[BETA] British Gas Hive Thermostat Driver with Device Presence

⚙️ Custom Apps and Drivers Custom Drivers
,
#1

After British Gas bought AlertMe back in the day, they brought out this thermostat and receiver combo.

Master_New_Hub_7454_R02_crop_2-1
Master_New_Hub_7454_R02_crop_2-11483Ă—988 77.3 KB
Master_Old_Hub_7491_R05AB_crop-1
Master_Old_Hub_7491_R05AB_crop-11325Ă—883 31.6 KB

They call it Hive Active Heating and it works very well. The thermostat is wireless and can handle heating and hot water scheduling. It talks to the boiler controller, which is actually the brains of the operation.

The system is very popular here in the UK and it's well implemented. Though remote control relies upon your internet connection and the Hive Hub, local control is truly local and the system can operate without any hub at all, the thermostat and receiver communicating directly with one another.

For some reason I've seen fit to bring this to Hubitat, so here we are!

Search for "hive" on Hubitat Package Manager (HPM v1.8.7 or later is required) or you can install manually:

All three components are required and the Library can be installed on Developer Tools > Bundles > Import ZIP, though HPM is the easier way to go.

NOTE THE BETA TAG!

What doesn't work?

  • Remote-Controlled Boost
    Setting boost mode works, but despite the correct boost duration being sent, the system freaks out and sets a countdown of over 5 hours. Not good, and this option is currently disabled.
  • Remote-Controlled Hot Water
    There are two versions of the system, one with the receiver pictured which is dual-channel, the other with a heating-only single-channel receiver. Control of the hot water channel is identical to the heating channel... except the hot water channel never reports its values and must be polled for information. I will add this eventually once I've worked out a neat way of doing it.
  • Scheduling
    You can set a schedule through the thermostat and use this driver to go between auto (schedule), manual or off modes just fine. This is a good thing to do as it doesn't rely on hub communication to run your heating programme: it is stored in the receiver directly attached to your boiler. Very clever. What this driver doesn't support is modifying the schedule via Hubitat. I can figure out the Zigbee just fine with some time, but I don't know how to integrate this with a reasonable UI in Hubitat.

I'm testing this out at the moment with my test setup (not on my actual boiler, yet!) so if you fancy messing around, go for it. Don't blame me when your family complain that the system didn't come on in winter. :sweat_smile:

Follow these instructions to reset your system. Keep your Hubitat hub in pairing mode during Step 6.

2 Likes
#2

Hi,

Thanks for this I've been looking for a solution for my Hive Thermostat to work with Habitat.
Has this been working for you?
I've installed all 3 items from HPM and assigned the drivers to the relevant devices ( stat & Receiver)
But i can't get the them to talk to each other or light boiler.

#3

Yup, works well here - make sure you follow the pairing instructions carefully and that you have the drivers installed beforehand. They both need to pair up to Hubitat, then the thermostat needs to find the receiver while it's single-flashing yellow.

Did the thermostat and receiver find one another? You should be able to control the receiver using the thermostat completely independently of Hubitat. In fact, they should both work independently even with your Hubitat hub switched off. If they can't do that, you'll definitely need to reset them and try again.

#4

All sorted Thanks you.

Just deleted all and reset up

Brilliant

1 Like
#5

Hi great work, i'm running into a problem with the receiver in the HPM 1.8.8.

Error Occurred During Installation

An error occurred while installing the package: Failed to install driver (cant_post_links) /birdslikewires/hubitat/master/hive/drivers/hive_receiver.groovy. Please notify the package developer.. Be sure the package is not in use with devices.

#6

I receive this error when trying to install both options from the HPM (ver 1.8.8)

image
image1557Ă—513 36.3 KB

#7

Yeah, I see this too. Let me have a look.

Hmm, the library doesn't seem to be available at the GitHub URL it used to have. I've updated the repository, could you give it another try? It sometimes takes a little while for caches to clear out, so it's still trying to fetch from the old location here.

#8

Tried again to install from HPM and it worked with no errors. Thanks for sorting.

My boiler is behind a fake wall so will wait until I next have a few hours before trying to connect.

Thanks so much for working on this. I have a hive setup and a single Hive TRv but they are too expensive to fit in every room. I have ordered some Moes ones from Ali express to trial. I was hoping for soemthing that allowed all of the heating devices in my house to better work together into a more single operating environment with the ability to have a heating schedule per room.... Hoping this will get me closer to this?

1 Like
#9

Yeah, getting the data in and out of Hive is the limitation there. Only thing you lose with this is online scheduling, but the interface on the remote for setting up schedules is remarkably decent.

Just make sure you reset the boiler controller and get the pink flashing light, then reset again to get the pairing orange light. That is apparently local control mode, where it never needs a hub to work. It sometimes takes a couple of goes to get the thermostat / remote to pair to the controller, but it’s solid after pairing.

1 Like
#10

Hi All,

Got this working great..... However how do i set a schedule ? I've installed "thermostat schedule" app but when i attempt to set up the routine my stat or hive heating devices are not listed in the selectable devices?

#11

It’s mentioned in the first post, there’s no schedule setting through this driver. You need to set your schedule using the thermostat.

#12

Ohhhh, ok sorry m8…

Thank you

#13

No worries! I'll look into that scheduling thing, I was unaware of it. Can't promise it's something I'll tie into this driver, but always interested to take a peek.

Must take another look at how to handle the hot water side of things at some point too.

Does anybody using (or interested in using) this driver actually have the dual channel heating and hot water version?

#14

I understand how this works now, but I think you're still better off setting the schedule with the thermostat.

The Hive receiver unit at the boiler can save a schedule sent to it from the thermostat, and run that schedule independently. The Hubitat thermostat scheduler issues the appropriate commands to the receiver but in real time, so you're always reliant upon your Hubitat hub and Zigbee network being up and working and your Hive system needs to be kept in "manual" mode.

This may not be an issue for you, but relying on manual mode and Hubitat to control the system does add more potential points of failure. But I'll be updating the driver so it appears properly in that app for those that wish to use it.

The bit this driver doesn't support is generating the schedule which is sent to the receiver for running independently. There are two reasons; it's a bunch o' work figuring out the messaging format, and there's no user interface to handle generating that message in the first place. In other words, even if I got the driver sending the schedule messages, how would anybody craft their schedule for it to convert and send in the first place?

Much better to do it on the thermostat where the interface is remarkably nice anyway.

#15

Done, you can now use this with the thermostat scheduler app. :+1:

While in the app, "auto" is internal schedule mode, "heat" is the mode you want to be in for the Hubitat scheduler to work and "cool" is off, because there's no cooling / air conditioning function in Hive.

#16

BREAKING CHANGES!

The latest update, v0.60, will probably cause people some trouble. To support the hot water channel I have had to switch the driver to a parent/child model. You'll now find that the heating portion of the driver is a "child device" to the main receiver.

You can use the child device exactly as you would have done with the previous device, and it'll be named with a "(Heating)" suffix.

The parent device represents the receiver itself, while the child devices will represent the heating and hot water channels. I was trying to fudge both channels into the one device, but it wasn't going to work. Best to make this change now than later.

If you have troubles, try a "repair" install from HPM.

1 Like

Download the Hubitat app