Indigo Domotics

Please post your tips, tricks, and "how tos" here in this thread for installation and integration of the Insteon / Venstar Thermostat. Also, I would very much like to see examples of how you are integrating thermostat control in to your control pages ... I am looking for ideas

I just integrated Insteon Thermostat control in to my Indigo control page today and it is working well so far. I live waterfront and only have heat, no AC, so all that I have implemented so far are two heating set points and polling for room temp ... outside temp is provided by the NOAA Attachment script.

Installation Tip: No "Common" Wire

I just installed my Insteon/Venstar Thermostat and came to find that I couldn't make it power up because I had no common line run. I have heat only and had three wires coming out of the wall from the heater: W, G, and R.

The solution turned out to be rather easy. I looked at my heater where the three wires were attached and noticed that there was an unused attachment point labeled "C". I ran a wire from the "C" attachment point on the heater through the wall to meet up with the other wires at the thermostat and VOILA it powered up and everything worked fine. If you are having problems with your install, it may just be that easy. Look at the attachment point on your heater and see if there are any unused, labeled connection points and then run the appropriate wire ...

Installation Tip: Script To Get the Temperature From the Thermostat and Display It On Your Control Page

Code: Select all

tell application "IndigoServer"
   set myThermoDev to device "Thermostat"
   set tempList to temperatures of myThermoDev
   set curTemp to first item of tempList as real
   set value of variable "curTemp" to first item of tempList as real
   log "current temperature is " & curTemp
end tell

- Then create a time/date action that executes the script every 15 minutes.

- After you have created the foregoing applescript, you need to open the Variable List Window (in the "Window" menu) and add a new variable with the name "curTemp" and you can leave the value blank or put any random number in.

- Finally, on your control page create:
Display - Variable Value, For - curTemp

And that is it ...



http://www.humanovation.com

Installation Tip: Script To Change Thermostat Setpoint to 67 degrees

Code: Select all

tell application "IndigoServer"
   set myThermoDev to device "Thermostat"
   set heat setpoint of myThermoDev to 67
end tell

pwfletcher wrote:

Installation Tip: Script To Get the Temperature From the Thermostat and Display It On Your Control Page

This is a bit easier than you might think. Inside the Control Page editor dialog create a new control and select Device State from the Display popup, and then select the device name from the next popup. Lastly, you can select Zone 1 Temperature and that control will automatically display the temperature value.

You can also display heat/cool setpoints and thermostat mode strings using the same technique.

Regards,
Matt

Thanks Matt ... MUCH easier. But now I don't know what to do with all of my free time

In case it helps anybody else, I came across some wiring info from the Honeywell site which is 404'd now but was available in google cache. I found it much more useful than the instructions that came with the Venstar--especially since I don't have 6 wires at either of my Thermostats.


I turned it into a PDF if anyone is interested: http://atkinsfamily.org/avatar/Common_T ... Wiring.pdf

Ditto here, except only AC no heat. If you're replacing a battery operated thermostat, you may not draw the 24VAC from the heating/AC transformer. I had two "spare wires" wired into the thermostat box and "made" one the C (common) from the inside blower/evaporator.

pwfletcher wrote:

Installation Tip: No "Common" Wire

I just installed my Insteon/Venstar Thermostat and came to find that I couldn't make it power up because I had no common line run. I have heat only and had three wires coming out of the wall from the heater: W, G, and R.

The solution turned out to be rather easy. I looked at my heater where the three wires were attached and noticed that there was an unused attachment point labeled "C". I ran a wire from the "C" attachment point on the heater through the wall to meet up with the other wires at the thermostat and VOILA it powered up and everything worked fine. If you are having problems with your install, it may just be that easy. Look at the attachment point on your heater and see if there are any unused, labeled connection points and then run the appropriate wire ...

Matt when you implement 'automatic temperature polling', please do something to keep it from showing up in the log. I used to peak at my event log every now and then to see what kind of stuff had happened recently. Now that I have a 5 minute refresh on my thermostat the log is flooded with

Code: Select all

Mar 11, 2008 10:15:00 AM
  Time/Date Action   Thermo Update
  Sent INSTEON       "Thermostat" mode request (received: auto on)
  Sent INSTEON       "Thermostat" temperature request (received: 68.0)
  Sent INSTEON       "Thermostat" humidity request (received: 37.0)
  Sent INSTEON       "Thermostat" setpoint request (received: heat 68.0, cool 71.0)

blobs, and it is hard to see other stuff!

