- Posted on
Sat Apr 25, 2020 10:19 am
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welchgregusa
offline
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- Posts: 101
- Joined: May 29, 2013
- Location: Orlando, FL
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This plugin is working wonderfully for me, and I am grateful to the developer for creating it.
We just just installed two new Trane HVAC systems—one blower/furnace+compressor set for each of two parts of our house. This plugin works great for getting various status/state from the two ComfortLink II XL 1050 thermostats, and using them in control pages, triggers, etc. I believe I can also change the set points, fan, etc. although I am not doing that at the moment—I'm using the manufacturer's thermostat/iOS app mechanisms for those.
After creating a Nexia account (w/ Trane) and configuring my thermostats to link to the account as described in previous posts, I was able to set things up in Indigo. I created five devices associated w/ the plugin/HVAC systems: a single Nexia User Account device (logged in to my account), two Nexia Zone devices connected to the account (one for each HVAC system—even though I don't have zones, each system is effectively a zone), and two Nexia Thermostat devices also connected to the account (one for each HVAC system).
It took me a little bit of experimentation, and some fast and useful help from the developer, to understand where the various functional state/status/setting elements reside, e.g. blower-related activities and state are associated w/ the Nexia Thermostat devices, while temperature and heat/cool activities and state are associated w/ the Nexia Zone devices. It is also important to realize that the plugin devices do not update from the Nexia servers instantly—they are set to query the Nexia servers every 5 minutes (default) I believe, presumably to not load the servers (or draw the ire of Trane). I do not fully understand all of the controls/status but it seems that many or most of Indigo's built-in thermostat controls/state are not used or are delayed or inaccurate. Instead I am using the plugin-specific controls/state, which can be seen by going to the DEVICES section of Indigo and selecting any of the Nexia Thermostat or Nexia Zone devices, and dragging up on the small UI "dot" on the status sheet at the lower part of the Indigo window, which will expose "Custom States" for the devices (the state names and the current states).
One thing I have not figured out is whether/how it might be possible to use the "Popup UI Controls" that Indigo provides for control pages. I believe the difficulty I experienced is related to the splitting of the thermostat functionality into the Nexia Thermostat and Nexia Zone devices—apparently necessitated by the Nexia system, and per previous posts, something the developer is looking at. But the Trane UI (Nexia app) on iOS is not bad—it works well—so I am using that for controlling the system, and Indigo for status, triggers, etc.
Again, overall the plugin works great for me, and I very much appreciate it's existence, and the very quick and helpful responses from the developer.