Water heating

Great plugin, does everything the now defunct 'Works with Nest' did.
I was pleased to see it also allows control of (stored) hot water as well as Heating Thermostat control.
I thought this might allow more flexible hot water scheduling but I found that activating the 'hot water' device only seems to start a 30 minute boost timer.
I wonder if there is a way to change the timer period (30 min / 1 hour etc) or even just turn the hot water On/Off on demand (have I missed something?)
I could repeat the boost after 30 mins but I'm not sure that would be ideal as there is a valve actuated also.
My aim is to minimise unused (wasted) hot water storage by setting a lower temperature during the week and higher at the weekend.
(I am mindful of the need to raise the temperature high enough & long enough to kill legionella bacteria).
Any ideas?

I will have a look at this over the weekend and remind myself how it all works. I haven't worked on the plugin for a while.

The Starling Hub doesn't expose hot water settings via the API other than turning boost on and off.

What you could do if you want the hot water on for say two hours is to turn on boost which will run for 30 minutes.
25 minutes later it should be at the 5 minute count, turn on boost again that will set it back to 30 minutes.
Repeat again in 25 minutes. So that gives you continuous heating without turning off the valve as the boost time is just being extended.

You could then pair this with a HW variable to indicate whether you want the heating on or off and have the repeat boost action to only proceed if the HW variable is set to "heat".
You would need a separate timer to set and turn off the HW Variable. When the HW variable gets set to "heat" it could trigger the repeat boost action.

I will have a think and work out if I can add an action like this to the plugin in due course, which would be a more user friendly place to put this.

The Starling Hub doesn't expose hot water settings via the API other than turning boost on and off.

What you could do if you want the hot water on for say two hours is to turn on boost which will run for 30 minutes.
25 minutes later it should be at the 5 minute count, turn on boost again that will set it back to 30 minutes.
Repeat again in 25 minutes. So that gives you continuous heating without turning off the valve as the boost time is just being extended.

You could then pair this with a HW variable to indicate whether you want the heating on or off and have the repeat boost action to only proceed if the HW variable is set to "heat".
You would need a separate timer to set and turn off the HW Variable. When the HW variable gets set to "heat" it could trigger the repeat boost action.

I will have a think and work out if I can add an action like this to the plugin in due course, which would be a more user friendly place to put this.

Ah I had an iidea that might be the case. I'm using a workaround like you suggested for now but something in the plugin would be a real bonus!
Thanks for looking into it anyway!

... but something in the plugin would be a real bonus!

I have uploaded pre-release version 2023.0.2 to Github: Enhance Hot Water Processing

The Starling Plugin can only turn on or off the Nest Thermostat's Hot Water Boost.

Now, the standard Indigo Turn On | Turn Off commands will keep the hot water turned on until turned off by using a timer to send a repeat turn on command before the boost timer is cancelled, thereby resetting it to continue boosting. The repeat turn on command is output to the Indigo Event Log.

A new action has been added "Boost Hot Water" which will now just do an ordinary boost, e.g. the Hot water will turn off after the default boost time. Turning off the Indigo Hot Water device, will cancel the boost.

Important Note: If you were previously using turn on the Hot Water device assuming it would automatically turn off as you were boosting the hot water, this will no longer be the case!

Now, the standard Indigo Turn On | Turn Off commands will keep the hot water turned on until turned off by using a timer to send a repeat turn on command before the boost timer is cancelled, thereby resetting it to continue boosting. The repeat turn on command is output to the Indigo Event Log.

Wow, that's great, thanks! I'll give it a try over the weekend
Not sure if anyone else is/would be using this feature for it to be a problem...?