thermostat setback ideas

[WetCoastWillie]

Looking for ideas to setback the thermostat when no one is home.

 

I want the ISY to change the heat set point on a ZWave thermostat when the house is unoccupied.

 

Simplest would be to link it with the arm/disarm status of the ELK, but the kids rarely set the alarm when they leave so that is not an option.

 

I have 5 motion detectors throughout the house and was thinking on a program that looks at the last time any motion was violated +45 min... but that would be a program for each motion (5) and a program that is activated if any one is violated... etc. and more to set it back to "occupied" mode

 

Any other easier suggestions, am i missing something obvious?

 

How are you achieving occupancy based heating with your ISY?

 

Thanks,

 

Matt

[Xathros]

Looking for ideas to setback the thermostat when no one is home.

 

I want the ISY to change the heat set point on a ZWave thermostat when the house is unoccupied.

 

Simplest would be to link it with the arm/disarm status of the ELK, but the kids rarely set the alarm when they leave so that is not an option.

 

I have 5 motion detectors throughout the house and was thinking on a program that looks at the last time any motion was violated +45 min... but that would be a program for each motion (5) and a program that is activated if any one is violated... etc. and more to set it back to "occupied" mode

 

Any other easier suggestions, am i missing something obvious?

 

How are you achieving occupancy based heating with your ISY?

 

Thanks,

 

Matt

 

Hi Matt-

 

I have my occupancy routine watch a number of things:

 

1) A program that includes many "If Control XXX switched On or Control XXX switched Off" statements (This includes switches, motion sensors, door sensors)

2) I have routines that watch my router for the MAC addresses of our phones. If connected then someone is home.

 

Anytime an occupancy event above occurs, I restart a 15 minute countdown. If the timer expires, the house goes to "Sleep", camera record on motion is enabled, pellet stove is shut down, thermostat is set back, doors are locked, garage doors are closed if they were open.

 

-Xathros

[larryllix]

I do a similar thing to Xathros, above.

 

Every event that can be caused by a human (mostly motions sensors and keypads), after adjusting lights immediately, call House_Occupied.

 

House_Occupied sets reasonable timers for expected future movement detection. Night time is the biggest problem when no movement is happening and I have to use 8-10 hours before resetting the flag/variable to get through to the morning.

 

During the day the time out for Occupied status can be shortened to about 2 hours depending on how many motion sensors you have.

 

A motions sensor where you typically exit the house can have a shortened time by making the assumption you are leaving.

 

With my old house and X10 system I ran my furnace fan much less when Occupied = False.

 

My heat takes a full day to recover so it only gets setback manually on the stat and returns by the manual timer set at that time.

[WetCoastWillie]

Thanks for the input guys!

 

I like the idea of having the LAN monitor for a MAC address connecting... if a phone is here - someone is home, if not..... (kids are never more than 5' from their phones)

 

Can you point me to some reading on how this is configured?

 

Thanks,

 

Matt

[Xathros]

Here ya go: http://forum.universal-devices.com/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=9854&hilit=proximity

-Xathros

[WetCoastWillie]

Thank You !

[Xathros]

Anytime! Happy to help.

 

That is a long thread but certainly some fun stuff to play with there.

 

-Xathros

[kevkmartin]

I use Mobilinc with the geofencing.

 

Whenever my iphone and my wife's iphone are away, set back the thermostats 5 degrees.