Converting a MAX! Cube to CUL/CUN to use with Home Assistant

[swifty]

No, I can’t say I’ve spotted the unit rebooting itself.

Have you tried a different USB power brick or cable ? - I have noticed the cube behaves oddly if there isn’t quite enough power.

[ibruceuk]

Yeah that solved it!

Using a 2amp power brick and it seems stable… The battery light actually means something it seems as now with a 2amp power brick it isn’t lit up at all where it did used to be!

[Nuick]

Hello everyone. First of all, thank you very much swifty for this very complete guide !

My max!cube as lost its configuration once too often. Before flashing the cube (as it’s one way), I want to be sure that I will keep the same set of features I’m using right now.
I have 6 max! radiator thermostats and 2 wall thermostats. Each wall thermostat is linked to 2 differents radiator thermostats. I am using MAX! home automation for configuring schedules and of course Home assistant integration to controls the thermostats.

1. As I understand, I will still be allowed to link wall thermostat to multiple radiator thermostats in order to send temperature change orders to the wall thermostat only, right ? Did someone test this ? Is the link between wall thermostat and radiator thermostats more reliable than with max!cube original firmware ? I have regular issues with this. Thermostats can desynchronize themselves and I have to factory reset them.

2. AndrejDelany says that is still possible to store time tables of temperature directly in the thermostat. This feature is very important to me. That means that the thermostats will continue to be scheduled even if there is an homeassistant/homegear/max!cube failure.
   Is it easy to configure in homematic-manager (in german ) ? Could someone please post a screenshot of the timetable editor ?

3. Is there a way to retrieve (and eventually set) the valve percentage of thermostats from Homegear into homeassistant ? Maybe using mqtt ?
   I am currently using some dirty python script to retrieve this values on max!cube and display them in grafana.

[AndrejDelany (Stefan)]

1. I linked one wall thermostat with one radiator thermostat. No problems.

2. Yes, they work even with homegear offline.
   

   
   
   (Wie du sehen kannst, ist die App teilweise auf deutsch. Du kannst damit die jeden Tag der Woche in bis zu 13 Abschnitte teilen, und für jeden Abschnitt eine Temperatur festlegen)

3. I don’t think so.

[swifty]

@Nuick if you are setting up from fresh I’d suggest deviating slightly from the setup I documented and enable mqtt in the homegear config.
This way you don’t need to use the homematic component for home assistant.
I switched mine over to Mqtt a while back and it seems much more reliable.

[Klagio]

@swifty

if you are setting up from fresh

Hi, after my nth unwanted MAX reset, I am ready to flash it, and hope not bricking the device. Coming weekend will do the hardware part.

For the software part I ran HASSIO 0.84.6 on a NUC,

Is your first post still working guide? Thanks for it anyway.

If I understoon correclty, you suggest to install Homegear HASSIo addon to be used with MQTT and do not install homematic, yes?

I managed to install the addon , I come to this menu, but clicking on ADMINISTRATION, it gives

# Not Found

The requested URL admin/ was not found on this server.

Homegear 0.8.0-2378 at Port 2001

[swifty]

Hi,

Yes the guide should still be working, but as per earlier I’d suggest the following change:
Skip the step for configuring the homematic component of HomeAssistant and instead use MQTT as per @quasar66 excellent suggestion here; Converting a MAX! Cube to CUL/CUN to use with Home Assistant

All you should need to do is enable the MQTT options within Homegear, which are documented on their website.
If i find some time i’ll update the OP to include all steps for MQTT.

[AndrejDelany (Stefan)]

You always need the Homegear addon. You can connect it via MQTT or via the Homematic component to Home Assistant.

[Klagio]

@quasar66

Success! I have thermostat+ 1 to 3 radiators in various rooms. When i change a thermostat the radiators get updated instantly!

And you don’t actually need the homematic binding, just use mqtt!

• https://www.home-assistant.io/components/climate.mqtt/

You can edit /etc/homegear/mqtt.conf and set your broker,

Hi, I did this, but I do not have thermostats but just the thermostatic valves: not sure we are talking about the same object (a thermostat is for me thge device that turns on and off the heater, the thrmostatic valve is the valve attached to the radiator that regulates the amount of water flowing in the radiator).

You know the mqtt commands to change values to the radiators?

https://www.eq-3.com/products/max/max-house-solution/max-radiator-thermostat.html

[Klagio]

@AndrejDelany

If you use MAX! Thermostats, I would recommend to use HomeMatic Manager so store the time tables of temperatures directly on the thermostats

if using MQTT as per above suggestions, will the programming still be stored in the thermostatic valves?

