Rheem Econet oddness

Third party integrations
1

New user of the Rheem Econet system here. I bought a heat pump (hybrid) water heater and installed it over the weekend. It’s running now, and of course I had to enable the Econet integration as well.
A few questions –

  • The kWh consumed doesn’t seem to update in Home Assistant unless I open the Rheem app on my phone (sometimes) or tell the integration to reload. Same goes with some other values. Oddly enough, the Wifi signal level does seem to update on its own when I look at history in HA.
  • I noticed that the available hot water went from 0% to 10% to 100% with no steps inbetween when the heater was first started. This morning after a shower it went from 100% to 10% with no more than 20 gal. consumed (I have an 80 gallon version and an external flow meter, so I know the 20 gal is correct). That seems strange. Is that an API quirk or something with the heater?
  • I was hoping to get the tank temperature sensors on this system, but they don’t show up in the app and not on HA. I’m guessing they’re not available to the outside? Anyone ever try anything with the special service plug on the side of the water heater? Looks like an RJ type, but with 6 pins…
2

Hello, I created the integration for this, so I can answer some of your questions.

The usage isn’t part of the push data rheem sends so that data is polled every time a state change is detected on the unit. (Running <-> not running)

The percentages are terrible. There are only a few supported

0, 10, 40, 100 they don’t seem to be very accurate.

Unfortunately no temp reported :frowning:

3

Thanks for the clarification! Bummer on the percentages. I had a gas & solar powered tank which I instrumented myself, so I always had a really good idea of how much hot water was left. I even added a display in my bathroom to show that while showering. Was hoping the new tank would have similar info …

I am seeing some inconsistency in the status change is being handled. Yesterday the compressor was on for a couple of hours, then went off, then a few hours later it turned back on. I can confirm this when I look at the power consumption in the app. Yet, HA says it’s been running for 12 hours straight yesterday. Have you seen similar behavior? No internet issues, here, so it’s not like I missed a state change push. The app seems to always be correct. And right now it is off and HA has no status since 11pm or so last night when I suspect it turned off. image

Is there a way to change the behavior of the integration to use polling for everything (like every minute or so) instead of waiting for push notifications and then poll? I’m wondering if that will give better data accuracy.

For temperatures, I guess I’ll stuff some RTD’s into the insulation by the pipes so I can get at least some idea of temp in the top of the tank and connect them to an ESP8266 module.

Oddly enough, the Wifi reading is constantly updating, so it’s not like it’s not getting any data:
image

4

Others have reported inconsistencies with the running status.

I’d recomment turning in debug logging for the econet component and watching the updates to see what they are sending back.

Its possible the heat pump unit is different and I’m doing something wrong.

I think the logic is, if the running sensor is another but a blank string consider it running so it could be that so other non-running state is reported.

As for the polling, that’s possible but a good way to get shut down by econet and the API to go away forever, this has hapoened with other integrations in the past.

5

What is the best way to turn on debug logging for this component? I haven’t had to do that in HA yet …
I had to reload the component this morning since nothing besides the Wifi signal strength was updating. So far it’s been working ok today.

Understood about polling … I wouldn’t think it would show up on their radar if someone polled once per minute or something. But you’re right – don’t want to risk it getting shut down.

6 
logger:
  default: info
  logs:
    pyeconet: debug

Docs are here. Logger - Home Assistant

As an example, the Wink integration years ago polled every 60 seconds. Wink reached out to Paulus directly and said y’all need to stop that lol, luckily we had the push changes underway when they reached out.

7

Ok. Log enabled. I’ll keep an eye on it and let you know what I get (or don’t get) when it’s not working properly! Thanks for your help so far.

8

I’m not sure if this is the correct place to post this, but I was unable to find anything regrading my situations. I’m not sure if anyone else is having difficulties with this Integration. It seems that this only pulls info form my water heater and I’m unable to make any changes to wither the heating temp or the water heater operations. I have the “thermostat” card for this and it does display the set temp but If I were to change the temp up, down or change the heating mode in Home Assistant it does not change anything on the water heater or with in the Econet app.
My end goal is to use and automation to set to heater heater to vacation mode. If I will need to pull out my phone open the app and manually do the changes or make the changes on the water heater its self this kind of defeats the purpose of a “Smart” water heater.

9

Can you enable debug logging and see if you are seeing any errors in your logs when you try to make changes?

If you make a change in the app do you see it happen Home Assistant?

10

I did notice that in the app the changes that I made did not reflect any changes on the water heater heater not in HA. Maybe I’ll try and reconfigure the app and re connect to HA. The only data that I noticed was if I changed anything on the water heater its self then the app would update and not the other way around.

11

Reset the Wifi on the Water heater and what pain this is for some reason. Took forever for it to connect. Tested with both the app and HA and they both seem to allow control. Fingers crossed that everything stays connected.

1 Like
12

I’m planning to get this water heater at some point. Is it possible to shut it off from the home assistant integration?

13

Just installed a Rheem heat pump water heater. The integration finds it, and gets data, but some of the data is obviously wrong. Others have reported inability to change mode or setpoint via HA. Looks like the current integration doesn’t really work and I haven’t been able to find out anything more about it.