I’m new to Mi Casa Verde and have a very basic test setup with Vera and one WDTC-20 thermostat. Currently, I’ve configured (4) scenes named Wake, Day, Evening, Sleep. These scenes are configured to control the thermostat to follow the Energy Star default schedule that changes the setpoint to save energy during the Day (when folks are at work or school) and to a lesser extent during the Sleep interval. I am purposely pushing only setpoint changes as to not override HVAC or fan modes set at the thermostat (don’t want Vera to turn the AC on when windows are open, for example).
Next step is to configure a Vacation scene, where I want my Cool setpoint to go to and stay at 85, heat setpoint at 58. Ideally, this scene may be activated from both a scene controller and from the web and mobile UIs. When invoked, Vacation mode must disable or otherwise prevent the aforementioned scenes from executing, so that the max energy savings setpoints are maintained. I can’t figure out how to do this. Is it currently possible? Seems like conditional logic is required that may not exist.
I’m new to MiCasa too but have been playing with it for some time now - and I need exactly the same behavior as you. The only way do this (that I can find on the UI) is to go in to the scenes setup and disable the “occupied” scenes when on “vacation” and then run the scene that sets the vacation setpoints. Then when you return, enable the “occupied” scenes.
It would be good to have a custom “mode” (eg. Any, Occupied, Vacation) in the UI that would either become part of the conditional logic in the event or, more preferably, determine whether a scene was enabled or not.
I concur with the main objective here, as well as your suggestion of putting in place an “Away” mode that Vera - and all Scenes and/or Timers with a corresponding flag set (such as a “Run During Away?” tick-box) - would honor for the duration of your vacation.
Added dream: Be able to designate the start and end of one’s vacation a few different ways… (a) manually, by clicking “AWAY” on the Vera UI; (b) internally, using a Timer or logic within Vera; and/or (b) remotely, using a Google Calendar or iCal event readable by Vera or the FindVera.com service!
I might sound paranoid here, but I would be hesitating to relay on any home automation while no one at home for long period of time. Think about it - what if your internet connection and/or router go bananas (all routers do sometimes), and you never know if your lights or heaters stay on for weeks. Besides the fact it means larger electricity bill, it can also be a fire hazard.
The thing is - this is all residential stuff, nothing in this are designed as ‘mission critical’, including z-wave switches, etc
For long periods this would be a concern if there was no way to have a neighbor check up if you couldn’t get online info about it etc.
For my purposes I want to automate a vacation home, specifically to:
Monitor temperatures
“Occupied Mode”: Allow the guest to change the temps within a predefined range when occupied but still have a “Home” and “Away” mode set from a timer
“Unoccupied mode”: Set an energy-saving set-points when there’s no-one there
Switching between the Occupied and Unoccupied modes would be done manually for now by enabling/disabling scenes.
I have a local property manager that can physically enter the home if needed so I just need to get the “Occupied” and “Unoccupied” modes set up and working. I still have a pending question about one of the Event triggers that I don’t understand but I have it working OK - though I suspect not optimally.
It’s been a while since this posting and I now have installed Vera + Wayne Dalton thermostat controls into my 2 vacation homes (one required 2 thermostats) and things are going well.
As background, I have written an online vacation rental management system (www.myvrzone.com) and automate everything I can about the day-to-day management. My goal with Vera was to save $ by ensuring that the homes are not heating/cooling when unoccupied and when occupied do give the occupants the ability to modify the temps within some range that I define. The occupied/unoccupied mode changes needed to happen automatically.
I have just written a bunch of LUA code for Vera that provides the following functionality:
Reads temp settings and reservation/occupancy information from my online reservation system
Uploads temp history to the same system for viewing there
Can override default temps per reservation
Has min/max setpoint values that it will reset to if the thermostat button is used to go beyond them
The occupant can change the setpoints within the range
Has an optional “drift” back to my desired temperature over some custom time period
I am implementing a way to vary the settings during the day when occupied for away/home functionality
Tolerant to power outages in terms of recovering to previous state
External internet access is only required for downloading updated info/uploading history and the system is tolerant to that being down
I have not documented this yet in the management system but the UI is there - is anyone interested to know more about this and potentially use it?
