HAI Important Information

[Wazoo]

Rick,

Thanks for not abandoning the HAI-IP plugin. Any help you need beta testing it, please let me know.

[rpeck]

HAI IP interface

Yes, Rick, I'd be glad to beta test the HAI interface as well! I'm hip deep in using it right now, and since I'm still doing fairly basic things I think I could provide timely and useful feedback.

Randy

[anogee]

You might want to wait till FW 3.0 is released to do your full testing. The current FW has a few bugs that HAI says they will fix the next time around.

[basshook]

I have a fairly big setup as well with two hardwire expander boards, one expansion enclosure, 5 tstats.... no issue beta testing.

[lamanmi]

Beta testing

Same here......I'm very interested in continuing this plug in and would be glad to beta test.

[Rick Tinker]

Hello Rick,

The thermostat concerns are documented in the following thread:

http://board.homeseer.com/showthread...ght=thermostat

I concur that managing the thermostat with HS would be a good thing.

But I am not at the point yet to let HS run my thermostat but would like to continue to monitor it via the panel in/output.

regards,

Pete

Pete,

I obviously completely dropped the ball on that - must have had the ticket assigned to me and either thought I was waiting on you for something or just threw it in with the myriad of issues that were in the beta version. Since it seemed nobody liked the beta version, I tabled it until I could get Ethernet going, but there are still just too few hours in the day it seems...

I suspect this is another one of those cases where HAI changed something in the firmware that the plug-in is not ready to handle. The last thing dealing with thermostats that I recall was the extended range temperature sensors. If they made some sort of change in the firmware for the thermostats to do something similar, then I could see how that could unravel everything. OTOH, there is a strong argument for why I have not heard from others - surely there is somebody else running the beta version with thermostats? Could it be that you simply need to delete and re-create your events involving thermostats? If there was a change in the triggers or actions between plug-in versions, I try VERY hard to make things backward compatible, but if I failed, then that could explain it and deleting the event and re-creating it might fix the issue.

However, that does not change my original recommendation. The HAI thermostat plug-in is by far a better thing to use than going through the panel. You mentioned that you want to monitor things, and this is where the plug-in is much better than going through the panel plug-in. The HAI Thermostat plug-in lets you know when the system is actually calling for heat/cool and can trigger off it, it can allow you to set Aux mode on the thermostats, reset the filter reminder, trigger events when the filter reminder goes off, etc. etc. etc.

It is a one-time hassle to change the configuration of the thermostats and wire up the thermostats to a serial port, but in my opinion it is very much worth it. I don't understand at over $100 per thermostat why anybody would want to limit what they could do with the panel plug-in. Now Ross can of course let me know if they also improved the Omni protocol to allow more of those features through the panel or not, but as long as there is a big differential of features, I will continue to strongly recommend the thermostat plug-in over running them off the panel.

[anogee]

They have improved the protocol. At least what they are saying for the new thermostats, is ANY data available from the thermostat, will be available to the panel, starting in Ver. 3.0 FW.

[basshook]

FWIW I run the beta with tstats and a buddy of mine runs the beta with tstats. The only issue is comm errors when the power to the furnace gets interupted.

[Pete]

Thank you for the reply - Rick, anogee & basshook. Currently I only monitor status of thermostat and may occasionally turn on / off fan, auto mode and set the temp. I do not run any events associated with it though. I believe though there were a couple of other folks with the same concerns as me regarding the thermostats.

Historically I believe the inadvertant set to max on the thermostat issues were related to communications issues between the HAI plugin and the HW and kind of showed up with the last beta. One user suggested that I go to a previous version. For that person (dropping down to an earlier version) the issues went away (this too mentioned in a previous beta HAI plugin thermostat related thread).

I am looking forward to trying the new beta when its ready.

Regards,

Pete

[Pete]

Thermostat Disconnect from HS

Rick,

Is there a way to disconnect just the thermostat communications for the plugin. It started to have comm errors and decided to shut down my furnace this morning. It did this by somehow changing the standard values of the thermostat defaults. I unplugged the thermostat from the Panel and it is functioning fine now but I cannot access the thermostat with the remote Omni Pro Keypads and I would like to still retain that function.

