I’m not familiar with EQ-3 but I’ve been looking for a radiator TRV solution for my home. I’ve been tempted by the Tado valves bit they have mixed reviews.
Does this flashing of firmware on the cube expose both sensors and a method to control / set the temperature of the radiator valves from home assistant?
Well done of the comprehensive write up! I’d be more than happy to give this a go if I can finally control my radiators from HA!
Thanks
I only use the Max! TRVs but they also make door/window sensors, wall thermostats and few other things, all of which work with HomeGear.
With the setup above I can read the current settings and send new ones (eg new target temperature) to the TRVs from Home Assistant.
Awesome thank you.
I notice there’s two different TRVs which ones do you use? I’m not too sure what the differences are between them but my radiators are all veritcal mount valves
Great, thank for the tutorial! Do you think there is an easy way to install HomeGear on HassIO to avoid using another machine?
I use the Max EQ-3 basic (https://m.reichelt.com/gb/en/max-basic-heating-controller-max-ht-basic-p161419.html?CTYPE=0&MWSTFREE=0&PROVID=2788&gclid=CjwKCAjwpKveBRAwEiwAo4Pqm7ZvZp7X6UJ2aIClTAE5T9AZXT79ocFQZlKLFkhWT0RdbVWOp3gBxxoCgskQAvD_BwE&&r=1)
Be careful when searching around, as I believe they do one that looks very similar but uses Bluetooth (no cube connection).
I think the larger squarish looking one has built in scheduling on the TRV itself, but this isn’t required if using Cube / Home Assistant, since you can create schedules there…
The only hassio add-on I could find for HomeGear appeared to be for Raspberry Pi - but I think its no longer maintained.
I use Hassio in a VM so that was no good for me anyway.
If you are using RPi I guess it should work OK though : Homegear Add-on for Hassio
I started to install homegear before flashing the cube, just to make sure, my installation works. Seems like Homematic Manager connects correctly to Homegear and after adding the homematic configuration to the configuration.yaml I get no error in HomeAssistant as well.
But when opening homegear:2001 in a browser, i get a server response, but an error. Is this correct, or should there be an UI?
You say: “At this point it is worth hitting http://<HOMEGEAR_IP>:2001 to make sure you are greeted by the HomeGear RPC Server page”. Is this page what you meant with that?
Another problem: HomeAssistant doesn’t care, if the provided homegear credentials in the configuration.yaml are valid or not. In homegear, I’m always getting the following log when starting home assistant. Is this the same output you get?
10/21/18 14:56:21.306 Info: Client with IP ::ffff:192.168.178.106 is calling "init".
10/21/18 14:56:21.306 Info: Adding server "http://192.168.178.106".
10/21/18 14:56:21.307 Info: Calling init methods on server "http://192.168.178.106".
(Please note, both home assistant as homegear run on the same IP)
I’m not sure why you get URL not found… it certainly looks like it’s Homegear that is listening on that port and responding by looking at the page footer…
I get this when I browse to port 2001 on my Homegear server:-
I wonder if the page is only alive when you have at least 1 backend (CUL/CUN etc…) configured / connected ?
As for the username/password - I believe these are only actually needed when using the json method of retrieving friendly names for the devices in Homegear.
I included it as this is what I have in my config, but as I note the friendly names don’t retrieve for me (I just set them in HA instead).
I’ve not had time yet to take a look at why this isn’t working - but it’s low priority for me as everything works ok otherwise 
Hello,
great write up!
One question though - what is the advantage of using the Cube as CUL/CUN device ?
Is it just to remove the send limits or are there further benefits?
For me, I was having issues with the cube forgetting the configuration when paired with HA (this seems to be a common issue with it related to frequent polling).
With the new firmware this issue shouldn’t be present anymore - I believe it also allows the Cube to pair with other extra devices (that use the correct frequency) but I’ve not looked into this much.
I mainly just wanted a stable heating system that didn’t forget all its settings every week 
Hi, I am trying to do as you advice but need some help.
Irun HASSIO 0.80.3 and added this addon
Homegear.
But it does not install (clicking on install does nothing).
Trying now to follow your instructions: first file name is “Dockerfile”, correct?
