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Best way to control thermostat schedule - HACS scheduler not working properly (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 3 weeks ago by Lemmee@sh.itjust.works to c/homeassistant@lemmy.world

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Hey gang, I've got a chunk of free time lately, and I've been working on some of the backlog issues I've had with my HA instance. The one that is giving me trouble right now is my thermostat - I use Honeywell total connect (or whatever its called), and it works just fine when using the normal thermostat card or controls. However, I want it to be warmer in the day, and colder at night. So I had been using a scheduler entity from the HACS store. It always used to work, but lately I've been getting out of bed and realizing the temp is still set to the nighttime temp.

It's not every day, and it seems to work 90% of the time, but I had always thought that the scheduler entities did a periodic check to see if the thing they controlled was at the proper state? Seems like if the scheduler 'misses' the switchover time, it's just stuck at the night time temp all day unless I manually change it.

So this got me thinking... Is there a better, or more 'approved' way to do this sort of thing?

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[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 3 weeks ago

I use my thermostat to handle that, and override as needed from HA. The other thing I do, if it’s a cloud api, is make the change, wait a period of time that’s reasonable for the update to occur, and check the state. If state is not what I want it to be, set again, wait a random back off and check again. There’s a service you can call to update an entity, too.

Homeassistant, as far as I’ve been able to figure out, doesn’t do desired states natively. You can’t declare “from 19-21h I want it to be 17°C”. You have to build it yourself.

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

The thermostat and Ha operate independently, so if you happen to accidentally have some schedule or rule defined on the thermostat itself, it will still execute. Check that first.

Next, you need to check your event and trigger logs for your defined schedule or rules and be certain about the if/when they are/aren't firing. It should be pretty clear what's going on there, and if there is a potential time zone issue with this package you've installed.

[–] Lemmee@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Okay, I was looking through the schedule's logs, and it looked like every day had the schedule triggered when it was supposed to. So I went to my thermostat and changed it to 'non programmable' so there is no day/night cycle on the thermostat itself. I will see if this fixes the missed days.

I am curious though, because I had always been under the assumption that using the scheduler is better than simple time triggered automations because if the system or entity is unavailable at the exact moment the automation triggers, you could miss it. This could lead to irrigation pumps being left on for hours instead of minutes, and furnaces running the wrong temp all day/night, etc. It appears to me that the scheduler integration is simply running an automation at every breakpoint in the defined schedule.

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah, it's just a simple scheduler. It's not doing anything fancier than that unless you setup other automations for it to do so. It's pretty much the same thing you can get from the thermostat itself, so no real reason to run it from HA unless you're making it pay attention to other sensors or rules.

[–] Smokeless7048@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

I use Versatile Thermostat and scheduler, for a basic control loop, and then use automations to overwrite target temps to versatile thermostat

Ie: normal temp is 20, but if only I am home, house temp is 18.

[–] tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden 1 points 3 weeks ago

Can you see in the activity something fires at all?

I've been using this to set up my thermostats and it works quite well: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/advanced-heating-control/469873