Can I integrate Hive Active Heating into HA without the Hive Hub?

Add the SLC first to Z2M.

There’s a dropdown just to the right of “Permit Join (all)”. Use that to select the SLC and then press “select join (SLC). The SLT will then be paired to Z2M via the SLT.

Hope that makes sense.

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Thanks for your reply @jchh , but I don’t know what SLC is. Is that within the Zigbee2MQTT bridge “device”? That’s where I have been turning Permit Join on and off.

I’ll try to upload an image of what I see. I have searched around the menus on Zigbee2MQTT and MQTT itself and I don’t see a dropdown or anything called SLC.

Hi, pairing is tricky, took me ages to get it right.
You will need to do this in the Zigbee2MQTT web UI, the HA device screen you are showing doesn’t have all the functionality exposed.
First force remove any hive device you have paired within Z2M Web UI (Delete button on the right of the device then tick force remove, don’t tick the block from joining again!)

Remove the batteries from the controller.

First pair the receiver as per these instructions.

Once that is paired within the Zigbee2MQTT web ui where there is the button Permit Join (All), use the arrow to select the receiver you have just paired.
Put the batteries in the controller and follow these instructions,

You should then have them show up in Z2M and HA and then it’s your choice to use either @burgess101 or my control methods.

Sorry, I replied away from my PC - I meant SLR1.

I’m running HA Container (in docker) so I use Z2M’s own interface ( http://<your_ip>:8080) and was giving you instructions for that. It looks like this:

Thank you very much @jchh and @codechimp , it was the part about needing to do it within the Zigbee2MQTT web interface that I was missing (I’d not used that before). Once I was in that, it was no problem to join the thermostat via the receiver as per the instructions, it worked first time.

I set up a default dashboard card like this, and it worked out of the box to control the heating. So I’m not sure why Andrew’s integration is necessary? Works both ways as well, so I can set the thermostat from the device and it updates in HA. I’m not sure what functionality I’m missing by doing it this way?

      - type: vertical-stack
        cards:
          - type: thermostat
            entity: climate.0x001e5ff7a6e22012
            features:
              - type: climate-hvac-modes
                hvac_modes: auto heat off
            name: Hive
            show_current_as_primary: true
          - type: history-graph
            min_y_axis: 0
            hours_to_show: 168
            entities:
              - entity: climate.0x001e5ff7a6e22012
                name: Hive

For my next trick I’m going to see if I can set up an automation to change the temperature based on time of day (cooler at night) and to turn it off (or set the temperature to say 5 degrees) if there’s no one home. But I should be able to figure it out from here - if you know of any got ya’s that I should keep watch for please let me know!!!

Thanks again

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Glad you got it working.
Although the basics seem to work you’ll find some weirdness with certain operations via HA with just the Z2M climate control, for example setting the heat needs 2 messages to be sent, the default Z2m climate control does not send the two messages, in certain conditions this will cause it not to do what’s intended.
It’s an extremely fussy zigbee device!

Thanks - I’ll see how it goes raw, and reconsider using your integration if I find weirdness! My setup is about as basic as it gets (one boiler, one receiver, one thermostat) and I have no intention of using any more Hive products after this experience!! So maybe this will be fine. I would eventually like to add zigbee TRVs and a temperature sensor per room but I think that’s a way away for me!

I don’t use it so not can’t comment on what it does. To get you a little excited, this is my Hive control view on HA. …you can do all of this as well :slight_smile:

It’s 100% local, uses presence, door/windows, time of day, awake/asleep etc etc to decide what to do with the temp. …anything is possible!

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This is what I ended up doing, it wasn’t too difficult. I used the Better Thermostat integration btw to control aqara TRVs and temp sensors but that was when I was on ZHA and couldn’t directly configure the TRVs to use external temp sensors.

I’ve had another go at this and everything now seems to be paired but it’s not working as expected.

For some reason, it says I have 2 thermostats attached to my boiler. The first 1 has the correct temperature, the 2nd doesn’t.

If I try to turn the heating on from HA nothing happens

HVAC is unknown on the thermostat

If I manually turn on the heating the controls update


I suspect one might be left over from a failed previous pairing attempt. I’d suggest force removing both the receiver and controller from Z2M web ui and starting again, give it a slightly different name as well to make sure there’s nothing in MQTT hanging around.

Turning on the heating via the native Z2M climate control doesn’t send all the appropriate messages, which is why people are either creating YAML based thermostats to send MQTT commands or my custom integration which does similar.
Here you’ll see the commands needed, you also need to look at multiple values returned to properly determine state.

Can you go into more detail on the 2024 update please? I’ve got my SLR1c connected and giving me an IEEE of 00:1e:5e:09:02:90:49:be, but running the following automation doesn’t seem to do anything:

action: zha_toolkit.execute
metadata: {}
data:
command: handle_join
ieee: 00:1e:5e:09:02:90:49:be

How do I get the SLT6 to pair up after that?