And where shall I save the 2 files, not sure how to access HASSIO addon folders (I just have config, share, ssl, addons, backup)
Below the log
18-10-22 17:35:22 INFO (MainThread) [hassio.addons.addon] Create Home Assistant add-on data folder /data/addons/data/89330960_rpi-homegear 18-10-22 17:35:22 INFO (SyncWorker_1) [hassio.docker.addon] Start build 89330960/amd64-addon-rpi-homegear:0.2 18-10-22 17:35:40 ERROR (SyncWorker_1) [hassio.docker.addon] Can't build 89330960/amd64-addon-rpi-homegear:0.2: The command '/bin/sh -c apt-get update && apt-get -y install apt-transport-https wget ca-certificates apt-utils gnupg' returned a non-zero code: 1 18-10-22 17:36:12 INFO (SyncWorker_16) [hassio.docker.addon] Start build 89330960/amd64-addon-rpi-homegear:0.2 18-10-22 17:36:14 ERROR (SyncWorker_16) [hassio.docker.addon] Can't build 89330960/amd64-addon-rpi-homegear:0.2: The command '/bin/sh -c apt-get update && apt-get -y install apt-transport-https wget ca-certificates apt-utils gnupg' returned a non-zero code: 1 18-10-22 17:43:44 INFO (SyncWorker_11) [hassio.docker.addon] Start build 89330960/amd64-addon-rpi-homegear:0.2 18-10-22 17:43:47 ERROR (SyncWorker_11) [hassio.docker.addon] Can't build 89330960/amd64-addon-rpi-homegear:0.2: The command '/bin/sh -c apt-get update && apt-get -y install apt-transport-https wget ca-certificates apt-utils gnupg' returned a non-zero code: 1 18-10-22 17:45:02 INFO (SyncWorker_4) [hassio.docker.addon] Start build 89330960/amd64-addon-rpi-homegear:0.2 18-10-22 17:45:04 ERROR (SyncWorker_4) [hassio.docker.addon] Can't build 89330960/amd64-addon-rpi-homegear:0.2: The command '/bin/sh -c apt-get update && apt-get -y install apt-transport-https wget ca-certificates apt-utils gnupg' returned a non-zero code: 1 18-10-22 17:47:02 INFO (SyncWorker_2) [hassio.docker.addon] Start build 89330960/amd64-addon-rpi-homegear:0.2 18-10-22 17:47:05 ERROR (SyncWorker_2) [hassio.docker.addon] Can't build 89330960/amd64-addon-rpi-homegear:0.2: The command '/bin/sh -c apt-get update && apt-get -y install apt-transport-https wget ca-certificates apt-utils gnupg' returned a non-zero code: 1
Did you make some test? Since is irreversible firmware flash wish to see others experiences 
Yes, exactly this error message I got when I tried to install the HassIO HomeGear addon from the repo you mentioned. Unfortunately there are some minor problems with my solution from above, e.g. the HTTP server does not start correctly.
But I am working on a new version of the HassIO HomeGear addon. If I’ve got everything working, I will post a tutorial here.
I’ve been running the flashed cube for a few weeks now connected to HA.
Many restarts of HA and everything is still working OK - that’s more than I ever got with the original firmware.
The configuration loss seems to be a bug in the original firmware, so should no longer be present with a-culfw AFAIK.
yes I sort of fixed it changing the poll interval to 600 seconds, so far it works,
how does the pairing process work? From HASS you click something?
See in the guide above - pairing happens via HomeGear, there are a number of apps that can be used to control HomeGear, I used Homematic manager.
The homematic manager app tells HomeGear to put the cube to pairing mode, the actual pairing process then works the same as the original firmware.
So, I finally managed to setup HomeGear as HassIO Addon. Before publishing it in a repo for easy installation, I would like to give a preview for testing:
Zippyshare.com - [now defunct] Free File Hosting
Please create a Directory “Homegear” in your HassIO’s addons share and copy the 5 files in there. Afterwards you can install from the “Add-on Store” inside HassIO (see https://developers.home-assistant.io/docs/en/hassio_addon_tutorial.html).
If it works for you or not, please give me feedback.
Please see here for new instructions on how to run HomeGear on HassOS on RaspberryPi:
Watching this closely.
I’m currently looking at incorporating TRV control into HA and am torn between this, Thermal Actuators controlled by Sonoffs (with automation to close them off when a room temp is hit) or EnerGenies…
Can this be used without Hassio and just Home Assistant?