Check "Suppress logging" in your "Thermo Update" Time/Date Action.

DPattee wrote:

Matt when you implement 'automatic temperature polling', please do something to keep it from showing up in the log. I used to peak at my event log every now and then to see what kind of stuff had happened recently. Now that I have a 5 minute refresh on my thermostat the log is flooded with

Code: Select all

Mar 11, 2008 10:15:00 AM
  Time/Date Action   Thermo Update
  Sent INSTEON       "Thermostat" mode request (received: auto on)
  Sent INSTEON       "Thermostat" temperature request (received: 68.0)
  Sent INSTEON       "Thermostat" humidity request (received: 37.0)
  Sent INSTEON       "Thermostat" setpoint request (received: heat 68.0, cool 71.0)

blobs, and it is hard to see other stuff!

Ahh! Thanks, I've overlooked that checkbox more times then I care to admit

can someone please tell me the applescript syntax for testing/setting the value of the current fan mode of a thermostat?

apparently the fan mode has two states "always on" and "auto on"... can i use a simple string comparison to test? for example:

Code: Select all

if fan mode of device "thermostat" is "always on"
then
...
end

and how can i set it? for example:

Code: Select all

set fan mode of device "thermostat" to "auto on"


the syntax seems to be ok, but i get a runtime error "descriptor type mismatch occurred".

i found the answer by looking at the applescript dictionary. there are apparently named applescript constants (i think) for the values of fan mode and hvac mode.

fan mode can be fanAlwaysOn or fanAutoOn and hvac mode can be offMode, heatOn, coolOn, heatCoolOn, runProgramHeat, runProgramCool, or runProgramAuto.

so the correct way to toggle the fan mode would be something like:

Code: Select all

if fan mode of device "thermostat" is equal to fanAutoOn then
    set fan mode of device "thermostat" to fanAlwaysOn
else
    set fan mode of device "thermostat" to fanAutoOn
end if


i find the hvac modes interesting... i gather that heatOn, coolOn and heatCoolOn are will hold the set temp indefinitely, while the runProgram* modes will hold the set temp until the next scheduled change, then will resume running the program.

interesting oddity: on my thermostat (model t1900), i can only select five modes manually versus seven via indigo. there is no way to manually set runProgramHeat or runProgramCool, but there is runProgramAuto.

dduff617 wrote:

so the correct way to toggle the fan mode would be something like...

Yep, you got it correct now.

dduff617 wrote:

i find the hvac modes interesting... i gather that heatOn, coolOn and heatCoolOn are will hold the set temp indefinitely, while the runProgram* modes will hold the set temp until the next scheduled change, then will resume running the program.

That is correct. The program modes are a bit less interesting if you are using Indigo to control all of the scheduling of setpoint values. I only use the heatCoolOn mode in my house since Indigo handles everything else.

dduff617 wrote:

interesting oddity: on my thermostat (model t1900), i can only select five modes manually versus seven via indigo. there is no way to manually set runProgramHeat or runProgramCool, but there is runProgramAuto.

Look at the thermostat manual -- you can selectively enable and disable what modes work when cycling through them at the thermostat. I'm not positive all of the different Venstar models support all of the modes, but I thought they did. I don't remember what the default setting is, but maybe the default doesn't include runProgramHeat and runProgramCool modes enabled.

Regards,
Matt

i am using a periodic date/time action with the "control thermostat" type and "get all status" action in 2.5.0b18.

i have observed that "get all status" seems to update the mode, temp, and humidity. however, it does not seem to update the fan mode. so i sometimes notice that my thermostat control page shows incorrect status.

is this an oversight? perhaps not considered important enough to warrant having an action? or should another action be added called "get fan mode"?

upon investigating this, i just reminded myself that there is no separate action for setting the fan mode. instead, the "set mode" action can be used with modes "fan always on" and "fan auto on" to set the fan mode. so this implies to me that the "get current mode" action (and the "get all status") action should probably get BOTH the system mode and the fan mode.

no biggie - i can work around it by using an applescript action instead of one of the predefined thermostat actions.

edit: actually, i don't know how to do a status request for the insteon thermostat from applescript -- i assume there must be more to it than just saying "status request <device>", right?