A while back I set my mother up with a Vera Lite, a few lamp modules, and two 2gig CT100 thermostats. Since then, one thing has confounded me about Vera and these thermostats: auto mode.
As far as I can tell, it doesn’t do anything. When I tell Vera to put the CT100 into auto mode, it seems to work (maybe - the button is gray), but I don’t see how to configure anything. How does auto mode work? How to I control it?
I have a Trane thermostat, and on mine I set upper and lower limits for the auto mode. How does the CT100 do it?
I’ve tried searching these forums and the web in general, but haven’t found any good answers. I even found the manual, but it doesn’t have any information either. Help!
Auto mode means it will switch between heating and cooling on its own. You set the target temperature and it tries to keep it there.
Um yes, I understand what it means. But is there any way to configure it? Like I said in my first post, on my Trane thermostat I can set and upper and lower range, so when I go out of town it’ll heat at 65 and cool at 80. You’re saying the CT100 will heat and/or cool if it detects a single degree of change from the set temperature? Is there no way to edit that?
Um yes, I understand what it means. But is there any way to configure it? Like I said in my first post, on my Trane thermostat I can set and upper and lower range, so when I go out of town it’ll heat at 65 and cool at 80. You’re saying the CT100 will heat and/or cool if it detects a single degree of change from the set temperature? Is there no way to edit that?[/quote]
The problem is, which target temperature are you setting? You have to be able to set both.
As far as I can tell, Auto mode in the Vera UI7 is useless. I’ve talked to the folks at Vera and they either don’t understand what auto mode on a thermostat means or they just don’t care.
If you install the AltUI plugin, it has a thermostat interface that lets you set both the upper and lower limits when in Auto Mode. It seems to work just fine for me.
I don’t see why this is so hard for Vera to understand. Its not rocket science. Nor is it new technology.
Since nothing in Vera allows the setting of both high and low setpoints, I always use AltUI or lua in scenes to set my thermostat.
For those who need it, here is the luup code to set the heat/cold points to the variables of new_hot_set/new_cold_set to device id variable “device”)
luup.call_action(“urn:upnp-org:serviceId:TemperatureSetpoint1_Heat”,
“SetCurrentSetpoint”, {NewCurrentSetpoint = new_hot_set},
device)
luup.call_action(“urn:upnp-org:serviceId:TemperatureSetpoint1_Cool”,
“SetCurrentSetpoint”, {NewCurrentSetpoint = new_cold_set},
device)
The weird thing is that (I’m pretty sure) the auto setting worked correctly in UI5. For some reason they CHOSE to make it function like this. Ugh.
You know, every time I think about coming back to Vera it seems like I’m immediately reminded why I left. And it’s even worse because I’m always being frustrated by very small issues that seem like no-brainers.
Well, call me when UI8 or 9 comes out. I’ll check in.