Drayton Wiser Home Assistant Integration

Third party integrations
2441

I just use a toggle helper with an automation which turns all of the wiser climate entities to off and also turns off all climate automations.

1 Like
2442

Mine is off all year round, I just boost when I want heating. Can’t be bothered faffing with schedules anymore when it so easy just to turn on for 2 hours from the phone when I need it!

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2443

I’m using Away Mode currently to see how that goes, and so far seems to be doing the job. I keep the toggle OFF for the Wiser Hub setting ‘Away mode affects Hot Water’ so that the Hot Water schedule remains in place and working.

One thing I have wondered, is that on a few occasions since being in away mode, I have heard a couple of the iTRV motors working for a couple of seconds - even though the temperature is way above the setpoint in each room. First thoughts were that it’s the valve protection setting kicking in to cycle the vales, but I have this turned OFF for all of the iTRV’s. I tried checking the diagnostics after it happened, but I couldn’t see anything out of place. Is there any way of tracing what triggered the iTRV to activate so that I can identify the cause when it next happens?

1 Like
2444

Thanks. This is what I am currently doing. For me it doesn’t seem ideal though, as if I am actually away I need to remember to change the hot water toggle. I guess I could set an automation to do it, but I then need to remember to change it when Winter comes.

It’s useful to see how others are handling it, as I am still trying to come up with something that works best for me.

2445

As you can create multiple schedules I personally just have a set for Winter and Summer so “Bedrooms-Summer”, and “Bedrooms-Winter”. When you select the schedule at the top there is a drop down to select which rooms it “Applies to”. So twice a year I go in and change the rooms that the schedule applies to.

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2446

In Settings->Away Mode you can select which devices it applies to and can exclude Hot Water if necessary.

2 Likes
2447

That’s true but when using Away Mode for dual purposes (summer heating off and holiday) means the hot water toggle needs to flicked on/off depending on which one is being used. Not a big deal of course. Swapping schedules seems a better approach as that allows some granularity leaving Away Mode for its “proper” purpose.

1 Like
2448

Thanks @jamiebennett. This is what I had been thinking of doing. Separate schedules for Winter and Summer and moving rooms between them twice a year, like you say.

2449

I already had an “unused room” schedule with a very low set point, and moved all my rooms into that when it warmed up but a couple of rooms fell below the normal set point.

You can use an automation to set up a “summer mode” to move all the rooms into a special schedule, and then use another automation to move them back to what you want the rest of the year. This could then be toggled via a button or even automated by dates.

I’m already doing similar for when I have guests staying (plus disabling automations that might be confusing).

1 Like
2450

I like this idea. This seems to make a lot of sense to me, moving them all into a single Summer schedule automaticially and back to their normal schedules in Winter. I think a toggle helper to do this would make the most sense, rather than trying to do it automatically on a set date, as “Summer” never arrives at the same time every year.

2451

I wasn’t really expecting to want to do this over just relying on the thermostats, but a couple of rooms were falling below 16°C apparently and triggering the boiler in the morning, and it really didn’t feel necessary. I suspect this may be another feature of the iTRVs.

2452

This subject (of the wiser hubR devices falling off wifi) could do with its own thread, i’d ike to know what people have tried and had success wtih.
I’m a relative newbie with home assistant but I’m a pretty competent sysadmin and can keep drayton honest with technical questions.

I hoped the recent firmware update for the hubR would help, turns out it didn’t.

How many people are still experiencing it fall off the network ?

1 Like
2453

TL;DR I still get occasional outages but I stopped trying to eliminate them after realising that the system mostly doesn’t need to be online all the time and finding some workarounds.

Occasional brief outages - certainly better than it was a year ago.

I made sure that the 2.4 GHz WiFi channel used by the hub didn’t overlap with either the ZigBee used by the hub or the other ZigBee network in my house.

I also set up sensors to monitor the WiFi signal strength received at the Hub and also one for the signal from the hub to the access point (luckily my APs have an integration that can do this).

