So I finally got my Vera2 and am trying to set up my Trane thermostat. I had a few questions and was wondering what people founf to be the easiest way to use/program it.
End goal:
My evening return times varies a lot from day to day and week to week. I would like to have the trane, turn on at a given time every morning (one weekday/one weekend) for a certain amount of time(one weekday/one weekend). In the evening, I want it to wait for me to message it to turn on. Id also like to be able to message it off if I leave before the morning leave time becomes active.
I’m a little hesitant to do all the programming via vera2 just incase that connection goes down for some reason. Don’t want the last command to have it stay on if I am on vacation.
My thought is to use the on board schedule to set the “default” times. Then use z-wave to send the “interrupt” messages to turn heat on early or stay off longer.
Questions:
Can you manually set set program on thermostat (enable schedule) and still be able to control over z-wave?
Best uses:
How have people set their tranes up? Do you just switch between Normal and ESM to do home and away? Or do you change the Normal set-point and use ESM purely for vacation? It seems there are several difference ways the reach the same end point so I wanted to see what people have found to be the best.
Any suggestions/comments would be greatly appreciated.
In mine, I have scenes hooked to my Alarm system so the Trane(s) are switched to ESM Mode when the house is Armed, and switched to Normal Mode (from ESM) when the house is Disarmed.
The Trane itself has the Schedule mode enabled, and I have that set per a normal thermostat… switching to ESM Mode effectively disables the Schedule.
In addition, I have a scene that puts the Trane(s) into ESM if I open a Window… since I typically open the Windows when I can.
It’s not perfect. I “switch” ESM → Normal after a 60 second Delay (using an Advanced Scene). If I open Windows during this time, the Aircond will still come on, so I have to tune up my scripts a little
A number of folks are doing similar things, except they use a Virtual Device to represent the “Home/Away” state that I’m getting from my Alarm Panel.
Can you manually set set program on thermostat (enable schedule) and still be able to control over z-wave?
Great. From the manual, trane made it sound like the z-wave got turned off when schedule was enabled.
I found another thread that had some suggestions also for how to control thermostat.
What I think I’m going to do is have local thermostat control schedule. Then use z-wave to make “execptions” to schedule. I’ll have the evening set to come on late, and that way if I come home early, I just need to tell it to turn on sooner.
Can you help clarify what ESM is. As I understand it, it’s like “vacation” mode. IE, normal will use the schedule to control it. When switched to ESM, the thermostat will just try to maintain the given temp at all times. Is that correct? Just want to make sure I’m going to be using the modes properly. I’ll use ESM when I go out of town (drop temp down but high enough to not have pipes freeze). Leave system in Normal when home, and simply change temp points based on when I’m home or out.
So I set my “regular” schedule on the Trane. A) Warming up in morning, B) cool during day when come, C) warm up in evening, D) cool off over night; repeat. This way I don’t have to rely on the z-wave communication to trigger changes (worse case scenario).
I set it to be a little “long” in morning (6-9), and “short” (9-11) in evening. The thought being that I can change it to “away” earlier when I leave in morning, and “home” when I’m on way home before temps would normally change, A->B/B->C (hope that statement makes sense).
Now I’m trying to figure out how best to do home/away changes. It seems to me there are 2 versions: day away/home, vacation away/home.
Vacation:
Here is where I’m thinking of using ESM. As I understand it, if the system is in ESM, it will override the onboard schedule and use the ESM temp points until ESM is deactivated.
Day:
Here, what I want to do is change the temp value before the next cool/warm cycle kicks in. I’m thinking, I can do this by simply creating two scenarios/events (maybe one if I get really smart). This event simply would need to change the current temp point. That way, it changes the temp point for the remaining of the current cycle, and standard schedule temp point takes over for next cycle. I view this is simply press temp values down on physical unit- just via z-wave.
Does that all make sense as an approach?
This seems easy enough. Questions:
I can activate/deactivate ESM via Vera2, correct? If so, do I have to do it vie luup code? Doesn’t seem to be a GUI way to.
Sending the Day home/away temp change, won’t effect the “regular” schedule on the Trane?
It doesn’t matter if I’m away-on-vacation or away-at-work, they’re both “away” in my current [scene] setup, and both plonk Vera into ESM mode. So I use the same ranges for each type of “away”…
When you put it into ESM, it disables the schedule and resets the SetBacks to the pre-stored [ESM] ones in the Thermostat. You can then adjust/fine tune these as you see fit (as @oTi indicates)
When you put it into Normal, the Schedule is restarted and whatever is the “current” part of the schedule determines the current SetBack values, and it’ll continue on schedule after that.
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