Help with ThermostatScheduler and Presence

[dunkin]

Hi All,

I am looking for some help with my thermostats. What I want to to is to have the all my thermostats be set to a value when I leave, not have the schedule trigger when I am away, and when I return have the thermostats return to what ever temperature they should be set for during the time i arrive back home.

Reading a few posts here I learned:

• Restrict the schedule to only run while not in Away mode.
• Use RM to setup a on mode Day,Evening,Night Activate the scheduled Setpoints.

But with the above changes when i left the house, the mode was set to Away but when i looked at the logs / history for a thermostat, i did not observe the setting of the thermostat, to my Away Setpoint instead i noticed a bunch of log messages saying some activity was restricted.

app:132 2023-01-19 12:35:40.953 PM info Restricted by mode Away
app:134 2023-01-19 12:35:40.687 PM info Restricted by mode Away
app:134 2023-01-19 12:35:40.683 PM info Restricted by mode Away
app:132 2023-01-19 12:35:40.672 PM info Restricted by mode Away
app:132 2023-01-19 12:35:40.641 PM info Restricted by mode Away
app:134 2023-01-19 12:35:40.640 PM info Restricted by mode Away
app:133 2023-01-19 12:35:40.633 PM info Restricted by mode Away
app:132 2023-01-19 12:35:40.627 PM info Restricted by mode Away
app:133 2023-01-19 12:35:40.625 PM info Restricted by mode Away
app:152 023-01-19 12:35:40.542 PM info Armed Away
app:202 023-01-19 12:35:40.438 PM info Mode set to Away from Day

I am assuming that this is blocking the setting of the temprature to the Away Setpoint. If so do I now have to have a RH rule to set the thermostat setpoint of each thermostat directly upon mode == away? Or is there some more elegant way of getting this functionality which i feel should all be built in as optional setting to the ThermostatScheduler App since this is becoming a little more convoluted.

Any help would be much appreciated, im probably not understanding some workflow, so any pointers, or recommended reading would be helpful here too. Thanks in advance!

[dunkin]

Well not entirely, entering and exiting modes work fine for the most part. I use the mobile app to sense presence, and set the mode to Away when all devices have left. That works the way expect it to. I do set the other modes when not Away by time.

I also set thermostats by a time based schedule via ThermostatScheduler. This works fine.

I also set Away Setpints for the ThermostatSchedlure. Without any additional RH rules. This worked when we all left home the thermostats were set to the Away Setpoint say 55. However I we were gone for a long time the next scheduled setpoint would be set despite us not being at home.

To prevent that from happening it appeared I needed to use the Restricted to only allow the setpoint scheduled setpoint to change in the Day,Evening,Night modes. However it seems this also prevents the Away setpoint from being activated. So If I leave when the temperature is set to 62 it does not change to 55 and I get the Restricted by mode Away message in the logs.

Finally when I return (mode changes from Away to Day,Evening,Night) after a scheduled setpoint, it does not appear to resume the temperature that would normally have been set. For example schedule 4pm to set temperature to 62. but this dose not happen since I was Away (desired). When I return a 5pm the temperature does not automatically change to 62 (resuming the scheduled temperature) . To solve this I added a RH rule to trigger on mode Day,Evening,Night to run ThermostatScheduler->ActivateScheduledSetPoints. Which I am not convinced is working yet.

I also am thinking that a new RH rule will be needed for each thermostat to set the away setpoint directly to the thermostat, in way to circumvent the Schedulers Restricted Mode. For the initial away setting.

This is all attempting to mimic builtin behavior from my previous ST setup. They had an Away mode where it could set the temp for the thermostat, and then the thermostat schedule had a return temp value that would be set when the mode was set to Home.

It does seem complicated to write, but in my head it seems like simple operation. Leave (set temp to 55) Away (don't run schedules), Return (set temp to scheduled temp), Home (run schedule). So I must be missing a feature or something that would make it all work the way I want to. Otherwise doing stuff in RH seems convoluted and not having all my temperature values in one place makes maintaining things a little more complex.

[dunkin]

I appreciate your help, thank you!

Thermostat scheduler for one on the thermostats: (This is the most simplistic schedule I have)

RH to set setpoints on return:

[dunkin]

Hrm interesting way of looking at things I did not investigate control with modes. Currently the only difficulty that I see is that I would end up with bunch of extra modes that only TS cares about. As I control different zones/thermostats throughout my house with schedules. I am sure there is some overlap so maybe I can optimize. Absolutely worth investigating though.

[dunkin]

Implemented. We will see how this works over the few weeks and I will update with my experiences.

So far my drawbacks are:

1. Lots of modes.
2. Loss of time information in the TS making it a little more confusing for other family members to adjust heating schedules.
3. Modes in TS are alpha sorted instead of time sorted.

I will mark this as solved.
Thanks for your help hopefully this will fit the bill.

[dunkin]

I ran this configuration over the weekend, and I still need to make tweaks, and see if i can work around some of the deficiencies here.

As a warning to anyone who comes across this thread, and had not migrated to the new mode manager. Even though the Mode Manager Legacy will note its disabled it still seemed to run, and thus not execute changes applied to the new mode manager. This required the Legacy Mode Manager to be deleted before changes to the new Mode Manager were applied.

The deficiencies that i am trying to workaround is that each thermostat scheduler needs to be a ware of all modes, even ones that don't concern it. Which can get confusing, changing the naming conventions of the Mods may help here (along with the sorting in TS) mode names would be 400 Morning and 1500 Afternoon. This ends up for making for confusing configuration in TS, as each mode would need to set the temperature even if there is no change.

Another issue is TS can't deal with set-point differences on weekends. Im not sure if this can be worked around. For some zones I did have different times and different temperatures for the weekend verses the weekday.

Keeping the existing floating Day,Evening,Night Modes which i use for lighting. Means that if i return home during one the times when those Modes are active, it will not set the temperature, unless i add those modes to TS. Which i don't want to have floating times when the heat or ac turn on pointlessly. I am not sure if there is a good way to work around this either.

As much as i did not want to control setpoints with RM, i think going back to that route may be cleaner.