today

That’s exactly of my point though. A lot of stuff comes second nature to us now because we either come from coding backgrounds or we’ve put all the pieces together and dealt certain things a hundred times now. The learning curve to get there was pretty steep though. I actually have some prior coding experience and it still takes me while to wrap my head around some things. That can be very discouraging. How many people have you seen threaten to rage quit HA because they were frustrated about something? I think HA is awesome and it has a great community behind it.

I would point out though that truth is not democratic ie. It’s very rarely what the majority of people think it is.

True enough but I think that if a best of post was highly upvoted particularly by a lot knowledgeable folks on here that it would be a pretty good indication it’s something that the mods should include. Some things are also pretty black and white. For example finitys post about dealing with timestamps in HA. For someone with a python background it’s a no brainer. The rest of us could probably benefit from a little hand holding in that area.

This was all only a fleeting thought of something I thought I’d find useful. I’m not overly vested in the idea. I’ve thrown it out there but if it doesn’t get any traction no biggie. Thank you for your thoughts on it. Like yourself, I’m only here trying to pick off low hanging fruit to take some the load off the guys that could be answering the hard questions (or actually working on HA). I also learn quite a bit doing it and it’s also gratifying to help people out.

Anyway it seems I’ve kind of hijacked the heating system thread with this here. So I’m going to go away now. I probably should have started another thread for this but I don’t always think so clearly at 2 in the morning. Perhaps I should just stay off the forums when it’s past my bed time…

Cheerio

[Mutt (Muttley)]

@123

I must sound repetitive and boring to some people

Some people just don’t hear it the first 1000 times, keep plugging, we’ve never told you to shut up

@123

users shouldn’t have to mitigate for the software’s ‘unique ways’

Not sure on this one, you meet the love of your life, witty, clever, fun to be with, great body with discipline to match - then you find out she bites her toenails in bed. Whatcha gonna do ? (I just pick my nose while I think about it)

@jazzyisj

trying to pick off low hanging fruit

Love that whole paragraph, spot on !

@jazzyisj

Anyway it seems I’ve kind of hijacked the heating system thread

It’s not as if Jiran hasn’t posted some irrelevant stuff in here already AND they do call this a community !

AND we are still waiting for him to come back with some answers !

[jazzyisj (Jason)]

@Mutt

Not sure on this one, you meet the love of your life, witty, clever, fun to be with, great body with discipline to match - then you find out she bites her toenails in bed. Whatcha gonna do ? (I just pick my nose while I think about it)

Oh my! I probably could have done without these visuals this morning!

[Jiran]

BEHOLD @Jiran is BACK and loaded! Now HASS running sensors, switches etc. ready. So now I need to create some automations. I think automation is the only usable way in HA for my purposes. Stiil I don´t know how automations run. Does some CRON or something starts it or how it works damned?

Anyway. Now I need an automation which will ask every room if it want to start heating. In those rooms there will be different sensors but I will use GENERIC THERMOSTAT for each. So I hope this module has some kind of output which says “I want to heat” Or maybe I don´t need to ask those thermostat as their On output will be switch to ON command (which will open room heating valve which will allows heated water to flow into room floor). So I can only ask if SWITCH dedicated to ROOM is ON or OFF.

Any help here? How to check if generic thermostat wants to heat? How to check multiple thermostats and if ANY of them wants to heat turn ON another automation or script?
Thank you very much.

[Jiran]

Oooh what a silence now… Anybody any idea or a tip for similar automation?

[finity]

@Jiran

I think automation is the only usable way in HA for my purposes. Stiil I don´t know how automations run.

check the docs? it will tell you that information.

I don’t use any smart thermostats so I can’t help with that.

[Twan (Antoine)]

Hi !

Just jumping in here, I had no time to read everything. If I understand it right, you just need a way to tell your central heating to turn on if any of the valves wants hot water ?

If that’s the case, you could simply put all your valves switches in a group, thus the group will be on when any of the valves is on. Then you can have this trigger the central heating.

Here’s a draft :

group.all_valves:
  - switch.valve_room_A
  - switch.valve_room_B
  - ...

automation_turn_on_central_heating:
  trigger:
    platform: state
    entity_id: group.all_valves
    to: 'on'
  action:
    -> turn on central heating

automation_turn_off_central_heating:
  trigger:
    platform: state
    entity_id: group.all_valves
    to: 'off'
  action:
    -> turn off central heating

Hope this helps

[Jiran]

OH great idea. Thanks. I didn’t know about groups… It is little more complicated in my case. There are some conditions.
Or better say this is the heating part.Not sure if do it using automation or script:

[nonyhaha (Ion Marica)]

So, what did you end up doing?
I had a similar project to build this winter, so I ended up like this: Multi zone heating control with open window detection for opentherm boiler
Take note, I wanted to send temperatures to the boiler, not only on/off commands.
This can be extended to any number of zones. It will look awkward, but it will work