This is a little bit more involved of a request, but I thought I’d try it. I’d love it if there were a way to take one of our heating/AC units that only has a “target” temperature and turn it into one that has a min temp and a max temp. The target functionality of the AC is pretty unreliable and very hard to control; it’s a lot more aggressive than the heat-only or cool-only modes.
This would require associating a temperature sensor entity of some sort so the integration could switch the underlying climate entity to heat or cool mode when the actual temperature is in the appropriate range. It would probably require a minimum distance between min and max to avoid temperature cycling. It also probably would be good to have some some hysteresis (e.g., if min is 65 and max is 75, don’t switch to “heat” until the temperature drops to 68 or 69) so the modes don’t cycle.
I don’t know if this would be better as a feature of the climate integration or its own, passthrough integration. Thanks for considering!
I have not! I’ll dig a little more, but reading it it seems similar, but not quite set up to accomplish what I’m looking for. The two main relevant limitations I see are that:
It can’t handle both heating and cooling, which eliminates the benefit of it acting like a single heating/cooling climate entity. You can accomplish something similar with two thermostat helpers, but then you don’t have a single climate entity.
It simply turns a switch on or off. I was hoping to use the temperate capabilities of the underlying climate entity to determine when to actually heat and how much (including fans, etc.) I could definitely build a couple of template switches to act as an intermediary between the thermostat helper and the real climate entity, but that’s moderately complicated and doesn’t fix #1.
Definitely let me know if I’m missing something though, and thanks for the idea!
Make helper template switch for heating and second for cooling.
Next make helper generic thermostat for heating and select your temp sensor and as executing device select created template switch for heat. So if temperature will be below target temperature then turn on this virtual switch.
Create second helper generic thermostat in cooling mode (if temperature above target temperature) and use use created template switch for cooling.
Thanks! I think that’s the idea above. But that doesn’t actually result in a single climate entity with a high and low, which was my goal. (Though please correct me if I’m wrong!)
No. There will be two thermostats - one for heating and second for cooling.
In heat thermostat you set your min temp. e.g. 21 and in cool thermostat you set your max temp. e.g. 24. If temp will be below 21 heat thermostat will activate heating. If temp will be above 24 cool thermostat will activate cooling. If temp will be between 21 and 24 both thermostats will be not active.