Ok, stop searching, my bad…
Floor setpoint IS available with the 2 557 that are set as FLOOR only.
Humidity max setpoint is available on the 557 that is controling Dehumidifying.
I didn’t realized that the 482 is “context sensitive” to the thermostats settings…
I will dig further and come back to you if needed.
Thanks a lot!!!
Hello again,
So the Floor (slab) setpoint is available with thermostats 6 and 7, which only have Floor sensors.
However, the protocol manual mentions this:
“Slab setpoint was availble in prior versions if no room sensor was configured. With protocol version 3 the slab setpoint message can be used as a slab minimum target temperature when both room and floor sensing is configured.”
Considering my config, do you think there would be a way to activate it for the other thermostats?
Hey new to this I got a client who has a 406 house control linked with a 557 and 6 552 stats for forced air and in floor heating now in theory I should be able to daisy chain the network through to the 406 and the 313 wiring centre to allow for setpoint change to thermostats only and than have the tekmar net still communicate stand alone to the main controller.
The 406 House Control does have two sets of tN4 expansion terminals, and is shown in diagrams connecting those bus terminals to the 482.
So I would say it looks like it is supported, but I have not personally tried it with a House Control module.
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Ok that’s fine will try and update now regarding the integration what would you recommend for when the integration is remote
USR -TCP232-302 RS232 Serial to RJ45 Ethernet Adapter IP Converter/Device Server : Amazon.ca: Electronics was looking at this to go to my LAN switch from my serial connection on the tekmar 482
It will work with serial to IP converters that support TCP Socket or RFC2217.
Ok beauty thanks man looking forward to trying it out will update with how it goes
Hello!
Finally installed my hydronic radiant + Tekmar equiptment and getting it fired up for the first time.
I had a couple questions that are making me scratch my head a little.
Originally, I had “Setback” disabled and the sensor readings mostly made sense. I setup a 2 Event schedule (day/night) and realized some data stopped getting sync’d back to HA until I re-read the documentation regarding enablement of “Setback”.
With that being said, here is what I’m seeing:
Questions:
-
Tekmar Living Temperature: Can I assume that this is the Air Sensor reading? I am targeting 71F, so it’s pretty much spot on within 2 tenths of a degree.
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With the Setback Enabled, should I assume it’s OK that the Tekmar Living Heat Setpoint is “null”? That value was not null when I had Setback disabled…
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This is probably that one I’m most confused about: Tekmar Living target Temperature is 72F even though my schedule on the Thermostat is set to 71F… is it somehow rounding values?? Notably, however, my temperature is spot on, so seems to be working as expected (assuming Tekmar Living Temperature is actually the Air Temp sensor…)
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What is the difference between Heat Setpoint and Target temperature?!
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What is the difference between Tekmar Living current temperature and Tekmar Living Temperature??
EDIT/UPDATE (several hours later…)
I believe the Tekmar Living Heat Setpoint was “null” because I changed the Setback to Enabled within the same window of graphing where it was previously Disabled… anything with a start window past 5:30pm does not show it, so makes sense since I disabled it right before 5:30pm…
Also, I’m thinking the somewhat unexpected numbers may be a Celsius vs. Fahrenheit issue… thinking me setting via thermostat to 71F might actually be 22C (which is 71.6F, rounding up to 72F)?
Really appreciate all your work on this, thank you so much!! I am in the US and using Fahrenheit.
Thanks again,
Questions:
- Tekmar Living Temperature: Can I assume that this is the Air Sensor reading? I am targeting 71F, so it’s pretty much spot on within 2 tenths of a degree.
Yes, it is the air sensor in the thermostat itself (or an external air sensor if the thermostat supports one and is configured to use that instead of internal).
- With the Setback Enabled, should I assume it’s OK that the Tekmar Living Heat Setpoint is “null”? That value was not null when I had Setback disabled…
Correct; that’s because when you enable setback it uses three separate number entities for each of the setback states instead of a single one. You can see (and may need to enable if they were created as disabled) the other ones in the device page. Under Controls it will show them or have them hidden under “X disabled entities”.
With setback mode enabled there are three different setpoint number entities available: Day, Night, and Away. The Home Assistant climate entity can only handle one, I map one of those three to the climate entity depending on the setback state.
- This is probably that one I’m most confused about: Tekmar Living target Temperature is 72F even though my schedule on the Thermostat is set to 71F… is it somehow rounding values?? Notably, however, my temperature is spot on, so seems to be working as expected (assuming Tekmar Living Temperature is actually the Air Temp sensor…)
Yes the rounding can be weird. Internally the Tekmar gateway uses its own magical unit for temperature called “Degrees H” or “Degrees E” that are not C or F and I have to convert those values first to C (which is what HA wants internally) and if F is selected for display C gets converted to F. So there’s three conversions happening to get from gateway H or E → C → F which has random rounding errors.
