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**anogee** · January 31, 2005, 12:36 PM

How do you know that the setpoint is not correct? A thermostat actually has two setpoints, one for heat and one for cooling, and its only possible to view one of these at a time locally. Are you sure your not mixing up the cool and heat setpoints? Also, make sure you turn of local control of the settings. If you don't do that, the timer in the thermostat will override any settings you have made with HomeSeer.

**Rick Tinker** · January 31, 2005, 12:59 PM

By local control of the settings he may be referring to the same thing I was going to mention but I am not sure.

If your thermostat has a schedule loaded in it, then it will still change temperatures according to the schedule in it. You have to de-program all of the scheduled temperature changes that come by default with the thermostat before you can get "full" control of it via HomeSeer.

**mrizzo123** · January 31, 2005, 03:03 PM

I think they are the 80 Series of thermostats that do not support any real programming (besides auto changeover from heat to cool). I am not on-site so I cannot completely verify.

What is strange is if I shutdown HomeSeer and connect to the HMS using the OnQ Installer tool, I still see these issues. I manually set the heatpoint (and I am sure the Tstat is in 'Hold' Mode set to Heat) to say 60 for all Tstats. The command is sent and accepted. I then go to the realtime statistics for the tstats and I can see the heatpoint set for '60', within 5 seconds they start to all change back to their previously stated setpoint.

If the Tstat is in hold mode will it not accept a setting change via remote?

**anogee** · January 31, 2005, 06:02 PM

If the thermostat is set to "Hold" it will NOT accept a remote change from the panel. That is what "Hold" is. If you remotely want to change the temp. turn off Hold.

**mrizzo123** · February 1, 2005, 01:20 AM

Well, that did the trick... I am now unclear as to the value of the 'Hold' option. The OnQ manuals defined the function different than the actual behavior. The OnQ manual states that 'Hold' only prevents automatic schedule temp changes from occurring and mentions nothing about preventing remote changes.

I want to prevent people from adjusting the temps on the stats. I figured I would just watch and see if the heatpoint had exceeded and threshold and just set the Tstat back to my desired temp. If someone at the keypad places the Tstat on Hold I guess I have to first have a script that notices the hold status and takes it out of hold before I can re-set the temp?

If I am missing some more elegant solution please let me know.

Thanks again for all your help and feedback. I am a newbie at Home Seer and so fare I am impressed at the ability and overall support of the application.

Mark

**Rick Tinker** · February 1, 2005, 10:27 AM

Mark,

First let me point out that the hold mode IS only for scheduled changes - it is only a 'suggestion' when it comes to remote control. ;-)

To do what you want to do, there are some things that I have put into the plug-in to help. 1. There is a security configuration page in the plug-in where you can configure which HomeSeer users have access to the HVAC page. If you are the only user that has access to the HVAC page, then the others cannot change the temperature that way. 2. HAI does not provide all of the triggers that this plug-in has, and so with the plug-in you can monitor the setpoint temperatures and if they go above or below a range you specify, you can have an event set them right back where you want them. Of course if the people in the house have administrative access to HomeSeer, they can just disable the event, but that too is a setup issue. 3. Although the hold mode is nothing more than a 'suggestion' for remote or local control, there are conditions you can put in your events to check if HOLD is enabled so you can prevent remote commands being sent to the thermostat when somebody has enabled hold. This does not prevent the local control though.

In the end, I think there are probably only three things you can do to have extreme control of the thermostat: 1. Contact HAI directly and see if there are options that can be set in the thermostat to make the HOLD mode stronger or to disable local control (which I think is possible) 2. Put one of those locking ventilated covers over the thermostat so that people cannot get to the buttons, or 3. Use HomeSeer to notify you of when the thermostat has been changed and institute severe penalties for offenders caught changing the thermostat.

**anogee** · February 1, 2005, 11:09 AM

First let me point out that the hold mode IS only for scheduled changes - it is only a 'suggestion' when it comes to remote control.

It may be a "suggestion" but I've never seen the panel or HomeSeer HAI plugin change a thermostat setting when the "hold" was on. I know that the HomeSeer Thermostat Plugin can overrride the hold, but in my opinion, that isn't really a feature.

The hold, as intended, is great for those times when it is neccessary to temporarily suspend all intervention by the home automation system. Having a party, going on vacation, etc. The feature that mrizzo123 is looking for can be acheived one of two ways. First, you can set your home automation to reset the temps every minute. That way if someone changed it, it would simply reset back within a miniute. Or second, purchase a label maker, and attach a label to each thermostat that says "Please Do Not Change Settings."

**Rick Tinker** · February 1, 2005, 02:35 PM

The HAI plug-in ignores the hold setting as well.

Understand that it is up to the program author whether to use it or not as the thermostat itself always accepts commands it receives whether holding or not. I can't speak for Alan's thoughts on the thermostat plug-in, but back in the early days of the HAI plug-in, I read some posts where people had both opinions about how it should work, and so the condition was put in the plug-in that allows the event to check if the thermostat is holding or not.

**JLehnert** · February 1, 2005, 03:16 PM

I agree with anogee. I think the hold is a little bit more than a "suggestion".

After reading this thread last night, I pushed one of my stats up to 72 and hit the HOLD. Going into HS, I dropped the temp back down to 70 through the plugin. Initially, the plugin showed the temp changed to 70 with the unit still on HOLD. Upon a refresh, the plugin showed the temp back at 72. From previous discussions about how the plugin works, this activity would appear to be correct as the first reading was based upon the action of the plugin, while the second readin was based on the actual status of the stat.

I checked tha stat itself, and it was still set at 72 and holding. Interestingly, the REMOTE indicator was lit again. I canceled the HOLD through HS and changed the temp again, and this time it did drop.

**Rick Tinker** · February 1, 2005, 05:16 PM

Wow - big news to me - I always assumed that if the display flashes a temperature change that it was, well, changing! Is that their way of warning you that an attempt was made to change the temperature?

On the plus side, HAI actually built it to work the way one would THINK it should work (other than the display change that has had me fooled for two years).

**mrizzo123** · February 2, 2005, 12:35 AM

Good info. I am glad I am not crazy..

FYI, this setup is going to manage a home at a Ski resort. We are renting the property quite a bit and the home has hydronic heating. In-floor heating takes quite a while to crank up but once it does it can take quite a while to cool-down. Besides controlling overall heating costs (fuel costs are high due to the remote location), we don't want people who are not used to the lag from change at tstat to over compensate and then end up opening the windows later to try and cool down..

From the manual the 'ultimate' lockout is to solder to points together on the circuit board which locks out the keypad entirely.. Not sure if that is necessary but it sure beats those ugly t-stat covers.

**bwally** · February 2, 2005, 08:38 AM

maybe you could re-locate the thermostats to a secure area (probably where the panel is) and use a remote temperature sensor to monitor temperature. all the wires are already in place.

**Rick Tinker** · February 2, 2005, 08:51 AM

FYI... If the hydronic system has an auxiliary/emergency heat source (e.g. electricity, gas or oil) then you are likely looking at an RC-1xx model thermostat, and HAI does NOT support putting the thermostat into Aux/Emerg mode through the panel. Thus, you will be much better off and have MUCH more control and information if you use the free HAI thermostat plug-in instead of running them with the HAI security plug-in. You will need to configure the thermostats for serial mode instead of Omni mode, but that is all you have to change besides connecting the wiring to a PC serial port instead of the HAI panel.

I have moved my 3 thermostats off the panel for this reason.

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OnQ T-stats not holding setpoint requested

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