I learnt that the signal strength where my Hub is located is poor compared to the rest of the house. This led to much tweaking of AP settings but nothing resolved the disconnects - I will add an additional AP when I remodel my kitchen which is where the Hub is located.

I also learned that scheduling and smart features of the Hub work if the Hub is offline - I just can’t edit them. I haven’t made use of many automations for the Hub sent from Home Assistant - those that I have are not critical but I did make a recovery automation that will apply some settings (e.g. Away) if the Hub is detected as coming back online. Someone shared some ideas on this above in this loong thread.

2454

I just leave mine as is. Its doesn’t get cold enough to hit the winter setpoints and it will start doing its thing again in Sept/Early October when it does.

1 Like
2455

I have different schedules and a summer/winter toggle. For a couple of rooms I also have an occupancy toggle so if they are empty it falls back to a low set point no matter if summer or winter. Then Away Mode does what it says on the tin!

1 Like
2456

For summer time I use the outside temp to turn to away mode.
I will change this to turn the tvs to off.
You can have ‘summer mode’ set whenever the outside temp is above x degrees and turn it back of when it drops below.
I also have it set that if the doors are left open for 5 mins it disables the heating everywhere till closed

1 Like
2457

I just simply just turn off heating, and juts have boiler do Hot Water.

1 Like
2458

With the passive mode, you could put all rooms in passive mode ‘manual’ which will then only call for heating if below a certain temp. You can create an automation to do this and have a toggle helper fire the automation on/off - or if you want to be really fancy, set it to run based on dates (however it might snow in Aug!!!)

This would then be like another away mode without using the hubs away mode in that if there is a cold day, it will provide some level of heating and saving the actual away mode for when you go away and want heating and h/w to be off / set to only bring on heating for an even lower temp.

1 Like
2459

Now that the hub firmware monitors the connection and restarts its networking, I only see the hub go offline for 5 minutes rather than the 2 hours it once did. However it just doesn’t appear to have the best antennae arrangement and I doubt firmnware revisions can address that.
I changed my main access point from an aging Asus to a decommissioned Meraki unit running OpenWRT. Now, wifi for the few IoT devices I have as well as phones and a laptop etc is improved. The hub seems to drop off wifi maybe once a week or so. Just to say, mine is not in the best location. It’s in the kitchen, a few feet from fridge freezer and microwave!

2460

Here is my recipe for handling automations that might be problematic if they get triggered and my hub happens to be offline.

First I need a binary sensor that detects if the hub is on or offline. I assigned my hub a fixed IP address at the DHCP server, so I can just use the ping platform:

- platform: ping
  host: 192.168.1.251
  name: Wiser-Hub
  scan_interval: 60

I can then create automations that trigger when the hub comes back online. I can then add conditions that are the same as automation triggers. For example, here is an automation that enables away mode if the hub comes back online and everyone is out:

alias: Wiser Hub Recovery Away Turn On
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - binary_sensor.wiser_hub
    from: "off"
    to: "on"
    alias: Wiser Hub comes back online
condition:
  - condition: state
    entity_id: group.my_family
    state: away
  - condition: state
    entity_id: switch.wiser_away_mode
    state: "off"
action:
  - type: turn_on
    device_id: my_hub_id
    entity_id: switch.wiser_away_mode
    domain: switch
mode: single

I have a corresponding one to turn away mode off if everyone is home when the hub comes back online:

alias: Wiser Recovery Away Turn Off
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - binary_sensor.wiser_hub
    from: "off"
    to: "on"
    alias: Wiser Hub comes back online
condition:
  - condition: state
    entity_id: group.my_family
    state: home
  - condition: state
    entity_id: switch.wiser_away_mode
    state: "on"
action:
  - type: turn_off
    device_id: my_hub_id
    entity_id: switch.wiser_away_mode
    domain: switch
mode: single

That is in addition to the rules to toggle away mode when everyone arrives or leaves.

This approach has worked great, but I don’t have a lot of HA automations that make changes to the hub.