Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Question How to turn heaters on and off with HS3

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Question How to turn heaters on and off with HS3

    Hi,

    I'm automating (for the first time) my new infrared panel heaters and hoping to get some wisdom on how to control them with HS3.
    In each room I'll have a temp sensor (Arduino + DHT22), a tablet running HS Touch (which I've not used yet), a UPB or z-wave switch or relay and a heater.
    I don't want to use wall mount thermostats because I want only one interface (the tablet) in each room.
    I've got the temperature and switch showing up in Homeseer and the heater turns on and off just fine.

    Now I want to make it intelligent and do things like:
    - turn the heater on/off if temp goes more than 0.5 deg below/above desired temp
    - turn temp down to 14 deg C overnight
    - increase temp to temp shown on tablet during day
    - turn heater off if we're on vacation or back on if we're on the way home

    So far I have a giant ugly series of if-and-then commands in my event page just to get started and I haven't looked at variables or scenes yet.

    Is this best done with variables, scenes, scripts and events in Homeseer?
    Is there a plugin that will do it for me?
    Is there another method that will make it really easy or well organised?

    Thanks,
    Phil

    #2
    You might not want an actual thermostat but you might or should use atleast a virtual thermostat of some sort. Seems to me like if you controlling from a tablet you might want the look and feel of setting an upper and lower temp (I guess that's not totally true if you only have heat and not cool). but seems to me like controlling heat with a virtual thermostat vs. only events would be more ideal.

    Comment


      #3
      Yes, that's what I meant by 'desired temp'. Sorry if not clear.
      Show the temp on the tablet, touch it to change it etc and buttons for controlling other stuff.
      I haven't played with HS Touch yet but looking forward to seeing what it can do once I get some hardware working.

      Comment


        #4
        Have you looked into the plugin "BLStat"? I never used it but it seems to be a virtual thermostat that might help you.

        Comment


          #5
          That looks perfect except the description says for z-wave. Would be nice if it could read wired temp sensors and UPB switches. I might ask in that forum.

          Comment


            #6
            I would use the Easy Trigger plug-in.

            I would build three virtual devices - normal temperature, setback temperature and on/off. I would build a setback schedule in easy trigger. Then I would build 2 events for normal temperature control and 2 for setback temperature. The events would look at the Easy Trigger schedule and use Easy Trigger comparisons to compare the room temperature to the virtual set point and turn the heat on or off accordingly. The virtual on/off control would be to turn the heat off. That could be handled by setting both set point controls, but the on/off could control it with a single device and would not require returning the set points to start the heat again.

            Then all you would need is is some device to turn the heat on and off like an Arduino controlled relay, MimoLite or some other dry contact device. .
            HS4 Pro, 4.2.19.0 Windows 10 pro, Supermicro LP Xeon

            Comment


              #7
              Thanks Randy, that sounds promising. I'll give it a go.

              Comment

              Working...
              X