Insteon thermostat - Feature requests

[claude]

Great job on this plugin!

The plugin already has a counter for cumulative time on heat and/or cold. So I assume, at the end of each heating|cooling period, the plugin adds the elapsed time for the heating|cooling period just finished to the global counter.

Would it be possible to include an extra step? When writing to the log the entry "... turning off HEAT|COLD", it would be great if the plugin appended the elapsed time for that period; for example "... turning off HEAT|COLD after 63 minutes".

I currently extract entries from the log to produce a visual graph of heating|cooling profile. This requested feature would greatly simplify my life.

By the way, this would be a good candidate for a graph, similar to the energy graph. Too bad the energy graph doesn't allow different input parameters: al that would be needed is replacing 'Kwh' by 'minutes On for period'.

[nfrobertson]

I have added a timer on the thermostats as well now so when they call for cold or heat the timer starts and when they turn it off they report the minutes in the log like you've asked for. This is separate from the HVAC counters as those may have multiple thermostats associated to a single HVAC.

Note that once you install the new version 3.0.1.0, the call for cold/heat will have to occur once to start the timer. If cold/heat were already on when the plugin starts then it will simply report the standard turning off message without the minutes.

I hope this helps

Nathan

[claude]

Just tried it on a short heat On/Off cycle and it works great.

Thanks!

[jpape]

Is there a way to reset the timers vis a script command?

[nfrobertson]

In your HS3\scripts directory is a file InsteonThermostat_script_api.vb This file shows examples of script commands the plugin supports. About half way down is a section with the reset script commands which I've shown below.

    '
    ' HVAC Control Scripting API
    '
    'plugin.PluginFunction("ResetCoolTime", {hvacName})
    'plugin.PluginFunction("ResetHeatTime", {hvacName})
    'plugin.PluginFunction("ResetHeatCoolTime", {hvacName}) ' both in one call
    'plugin.PluginFunction("ResetMaintTime", {hvacName})

[jpape]

In your HS3\scripts directory is a file InsteonThermostat_script_api.vb This file shows examples of script commands the plugin supports. About half way down is a section with the reset script commands which I've shown below.

    '
    ' HVAC Control Scripting API
    '
    'plugin.PluginFunction("ResetCoolTime", {hvacName})
    'plugin.PluginFunction("ResetHeatTime", {hvacName})
    'plugin.PluginFunction("ResetHeatCoolTime", {hvacName}) ' both in one call
    'plugin.PluginFunction("ResetMaintTime", {hvacName})

Thank you.

[codemonkey]

[nfrobertson]

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll try to look into this soon.

Nathan

[nfrobertson]

[codemonkey]

Thanks Nathan. When I added the suffix to the device, that suffix was not carried to the Thermostat API.

[nfrobertson]

That was my assumption. I thought only the values were carried into HSTouch via the Thermostat API. I assume they expect you'll just put a label with the degree or percent symbol next to the element with the value.

I did release 3.0.6.3 to the beta updater if you wanted to try it but not required. It adds a general checkbox to add those symbols to new devices so that won't affect your existing ones.

Nathan

[codemonkey]

Cool, thanks!