I spent a few hours trying to get my SLR1C and SLT6 to pair with home assistant successfully last night. I too ended up with both showing in HA, but the thermostat still showed “Searching…” with the time counting up.

I tried to follow these instructions and they didn’t work, but the ZHA toolkit put me on the right path.

I first tried the handle_join for both the IEEE of the receiver and the thermostat. Both gave a successful message, but neither seemed to make any difference.

I then looked throught the docs of ZHA Toolkit and thought I’d try binding the stat to the receiver.

In HA, I did the following, go to developer tools and then the “Actions” tab. On there look for “ZHA :toolbox: Toolkit: Bind Cluster”, which is the bind_ieee command, and then put in the thermostat IEEE into the “Device Reference” and the receiver IEEE into the “Bind To Device Reference”. After clicking “perform action” I got a successful message.

After this, I still had the “Searching…” message showing on the stat, so I ran a command to check the bindings… “ZHA :toolbox: Toolkit: Get Binding Table”, which is the binds_getcommand, and put the thermostat IEEE in the device reference. Pressing “Perform action” returned a list of the bindings, and the Thermostat was binded to the receiver now, but above it was another device which I assume is the device it binded to when first adding the device in HA (event tho I did it via the receiver in the first place). I noted the other devices IEEE number for the next step.

I then ran the “ZHA :toolbox: Toolkit: Remove All Bindings from Device” action, which is the binds_remove_all command. For this one, I put the thermostat IEEE in the device reference field, and the other devices IEEE I noted from the previous step in the “Remove Bindings with This Device” field, with all others blank, and click “perform action”. This worked, confirmed by another check with the “ZHA :toolbox: Toolkit: Get Binding Table”.

I think at this point I noticed that the light on the receiver had changed from flashing yellow to solid green, but I can’t remember if I ran the handle_join again or not.

From that point on, the thermostat showed the temp controls and everything in HA worked perfectly. The stat can turn the heating on and off, and I can change the settings in HA and have them turn the heating on/off and be reflected instantly on the stat.

I hope that’s helpful.

Did you get to the bottom of this, @Ydarb?

I’ve reached the same point. I also have 2 thermostats listed on the receiver, one with the correct temp and details and the other which doesn’t seem to do anything, and 2 HVA actions, similar to the stats listed.

However, you seem to have got slightly further than me in terms of the thermostat unit. My SLT6 lists the correct temperature on the sensor, but the controls don’t display any relevant data.

These screenshots were taken at basically the same time.

Receiver:

Stat:

Changing the temp on the stat, or using the controls on the reciever in HA does appear to do what it is meant to do, but something is not quire right here.

I’m loathed to move all 50 Zigbee devices from ZHA to Z2M, but if it’s the only option to get this working I probably will.

At the moment I have the receiver wired to a plug and not on the boiler for testing, so I’m not impacting the wife and kids, but it would be nice to have this working properly ASAP.

The plot thickens!

When first paired the receiver seemed to be performing as expected, and I had it set to heat for over an hour. I then had a play with the Climate controls in HA and turned it from “heat” mode to “off”. When I tried to turn it back to heat mode in HA, the set temp dropped to 1C and after changing it, neither the receiver or the thermostat reflected the change. I used the thermostat to turn the heating back on and that worked, but ever since, it seems to get stuck in a cycle where the receiver turns the boiler on for 9-10mins then it loses connection to the thermostat, the light on the receiver turns red (and reports idle in HA), the boiler turns off, and then 5/6mins later it reconnects and the receiver turns the boiler back on. It’s done that consistently over night and a power down and reboot of both units seems to make no difference. During the period when the receiver is showing a red light, if I change the temp on the thermostat it is reflected in HA, but it still reports being disconnected on the screen.

Update (14 Nov 2024):
In the end I’ve moved over to Z2M and everything is working as expected. It’s a shame I couldn’t get it working reliably with ZHA, but I’m happy now. It’s been stable for 6 days and with none of the issues I was seeing in ZHA.

With time it may have been possible to work out what was going on and fix it, but I didn’t have the time or inclination. Having now played with the Z2M integration, I think ZHA isn’t sending the necessary complete commands because multiple attributes are changed at the same time, and I suspect ZHA isn’t sending all the necessary updates.

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I’m not entirely sure it was a bit of trial and error. I’d aim the handle join at the device connected to your boiler, when it’s in the appropriate light flashing stare as described above.
Then I’d put the battery powered controller into pairing mode as described above

Any info on setting this up?

Did you go full YAML or just use the visual editor?

Full yaml. Happy to share it but after Christmas as I’ll need to spend some time annotating and explaining if that’s OK?

Edit: I forgot that I have already posted this.

check here for the dashboard and here for the package.

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Thanks!

That’s enough for me to cobble together an imitation, very kind of you.

Feel free to ask any questions as they arise :+1:t2: