Hello - I’ve got three of these thermostats in my home and I’m enjoying controlling them with my VeraLite. However, I’ve got two issues I’m hoping you can help me with:
The MCV app doesn’t show me enough information. I see that the temperature settings are (a/c at 74, heat at 65) and I see that it’s in Auto mode. But it doesn’t show me if the the system is running, what the fan is doing, if it’s in Heat or Cool mode currently, etc. I can see the current temp and deduce what it should be doing (for instance, if the thermo is reading 64, the heat should be on, if it’s reading 75, the cool should be on). But it’s not always doing what I assume it should be doing. And, with the app, I can’t tell it to run the fan continuously as the only two options on the app for the fan are OFF and AUTO. No “ON”.
Is there a way to have the app provide more information on the current status of the thermostat, as well as allowing me a bit more control for manual settings?
I think one of the thermostats might be defective? It’s worked great for 2-3 months and now it’s not acting properly. The cool will be at 70 and the heat at 65. I’ll set the heat to 71 and it won’t automatically set the cool temperature to whatever it normally does (I want to say 3 degrees so in this case it should set the cool temp to 74). So it will actually leave the cool temp at 70 and the heat to 71. Which is impossible and makes no sense. Does what I’m relaying make sense? Is there a fix? Is this a known issue?
What phone platform are you using? Have a look at the remote control subforum. On android you have, HomeBuddy, AutHomation, and a few others. iOS, you have HomeWave, Automator.app, etc.
I agree the thermostat experience is not all that it could be. One thing I did that helped was added a value for the User Supplied Wattage. This does completely not solve your problem of knowing if it is running or not but give you insight. If, after you set the values, you view the thermostat and the energy consumption on the bottom left reads 0, it is not running. If it reads something else, it is running. This also adds to the energy usage tab to help you see what is is costing you to run it.
There is a lot of variation among different thermostats and plugins as to how much information they allow you to monitor and control. Some can’t show the current operating state (heating, cooling, fan only, idle), some don’t have a meaningful temperature setpoint for heat when the current HVAC mode is set to cool, etc. The UPnP spec for a thermostat may be a sensible model for what a thermostat could do, but in reality each vendor’s idea of a thermostat may differ enough from the UPnP model that certain features just aren’t implemented, or can’t be implemented in a way that’s consistent with how others are implemented. This variation probably makes writing a remote command-and-control app even more difficult.
I have two different thermostats and both show up correctly in the AutHomation app on Android, but one is simply not capable of showing the current operating state (currently heating, cooling, etc.) while the other one is, owing to differences in the underlying programmatic interfaces. I don’t know if this applies to your situation, but it’s one explanation of why users might see less information and control for one kind of thermostat compared to another.
The Nest thermostats convey current running state back through the plugin to the Vera, shows on the UI5 dashboard and in the AutHomation app correctly. It will show Heating, Cooling, FanOnly, Idle. (Caveats: Not Z-Wave, requires reliable Internet connection to work, and may take up to two minutes to reflect the current running state.)
watou
Best Home Automation shopping experience. Shop at Ezlo!