I have a Honeywell T6 Z-wave thermostat. The interface provided by Vera is just OK. I can see of the fan is setting is On, Auto, or Cycle. I can determine easily when it’s heating, cooling or idle. I’d like to know if it’s heating normally (heat pump) or using emergency heat (oil burner). It’s not clear to me what the Energy and Normal buttons on the Control tab are for. I know this thermostat uses an external temperature sensor to determine when to switch to emergency heat. The thermostat itself does not display the current reading of this external temperature setting. I’m wondering if the attached zip file of the userdata for this thermostat provides any clues as to how to:
determine when it is idle, heating normally, or using emergency heat
Nothing stands out. Looks like just the usual thermostat variables that are standard. Vera would have to add support for any special values coming back from the device. They may not even be in standard command classes, but in manufacturer-specific ones (which can be a whole additional level of nightmare, as these can and do change without notice, vary from model to model, etc.). I’d go the route of trying to figure out some kind of sensing on the oil burner, on its control circuit if possible, or temperature as a last resort. In my previous life, we used a lot of current sensor switches for things that didn’t otherwise want to play nice with our monitoring systems. Gotta love a good split-core CT.
You can use a watt meter on the heatpump or if there are any way of integrating a fibaro smart implant in the heatpump to see temperatures and status of pump.
/ Mattias
Attached is a zip of an XML file from Honeywell that includes the command classes and more. ZC10-18046094.zip (6.0 KB)
I thought that the device Capabilities variable would provide some clue as well.
If Vera doesn’t process the value or command class, it’s not going to be visible. When your system is running on emergency heat, I would check the value of ModeStatus and ModeState (if it has it). Keep in mind that UI7 doesn’t always show the current value of a variable on the device’s Variables tab, so you’ll need to click the “Edit” link–the value editor will refresh the value and show the correct current value when you open it (don’t change anything–just view). Failing that, you can explore the other variables to see if there are any unusual/telling values, but you are really reliant on Vera to pick up the feature, so if it’s not there, you’re not getting it, at least not in this firmware.