I am also in the US and use F, but I haven’t thought of a way to improve the whole multiple conversions thing yet. I may have to make a table of E/H values that map to a C/F value rather than trying to use math and rounding.
- What is the difference between Heat Setpoint and Target temperature?!
- What is the difference between Tekmar Living current temperature and Tekmar Living Temperature??
I believe that is just duplicates from the entity and the HA climate entity, one rounded to zero decimal places and the other with 1 decimal place.
Thanks for those details regarding the quirky/rounding, conversions, etc… I may try converting the thermostats to C since it appears C supports .5 degree granularity, whereas F supports only whole degrees… but what you described actually makes total sense.
I believe that is just duplicates from the entity and the HA climate entity, one rounded to zero decimal places and the other with 1 decimal place.
Just poking around this one a bit more, it seems like maybe it rounds Down up to .4 degrees (or just drops it), and once it hits .5 degrees, rounds Up:
For example, I tracked this throughout the last couple days and anytime Tekmar Living Temperature had temps 71.0F through 71.4F, Tekmar Living current temperature was showing as 71F, but as soon as Tekmar Living temperature hit 71.5+, Tekmar Living current temperature showed as 72F… I understand it enough now to know I should be focusing on Temperature vs. current temperature!
One new question: after manually setting my Thermostat’s time over the last few days, I was wondering how it kept getting an hour ahead… I also just discovered:
Time Synchronization The integration will synchronize time on the Tekmar network with the local time from Home Assistant at startup and every 24 hours after.
Is it possible the Daylight Savings being “On” is causing problems if the time keeps getting set +1 hour? I made sure my Home Assistant time is accurately set… and even though UTC, it’s matching my local time MST…
Any idea why the thermostat timestamp keeps going +1hr every day? (Don’t know what time that happens, but guessing around midnight)
I will have to investigate the time error.
Thank you so much for this. We had Radiant flooring with Tekmar 532 stats installed in our new home, and I came across your integration. Going to have them install the 482 gateway and then I can integrate into HA!
@WillCodeForCats Thanks for all your work on this. I have successfully set up the server and client, and the integration successfully sees all devices (482 gateway + thermostats), all thermostats show current temperatures and setpoints. But when I change the setpoint in Home Assistant, it doesn’t persist. Within a minute, it changes BACK to what it was before I changed it in Home Assistant (whatever the thermostat is set to manually with the up/down arrows). Any ideas on a potential fix or how to troubleshoot? Thank you!
Finally figured it out.
There’s a physical DIP switch inside the Tekmar 482 gateway labeled ‘Reporting Enable Power-On State’. It was set to OFF, which put the gateway in passive/monitor mode. Flipping it to ON and power cycling the gateway gave it the authority to send commands that the thermostats would accept, even though they’re controlled by a Tekmar 401 House Control.
In case this is helpful for anyone else! Thanks again for this integration!
I will test this more because the integration should command the gateway to turn on reporting as part of the start up sequence even if the switch is off.
However, if the switch is off and the gateway gets power cycled for some reason while the integration is already running, then it wouldn’t get the reporting enable command until the next time it restarts.
I put together a new integration which directly integrates Watts Home / Tekmar 561, 562, 563, and 564 thermostats into Home Assistant.
It works in my home, but I’d love feedback to see if it works for others!
I was around at the beginning of this project, but never got a chance to get a 482 installed on my system. Now I’m about ready to pull the trigger, and have one important question:
The docs say that it works with “RS232 Serial to IP converter for Socket or RFC2217”. Does someone have a link to such a converted that is known to work with the tekmar server? Ideally something that’s wifi.
Thanks!
What I bought was a USB to Serial RS-232 Adapter and a RS232 Serial Cable - Male to Female. I bought a separate RP5 to run the tekmar server on a 2nd instance of Home Assistant since my gateway had to be installed far away from my main RP5 with my main instance of Home Assistant. Tekmar integration on main RP5, tekmar server app (add-on) on the 2nd RP5. The two RP5s talk to each other over WiFi. This setup works for me.
If it ever stops working (changes made in Home Assistant don't persist), power cycling the tekmar gateway fixes it. I had to do that once or twice in the past few months.
That’s certainly an option, but I really don’t want to have to maintain a second HA instance, and run an RPi in the boiler room. I’d prefer some sort of dedicated device that could be plugged into the RS232 port on the Gateway that would then forward the serial connection over Wifi (preferred) or ethernet.
I can do this with an Rpi, a USB-Serial cable, and NCat, but that seems like overkill just to forward a serial port… There are several devices on Amazon that purport to forward serial over wifi, but none of them mention if they work with Linux - the ads all talk about Windows…