Custom Wifi Heater driver (imlementing Thermostat)

⚙️ Custom Apps and Drivers Custom Drivers
1

Hello guys!

I own a Millheat panel heater, which supports local control via a very simple HTTP API (GitHub - Mill-International-AS/Generation_3_REST_API: Local REST API documentation). Via that API i am able to get the current ambient temperature and settings of my heater, aswell as set its temperature and operating mode.

My end goal is to make it so that i can pass this device to Homekit and it shows up as a thermostat device with only two modes ("off" and "heat"). And this is the part where i get stuck.
When i add Thermostat capability to my driver, hubitat implies that the device can heat or cool, and also has a Fan and Fan control modes.

How can i disable that? I see that there are attributes for supported modes (supportedThermostatModes and supportedThermostatFanModes) but i cant understand how can i modify those to limit the capabilities - in my heat i think that if i tell hubitat that only certain modes are supported it wont offer buttons/controls for the unsupported ones (and hopefully when it exports them to Homekit it will only export the supported ones).

How do you guys deal with such issues?

2

You can edit the supported modes, to only allow Heat and off. I do that with a few virtual thermostats I set up.

You should be able to just send ["heat,"off"] to setsupportedThermostatsmodes.

I virtual thermostat I set up that I only setup for heat. I used the setThermostatModes to change it .

themostatex
themostatex1628×926 114 KB

3

Hmm.. are you exporting that to Homekit? I also try to set the supportedThermostatModes (although i am doing it with "sendEvent(name: "supportedThermostatModes", ...)" and it exports all modes to Homekit.

Do you mind sharing the code of your driver so i can use it as an example?

Thanks

4

That is just the standard Virtual thermostat from HE. I couldn't tell you how in a custom driver I just assumed the command would work for your driver. I used this method to correct supported thermostat modes in the virtual and in another driver I was using for awhile. Perhaps looking at that code can help you.

5

Thanks for that - i took a look at the code and the virtual thermostat driver. Unfortunately setting the supported modes doesnt seem to reflect in Homekit at all :-/
I am setting the values to only "off" and "heat", but in homekit i keep seeing cool and auto modes present. Even after removing the device from Homekit and re-adding it.

Any ideas are welcome to try...

6

are you exporting that thermostat to Apple Homekit? What modes is it showing for you?

7

No I am not doing homekit.

8

Also limiting the export of the optional fan would be nice.
For now im stuck with the default driver, which i modified to only execute heat commands. Not very pretty in Homekit, but at least it works with my automations.

Does anyone have any idea where can i find any documentation on what Hubitat capabilities are exported as what in homekit? That would be really helpful. Actually anything explaining in some details how does hubitat-homekit integration actually works behind the scenes will be helpful, but infortunately i cant find anything :frowning: