Thermostat Enhancement Plugin

But the basic code, and option is in the latest NEST enabled beta...

Wait.. the NEST is an Insteon device? I didn't realize that before..

Also, should I go ahead with using the Action Collection plugin to keep track of the fan usage for notifying me when to change the media filter? Or did you think of a better workflow?

No the NEST thermostat isn't an Insteon device... But the NEST plugin, bridges the Indigo - Wifi Thermostat gap.

The Thermostat Enhancement Plugin doesn't care how the data gets to Indigo, it simply is looking for a Thermostat device that is equivalent to the Indigo built-in Thermostat Device... So the Nest Plugin, appears to met that requirement...

So, thus the TEP should work fine with the Nest Thermostat. Which is why I am asking any NEST users to volunteer for testing.....

I believe the NEST plugin is available from here... (https://github.com/johnray/Indigo-Nest- ... tat-Plugin)

- Ben

No the NEST thermostat isn't an Insteon device... But the NEST plugin, bridges the Indigo - Wifi Thermostat gap.

Ahh, I hadn't realized there was a plugin for this. Is the NEST a viable alternative to the Venstars then at this point? (I realize I'm getting kind of OT at this point, so just tell me to shut up if it bothers anyone lol).

I had considered a "deep drop" as you have set, but my justification for not doing it is simply that the house would still have to warm back up, so any savings in dropping the temperature would probably be negated by the heat up cycle...

Looks like the thermostat enhancment plugin should be able to answer that question -- when the weather gets consistently cooler, run the thermostat for a few nights with a deep drop and then with just a little, and total up the run time. My guess is that it would take less run time to bring it back up to temp in the AM than to hold it at temp all night.

Finally, do I recall that Indigo would also have caught an error of this magnitude? If so, would Indigo have reset the temp? Right after the above event, there is this entry in the log:

I don't recall Indigo having this feature... It's possible, but I would expect that if it did, it would of thrown out the bad data, instead of setting the heat to 225.

2012-10-24 05:05:19 Received INSTEON "Thermostat Main Bedrooms" heat setpoint changed to 74.0

Where did that come from?
No idea...?

- Ben

I have no earthly idea how that happened. I seem to recall in the Venstar thermostat thread that Matt and Jay had enabled Indigo to correct the whacky values the thermostats sometimes register, but was not sure if that was what that was.

[jay (support)]

We do monitor for some edge cases in the venstar INSTEON code that were caused by the malfunctioning firmware that they had a while back. That's in INSTEON code though so it would have no effect on anything else.

Ben - could you update the link on your blog to the latest version? It's still pointing at 1.05.

Another feature request. I think it'd be nice if the plugin could be configured to email me whenever the daily, weekly, and/or monthly values are reset (just before they do, obviously) to get a report of cooling, heating, and/or fan usage. Since there currently is no web server plugin like for the Indigo 4 version, this could provide a little feedback for those of us that want to monitor usage in the meantime.

Actually, come to think of it.. maybe just provide a trigger for when they're about to roll over? This would solve my problem of wanting to collect filter usage mins in a variable, too.

Did it again.

28Oct, 2012 7:44:34 AM
Received INSTEON "Thermostat Main Bedrooms" heat setpoint changed to 254.0
Thermostat Enhancement Add-On Thermostat Enhancement is overriding the Heat Setpoint. Was set to 254.0, overriding to 85
Sent INSTEON "Thermostat Main Bedrooms" set heat setpoint to 85.0
Received INSTEON "Thermostat Main Bedrooms" on (button 2)
Thermostat Enhancement Add-On Clearing Last Daily Runtime for heating.
Thermostat Enhancement Add-On The heating Daily Runtime for Wed Oct 24 07:30:15 2012 was 133 minutes.
Thermostat Enhancement Add-On 133
Received INSTEON "Thermostat Main Bedrooms" heat setpoint changed to 74.0

I wonder if this is a failsafe put in by SmartHome for these sort of glitches, given the issues they have had with the adapters in the past. I'll look on their site and contact tech support, but if anyone has any thoughts, pls post. I'll also make a trigger to reset if heat set point >70.

Another feature request. I think it'd be nice if the plugin could be configured to email me whenever the daily, weekly, and/or monthly values are reset (just before they do, obviously) to get a report of cooling, heating, and/or fan usage. Since there currently is no web server plugin like for the Indigo 4 version, this could provide a little feedback for those of us that want to monitor usage in the meantime.

Actually, come to think of it.. maybe just provide a trigger for when they're about to roll over? This would solve my problem of wanting to collect filter usage mins in a variable, too.

A big YES on collecting data!

Questions/Issues:

Now that I have had a month to play with the plugin, there are a few things I would like to see in a future update:

1) My AC in the summer comes ON at 4:30 pm, so I get my totals in the log at 4:30 pm. The trouble is it's not a true 'daily' totals, from 4:30 pm [day 1] to 4:30 pm [day 2]. Can we get it to log from 12:00 am to 11:59 pm ?

