Heating X: Schedule Thermostats with Calendars (DEPRECATED) [CLOSED]

I use Centigrade.
I do see all the traces.
I have set up a test dashboard.

The following from AllexIT:

Sonoff TH

Support optional Climate entity that controls Thermostat. You can control low and high temperature values and hvac modes:

heat - lower temp enable switch, higher temp disable switch
cool - lower temp disable switch, higher temp enable switch
dry - change control by humidity with previous low/high switch settings
In dry mode, the Thermostat controls and displays Humidity. But the units are displayed as temperature (Hass limitation).

Thermostat can be controlled only with Cloud connection. Main switch and TH sensors support LAN and Cloud connections.

The thermostat can not switch on the sensor to turn on the heat for the geyser.

1 Like

I cannot comment on your particular thermostat, but with mine it is possible to read the temperature using a template sensor.

Hi Andy,
I’m relatively new to HA and wanted to use your blueprint to create some heating controls.
I have a very basic question which isn’t clear from the guidance here or in the code generator “ReadMe”: I’ve generated all the .yaml files as per the code generator but where do I put the resulting files. I’ve tried adding to the configuration.yaml but that generates multiple syntax errors.
Some guidance would be appreciated

Sorry I did not make this clear …

I use a separate .yaml file for each type of helper and the templates; put them in the /config folder then include them in configuration.yaml as follows:

input_datetime: !include input_datetimes.yaml 
input_number: !include input_numbers.yaml
input_text: !include input_texts.yaml
template: !include templates.yaml
timer: !include timers.yaml

Into each of the files input_datetimes.yaml etc., paste the output from the code generator for that type and the syntax should be correct.

Thank you Andy for the amazing work!
I am trying to adjust your project to manage my Tado heating sistem from HA, most of the features that I need are already there so it’s a huge help!

Do you think it is possible to adapt this blueprint to use a different temperature in case the room is not occupied? I like to keep the temperature stable to 17°C the whole day and rise the temperarture when I am home and the windows are closed. I tried to use the parameter “minimum thermostat temperature” but it does not work this way, when the room is not occupied the heating is turned off. Any idea on how to implement this? Thank you in advance!

I am happy that the blueprint helped. I know is is hard to accommodate every need, so I hope you have success adapting it to yours.

‘Minimum thermostat temperature’ is the minimum setting the device can accept. You can use the “frost setting”, which used when there is no calendar event (or the room is unoccupied or a door or window is open). It is usually set to 5, but you could change it to 17.

Another method that should work is to have a continuous calendar event set to 17C all day every day. You can overlap other events with the current implementation. However, to make that work I introduced the 1 minute refresh, which I now realise runs down the thermostat batteries rather quickly. I am working on a release 2 that does not require this constant refreshing and want to add an ‘away’ feature (override everything when no one is in the house). I will think about how best to also accommodate a ‘background temperature’ feature.

UPDATE 26 Jan 24: following your comments and others I am working on a second release of Heating X that will feature

  • A ‘away’ switch that will cause all rooms to be set to a temperature specified for each room (the away temperature), without having to edit all the calendars.
  • An ‘background’ temperature input value that will be used when there is no calendar event - so you will not need 24 hour events. It is separate from the frost setting (effectively off), which will be used if a door or window is open.
  • A reprogramming of consecutive and overlapping events so that it will not be necessary to refresh every minute.
  • An optimisation of TRV transmissions to avoid duplicate instructions and thus save battery life (in release 1 this is rather bad with 1 minute refreshes!)

I would have a use case for this: I rent a couple of offices by the hour and add the bookings to a Google calendar. If I could use the same calendar to manage the warm-up schedule, it would be much better than having to use another calendar where I have the same events, but all starting X hours earlier.
In addition, automatically adding the heating period could bring some advantages in terms of the timing itself: if you look at the historical graph of a thermostat, you will clearly see that when the heating system is turned on, the temperature starts to be plotted on an exponential path influenced mainly by the initial temperature, the target temperature, the outdoor temperature, and some nonvariable coefficients that are typical for the specific room. With simple logic, it would be possible to calculate the timing based on historical data and turn on the heating system at the exact time it is needed.

Hi @AndySymons , great work !
Did you ever thought about using helpers instead the calendar/event function ?
In my opinion these helpers are easier to setup and to change ?

regards!

For some reason none of my window sensors are showing up within the blueprint. Any ideas?

Do you mean they are not showing in the selection list at the time you create the automation from the blueprint?
This might be because the selector filters on the domain binary_sensor and you have your sensors in s different domain? If so, then you can fix it by editing the blueprint to use your domain or remove the filter altogether

Thanks for the compliment. BTW I am working on release 2, which will feature an ‘away function’.
I am using helpers a lot (and wish it were not necessary) but I do not understand what you mean by ’ the calendar/event function’. Could you explain please?

Thanks for the interesting idea.
First point is that although I use local calendars, the blueprint should work with Google calendars or any other calendar that Home Assistant maps to a calendar entity.
How you would use historical data to insert events into the calendar I have no idea (and it is outside the scope of my present develpment). Do let us know here if you find a way of doing that!

Hi, thanks for your work and that you share it with us. Last week I made it work here as well in two rooms, each with a Shelly H&T and an IR-Panel (one with a Tasmota plug, one with a Tuya plug). Nothing more (no window sensors, etc.). It worked well for a few days, so i put one to my daughter’s room, but since the day before yesterday it stopped working.
Schedule and Status are showing the correct info from the dedicated calendar, but IR-Panel is off. I do can manually switch in on, so connection should not be lost.
How to find out, what’s wrong? I did not change anything directly on Heating X stuff, i just added Waste Collection Schedule from HACS which also uses calendars, but they should not influence each other.

1 Like

You would have to set up a test scenario and then look at trace in the automation created rom the blueprint.

If you are setting up test events in the calendar, remember that they take about 10 minutes to take effect, so you need to do it 10 minutes before observing what happens.

You may find it helpful during testing to put some of the helpers on the dashboard. You should anyway have ‘setting reason’. It is useful to have ‘manual override timer’ because then you can reset it rather than waiting two hours for it to expire.

Thank you Andy,
got it; my generic_thermostat was configured like

initial_hvac_mode: “off”

so it was deactivated after a HA restart (which i did during waste collection schedule setup several times).
I took that line out and configured

keep_alive:
minutes: 3

now it seems to be fine :slight_smile:

1 Like

The new release “Heating X2” is now available

:partying_face: :dancing_women: :piñata:

Hi Andy,
Just find this,
Does this control Honeywell Evo Home via an outlook calendar.
Kind regards,
John McGregor

1 Like

I don’t know offhand as it is not something I have tested.
The two questions to ask are

  1. Does the Honeywell Evo Home present to Home Assistant as a climate entity? (or can it be made to?)
  2. Does Outlook calendar present in Home Assistant as a calendar entity? (or can it be made to?)

The answer to the first question appears to be yes if you use Honeywell Total Connect Comfort (Europe)

The answer to the second question appears to be yes if you use Outlook Calendar Integration

So on paper it looks like a thumbs up. :+1:
Please post back here when you get it working!

1 Like

Thanks Andy, I’ll take a look :eyes:
JMc

1 Like

Heating X is no longer supported, but its successor Heating X2 can be found as part of my Home Assistant smart heating system in Project HEATHER.

This topic is therefore closed; please make further comment in the new topic.