Regards,

Pete

[Rick Tinker]

Yes, set the number of thermostats used to 0.

This still does not make ANY sense - if there are no thermostat actions, then it is not sending any thermostat commands and it should not be messing up.

The COMM errors are the key. I have done pretty much everything I can in the code to eliminate them, but the way the polling protocol works, I can probably never get rid of them all without eliminating the near realtime response that you get on most sensors. If you are still getting them frequently, then there must still be things that can be done to reduce them.

[Pete]

Here is the step by step - not totally sure its working right yet though -

Burners were kicking on - then shortly kicking off with a blinking diagnostic code indicating "limit or flame out switch is open".

Called a friend who owns an HVAC company. We did some diagnostics. First checked all connections on the "motherboard" making sure that they are not loose. He then had me bypass the limit/flame out switch. This test indicated no problems with the switch. He then had me unplug the thermostat and jumper the heater to work by using a jumper cable between the red and white wires. This will just turn on the furnace in heat mode. It worked when I jumped it. My HVAC friend told me to put another thermostat in. As a similiar issue occurred last year did the following (still going to the hardware store to buy a cheap thermostat).

1 - Power stealing effects seen (thermostat resetting itself) - except instead of rebooting would just go off with the diagnostic codes flashing.
2 - Set HAI ini file to thermostat = 0 - Homeseer then would hang on the HAI boot up config section in the log then exit not booting up.
3 - Set HAI ini file to thermostat = 1 - shut down HS server.
4 - Cleared RAM on OmniPro II using documented procedure.
5 - Checked all service config settings on thermostat - all OK
6 - Restarted HS server - started fine and didn't hang.
7 - Currently furnace is running with no errors - 20 minutes. BUT I have the covers off the bottom and top of furnace (by passing cover switch).

Still not sure if this fixed it (this = clearing OmniProII RAM) but all appears ok at this time.

Rick, thank you for your quick response and suggestions.

It looks like a snow sandstorm outside now with temps around 4 degrees.

Late last night put an analogue (old Honeywell) thermostat in place - removing the HAI thermostat. Ran fine. I asked my HVAC friend about running it with the covers off and he said one night wouldn't be too bad. BUT - got paranoid around 11 PM and put the furnace covers back on. The error LED came back on shutting off the burners in about 2-3 minutes. I have an electronic air filter with a regular filter on the ingress side and a charcoal filter on the egress side which I change every month whether dirty or not. Pulled the charcoal filter out (it was a bit clogged up to my surprise). All started to work normal again. I then replaced analogue thermostat with HAI thermostat and all is well (around midnight last night). I have never had this problem. I believe the thermostat was resetting itself when the error codes came up causing some havoc with communications with HS.

Regards,

Pete

[Pete]

I had tried HAI Thermostat Power Supply Module (30A00-2) - with no luck.

Purchased and pending install - But haven't seen any issues since what I reported above.

1 - HAI - Thermostat Isolation Module 29A00-1
2 - New 24V power supply

I believe having a separate power supply should work.

[basshook]

Pete please keep us posted on results. I have the same basic problem as a result of line glitches, I get comm errors which takes a reboot to recover from.

[Pete]

HAI Thermostat Power Supply Module (30A00-2)

It looks like this may be doing the trick. I have not seen any more comm errors. It is a more costly solution in that you have to buy the transformer and the Power Supply. To install it I shut down my furnace and removed the back plate to my furnace motherboard. Once that I had the mother board out of the furnace I drilled the holes for the standoffs for the module then re installed the motherboard back plate. More wires. Be very carefull with electric (shut off at the breaker) and the sheet metal as it is very sharp and will cut your hands. One of the things that I had to do was disconnect the fourth "common" wire from the thermostat to the furnace motherboard.

Another thing that I am NOT seeing which is good is the shooting up of the temperature to the max. I have not seen then and have redone my set point high and low limits. So this might have fixed this issue.

I now have three transformers related to functions in the furnace. One for the furnace, humidifier and thermostat.

This "power stealing" thing to me is more of a thermostat design flaw than anything else. I really shouldn't have to compensate for this flaw my having to do what I did. I wonder what kind of hash is going to the Omni-Pro II.