2) Can we get the totals to always appear at 11:59 pm in the log. This way we don't have to hunt for them.

3) Right now I'm between AC usage & HEAT usage [neither are being used], so I don't get totals in the log. Can we get it to log '0' usage instead of no log entry?

If we can get the info emailed, that would solve the issue of hunting through the logs.

Thanks

Hello Ben,

I wanted to give you some feedback on your plugin.

I just installed a second Venstar T1800 and 2441v adapter [95 i2CS] today, created a new enhancement device, and the appropriate control page items.

The totals that showed up immediately were NOT zero, the fields were populated with the totals from the original thermostat!

So I ran the AC for five minutes and the totals switched to 5

But, the AC YEARLY MIN [was 942] is now 947. Should be 5.

Indigo 5.1.7
OS 10.5.8

Does anyone know how to zero the data for 12/31/2012 so we can start fresh in 2013?

Does anyone know how to zero the data for 12/31/2012 so we can start fresh in 2013?

Right now, the best answer I can give you, is that it's not designed to do that.

If you create a different Thermostat monitor, and either delete the old one, or unlink the thermostat (for historical data), that would work...
But I don't have any option to reset the state data at this point. I'll think about how to add that in, when I go to revise that plugin.

- Benjamin

Benjamin,
I, too, am getting all zeroes for my thermostat monitor device. I installed v1.11 from your link in the forum thread, and the plugin reports itself as 1.11 in Indigo. I think it might be an old version, however, because your dialogue in the forum about v1.11 is dated Oct 2012, but the plugin revision date (in Finder) reflects a date in July. My Venstar thermostat is firmware 92 and I installed it a year and a half ago.
Thanks,
Phil

Hi Ben,

Was wondering if you had any further thoughts regarding controlling the max heat setting or the max cool setting? Had another "episode" today when my thermo script was running:

Code: Select all

 Sent INSTEON                    "Thermostat Fam Study" set cool setpoint to 76.0
  Sent INSTEON                    "Thermostat Fam Study" set heat setpoint to 69.0
  Sent INSTEON                    "Thermostat Main Bedrooms" set cool setpoint to 84.0
  Sent INSTEON                    "Thermostat Main Bedrooms" set heat setpoint to 50.0
  Sent INSTEON                    "Thermostat MBR" set cool setpoint to 84.0
  Sent INSTEON                    "Thermostat MBR" set heat setpoint to 55.0
  Sent INSTEON                    "Thermostat GameRm" set cool setpoint to 84.0
  Sent INSTEON                    "Thermostat GameRm" set heat setpoint to 60.0
  Schedule                        Garage Door 1 Auto Close (delayed action)
  Received INSTEON                "Thermostat GameRm" temperature changed to 61.0
  Received INSTEON                "Thermostat MBR" heat setpoint changed to 183.0
  Thermostat Enhancement Add-On   Thermostat Enhancement is overriding the Heat Setpoint.  Was set to 183.0, overriding to 85
  Sent INSTEON                    "Thermostat MBR" set heat setpoint to 85.0
  Received INSTEON                "Thermostat MBR" on (button 2)
  Received INSTEON                "Thermostat MBR" heat setpoint changed to 82.0


MBR got set to 183 degrees. The Thermo enhancement set to 85, but that's still too high. I can fix this with a trigger, but was thinking it would be more elegant in your nifty plugin.

Also, on a different topic, is there a simple way to query the database to see trends in a graphic format?

Hi Ben,

Was wondering if you had any further thoughts regarding controlling the max heat setting or the max cool setting? Had another "episode" today when my thermo script was running:

MBR got set to 183 degrees. The Thermo enhancement set to 85, but that's still too high. I can fix this with a trigger, but was thinking it would be more elegant in your nifty plugin.

Also, on a different topic, is there a simple way to query the database to see trends in a graphic format?

Once I am done with the iAutomate RFID plugin, I'll have some more time to address this.

I have a few ideas, but the big issue is merging the Thermostat Enhancement with the old IWS Venstar Historical data plugin. The graphing portion is the tricky part, since I don't want to use Google Graphs.

- Ben

I am not having success getting the Thermostat Enhancement Plugin to work. I installed v1.11 in Indigo 6.0.0 beta by clicking on the TEP install file. The installation seems to work as the plug-in appears in Indigo under the plug-in tab. I can see the reports in the event log...

Enabling plugin "Thermostat Enhancement Add-On 1.11"
Starting plugin "Thermostat Enhancement Add-On 1.11" (pid 30479)
Started plugin "Thermostat Enhancement Add-On 1.11"

I have created a Thermostat Enhancement plug-in device and assigned it to monitor my Insteon thermostat model 2441TH. The plug-in device shows the correct device ID under "MonitoredThermostat", but it fails to detect any of the values or log any of the activity.

Any suggestions?

Thanks, Mark