stillen_i30 Posted February 6, 2014 Posted February 6, 2014 Hello, I need help writing a thermostat program. Our master bedroom has a separate thermostat (insteon) The behavior I desire: 1.) Between hours of 9am and 6pm, the thermostat should self-adjust itself to heat 85 cool, 60 heat (when nobody is usually in the room) 2.) Nightly, we will manually adjust the temperature ourselves 3.) If between the hours of 9am and 6pm the temperature is manually adjusted, the thermostat will allow this until the following day when it reverts back to the original rule in #1 above Any help is appreciated. Also had a few instances where random unattainable temperatures were suddenly sent to various thermostats around the house causing the equipment to run constantly wasting energy and running continuously for long hours attempting to reach such temperatures...anyone else have such a thing occur and if so, any way to protect against this?
MaddBomber83 Posted February 6, 2014 Posted February 6, 2014 Your first program requirements are very simple. Make your new program. Under if do a Schedule and make it From 9AM to 9:05AM Under Then do two actions, one for your heating and one for your cooling. It looks like: If From 9:00:00AM To 9:05:00AM (same day) Then Set 'Thermostat- Main' 60° (Heat Setpoint) Set 'Thermostat- Main' 85° (Cool Setpoint) Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') This will set your temp and then it will not care what happens until the same time the next day. You can adjust it at any time after this. I have not had the problem you describe, however I have had a problem in the past where I made a programming mistake that attempted to make the house as hot as possible. Luckily I had a program set up already to combat abnormal conditions. If Status 'Thermostat- Main' > 85° (Temperature) Or Status 'Thermostat- Main' < 55° (Temperature) Then Set 'Thermostat- Main' 80° (Cool Setpoint) Set 'Thermostat- Main' 60° (Heat Setpoint) Send Notification to 'Mom and Dad' content 'House Out of Bounds' Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') This program is rather basic, but what it does is monitor the T Stat temp, and if it exceeds what we consider as acceptable values it will adjust the heating / cooling setpoints and send us an email letting us know something is broke.
shannong Posted February 6, 2014 Posted February 6, 2014 Hello, I need help writing a thermostat program. Our master bedroom has a separate thermostat (insteon) Is the master bedroom tstat a 2441TH directly wired to the HVAC system? Or is it a standalone wireless 2441ZTH? There is a known issue with the TH models when used with gas furnaces where the sparking of the igniters causes the Energy mode to turn on/off on it's own. (and a few reports of the mode changing too though I never experienced it) The default swing of the Energy mode is 4 degrees down during Heat mode and 4 degrees up during Cool mode. This could possibly explain your random set point changes. See this long thread on it. viewtopic.php?f=27&t=9783
stillen_i30 Posted February 7, 2014 Author Posted February 7, 2014 Thanks for the suggestions. I just wanted to clarify that the time should just be 9am to 9:05 the same day? Also, the idea of sending the notification was excellent, didn't think of that. This will help greatly as the two incidents with either of my thermostats (both T1700/2491T1E) caused the temperatures to be ridiculously out-of-whack (cool 15 and heat 123 for example). Your program says that when the actual temperature is >85 or <55 then you will be set the alert. However, if the current temperature in your room is 80 and the thermostat gets an erroneous command to heat to 123, you will not be immediately notified...will using "STATUS THERMOSTAT >85 (HEAT SETPOINT) OR STATUS THERMOSTAT <55 (COOL SETPOINT)" work in this regard?
MaddBomber83 Posted February 7, 2014 Posted February 7, 2014 Thanks for the suggestions. I just wanted to clarify that the time should just be 9am to 9:05 the same day? Also, the idea of sending the notification was excellent, didn't think of that. This will help greatly as the two incidents with either of my thermostats (both T1700/2491T1E) caused the temperatures to be ridiculously out-of-whack (cool 15 and heat 123 for example). Your program says that when the actual temperature is >85 or <55 then you will be set the alert. However, if the current temperature in your room is 80 and the thermostat gets an erroneous command to heat to 123, you will not be immediately notified...will using "STATUS THERMOSTAT >85 (HEAT SETPOINT) OR STATUS THERMOSTAT <55 (COOL SETPOINT)" work in this regard? I use a 5 minute window to do a setpoint adjustment when I then don't want to maintain that setpoint. This is not necessary, but if you had a brown out right before 9 am or there was some communication issues the 5 minute window could become handy. And yes, same day. You are correct, my safety program is based on temperature and not set point. You can adjust it to be based off set point as you mentioned. I chose temperature to base it off because I feel it will be better at grabbing more situations (although as you pointed out, a bit slower). An example is on a hot humid day in west texas (very dry all the time) the AC iced up. When we got home later in the day the house was nearing 90f even though the cooling set point was 75. This was before any automation, and this stuck out as a reason to use temp and not set points. One thing to note, is that I am not concerned about erroneous set points as I have had no problem with them. You have and are concerned about them. We can fuse the two together and it would look like this: If Status 'Thermostat- Main' > 85° (Temperature) Or Status 'Thermostat- Main' > 85° (Heat Setpoint) Or Status 'Thermostat- Main' > 85° (Cool Setpoint) Or Status 'Thermostat- Main' < 55° (Temperature) Or Status 'Thermostat- Main' < 55° (Heat Setpoint) Or Status 'Thermostat- Main' < 55° (Cool Setpoint) Then Set 'Thermostat- Main' 80° (Cool Setpoint) Set 'Thermostat- Main' 60° (Heat Setpoint) Send Notification to 'Liz and Brent' content 'House Out of Bounds' Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') And now, actually, I think I'll keep the more robust safety program that includes your set point suggestion.
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