Best practices on making Climate control smart

Configuration
1

I like to use climate platform (generic_thermostat, specifically) for contoling temperature, but need to add the following set of tweaks. The question to you guys is which of possible implementations is the best practice?

  1. Climate control needs to pause (turn off ACs) when any of the window sensors indicates some window is open. When the sensor are back to normal state (windows are closed), the climate control should resume as if nothing happened

  2. I have two ACs in one room controlled by HAss’s climate platform. Climate should use the subset of ACs I have not individually disabled using Input Booleans (one boolean per AC) and make sure any disabled ACs are off.

What’s the wisest way to implement this behavior?

  1. Modify climate platform to take a list of entities that can override use of all or any of ACs?
  2. Write a custom python script?
  3. Use some automation kung fu (hoping it would not be 100 lines of yaml)
  4. Write an app for appdaemon?
  5. Anything else?
2

Both of these would be simple to implement with automation.

Automation 1:
Trigger: Window open
Action: Turn off AC

Automation 2:
Trigger: Window closed
Condition: check group of windows to ensure all are closed
Action: turn AC back on

Automation 3:
Trigger: Montor input boolean
Action: Set appropriate HVAC unit to off.

I am sure there are a number of ways to do this but to me that is the simplest and what I am familiar with.

3

I forgot to mention the specific Climate component I am using is generic_thermostat.

@silvrr, what do you mean when you suggest “Turn off AC”? I see no way to turn off generic_thermostat. As for individual HVAC units, if I turn them off, the generic thermostat will turn them on again (because it does not know I want those HVACs to remain off).

4

What are you options for operation_mode? You can either check the pull down on the front end or it may be listed next to the climate entity_id listed in your states tab.

5

Options for operation_mode are AUTO and OFF. Even if I do set mode to OFF when window is opened, I need some state to remember what the operation mode generic_thermostats was in before that. When window is closed generic_thermostat needs to return to that prior mode.

6

Yep, I have something similar set up with automations with my central air. If I open a window/slider and they are open for 5 minutes I turn off the ac. (In case I’m grilling or going in and out for some reason I don’t want to turn off the ac immediately.

I actually don’t have the ac turn back on automatically ever only because I’m funny that way. I have an ios automation that sends me a actionable message if all windows are closed and the temperature is at a certain value, if I would like to turn on the ac. I can respond yes/no.

7

Very smart setup, @azeroth12! Maybe I should use your ideas instead.