[Klagio]

@swifty

We can use the homegear cli to add a user for HomeAssistant - execute ‘homegear -r’ on your homegear server.
Type: users create <USERNAME> "<PASSWORD>" "1"
(Include those quotes around password and 1…)

Ohh I see I need to add a user, but how to add it in HASSIO?

[swifty]

Only need that for using homematic - you shouldn’t need this if using the MQTT approach.

In answer to your other questions, yes using the HomeMatic Manager to store the timetables to the thermostats will work fine with MQTT (they are stored on the actual valve) - assuming you run in ‘Auto’ mode.

And yes, the MQTT post I linked works fine with the radiator valves themselves (ie. if you don’t use a wall thermostat) - it can set the target temperature and change mode etc… of the radiator valve.

[Klagio]

@swifty

Only need that for using homematic - you shouldn’t need this if using the MQTT approach.

I see, great, one additional step solved.

Now the missing part is which are the correct topic for changing things. For each VALVE I should do something like the below code, but which are the topics for my 11 valves …? Basically how do I link a vbalve to a topic … sorry I am … confused

 - platform: mqtt
   name: Office Thermostat
   retain: false
   send_it_off: true
   current_temperature_topic: service/homegear/8347/plain/1/1/ACTUAL_TEMPERATURE
   temperature_state_topic: service/homegear/8347/plain/1/1/SET_TEMPERATURE
   temperature_command_topic: service/homegear/8347/set/1/1/SET_TEMPERATURE
   min_temp: 10
   max_temp: 30
   temp_step: 0.5
   modes: ["auto","manual","party","boost"]
   mode_state_topic: service/homegear/8347/plain/1/1/CONTROL_MODE
   mode_state_template:  >-
      {% set values = { '0':'auto', '1':'manual', '3':'boost'} %}
      {{ values[value] if value in values.keys() else 'off' }}

[Klagio]

I found this, but is soooo , to me, complicated. I just want to know the command/topic to read the current temperature of a specific valve and the command/topic to set a temperature value to a specific valve.

Any clue? Thanks

https://doc.homegear.eu/data/homegear/communication_protocols.html

[swifty]

So as an example, if you have the following settings in the mqtt.conf for homegear:-

prefix=homegear
homegearID=climate
plainTopic=true
enabled=true

(and obviously set your broker details)

Your MQTT entry for homeassistant would look something like:-

- platform: mqtt
   name: Landing Radiator
   retain: false
   send_it_off: true
   current_temperature_topic: homegear/climate/plain/4/1/ACTUAL_TEMPERATURE
   temperature_state_topic: homegear/climate/plain/4/1/SET_TEMPERATURE
   temperature_command_topic: homegear/climate/set/4/1/SET_TEMPERATURE
   min_temp: 14
   max_temp: 30
   temp_step: 0.5
  modes: ["auto","manual","party","boost"]
   mode_state_topic: homegear/climate/plain/4/1/CONTROL_MODE
   mode_state_template:  >-
  {% set values = { '0':'auto', '1':'manual', '3':'boost'} %}
  {{ values[value] if value in values.keys() else 'off' }}

Where ‘4’ in the topic is the peer (think device) id (view this in the homegear cli) and ‘1’ is the channel.
You’ll basically want to have multiple copies of the above, but simply change ‘4’ in the topic and the name to the relevant device.

[Klagio]

@swifty

Where ‘4’ in the topic is the peer (think device) id (view this in the homegear cli) and ‘1’ is the channel.
You’ll basically want to have multiple copies of the above, but simply change ‘4’ in the topic and the name to the relevant device.

Thanks a lot for your help. Is very clear all.

One last thing, I hope (!), how /where to check the peer ID for each device.

Running HASSIO I don’t have access to the homegear cli, or I have?

Nevertheless I can try randomly: I guess having 11 thermostatic valves they are numbered from 1,2,3 to 11?

[Klagio]

Sorry but trying to solve all the possible issues before installing all, and since the flashing is irreversible I want to make sure I have it all streighten up. Now it’s winter with 0 degrees, not a good time for experimenting with heating

[swifty]

If you can’t get to the cli, you can also view it on the web page at http://<homegear_ip>:2001
There is a table at the bottom of the page which shows all paired devices and the device ID.

[Klagio]

For accessing the GUI will need to solve the problem of the user. (Converting a MAX! Cube to CUL/CUN to use with Home Assistant)

I am kind of stuck
Nobody did this installation with HASSIO?

If not I guess will need to make a fresh Hassbian install so to have access to the cli, and hope the settings (peer I’d) be the same in the two install (hassio and hassbian)

[Dielee (Linus Dietz)]

Does this work with window sensors from max?