Hive thermostat / Receiver Zigbee

I've seen some examples using the API but I wanted to use Zigbee. I've sort of got this working now where I can talk directly to the hive receiver. The Thermostat seems to do some weird stuff and more attributes seem to be accessible on the receiver (or perhaps there is some proprietary crap going on)

  • mode : off / auto
  • status : heating/idle
  • target temperature
  • current temperature

What I can't seem to determine is if it is in manual or schedule mode.
I suspect there is a manufacturer specific attribute / value.
Do you have any tips for trying to work this out?

Another problem is the UI in hubitat is horrific. The standard thermostat UI is something only a hacky developer could love. Putting attributes in to tiles is messy.

Is there anyway to create a custom tile template?
Example of what I have then quick illustration of the sort of thing I'd like to achieve.

Okay so this has eaten hours of my life but I have a hacky implementation which shows the basics of my hive heating from my receiver using zigbee. Is anyone else out there using Hubitat and hive or am I alone here?

i'm using hive with my hubitat via this linky.

how did you get the receiver to pair with hubitat? does it still work with the hive app?

Thanks I'd seen that but it is using the cloud APIs as far as I could tell .
I'm using Zigbee as I want it to work locally.

I put the receiver in to paring mode and hubitat detected it. It seems to detect all my hive devices.

I'm still playing around with the zigbee driver but I have a hacky solution. It's not wildly different to what is out there but there are some quirks and missing features i'm ironing out.

I no longer have my hive hub. All my hive devices are connected to hubitat using zigbee.

My thermostat is still talking to the Hive receiver as there are limitation in what I can get hubitat to do at the minute. But my plan is to have the thermostat talk to hubitat and then hubitat control the receiver.

I hope that makes sense.

I was under the impression hive did something weird with their zigbee as I couldn't ever get it to pair. I might have to give this another go.

I got the heating to pair. There is certainly some weird stuff going on between what the receiver and the thermostat does.

e.g .
I cannot get the temp from the thermostat but I can from the receiver.
receiver / thermostat report different modes.
If I do something to the receiver via hubitat the thermostat doesn't seem to pick some things up.
Hot water remains a mystery.

What would help hugely is if I could force a device to notify all its changes via configureReporting. I have not found a way to do this. I could hack it by creating every conceivable value of attribute ID but I fear it may overload it and I might not be able to back it out.

I've been putting messages on the hive website to get them to publish their spec. the more people who do this the better.

Any thoughts welcome. I will publish my code on github once it is a bit less embarrassing.

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I've been struggling to address some of the quirks and I've noticed my receiver has lost sync with my thermostat. I am definitely operating in quirks mode.

I've made a request to hive and they have refused to open up their spec. I have therefore made a request under the data protection act to access my data on their device. It will be interesting to see how they plan to address this.

In the mean time I have created a dashboard forhive which will link from my main dashboard should I want to change any of the settings. I feel this is a more elegant solution than the built in templates which are ugly as sin.

If people want to pile on in the hive community this would help ut pressure on them to release their spec.

Did you get any further with this @dj_bayley

@mike.maxwell may have an idea on how to work out the 2 queries. Mike any help would be appreciated

When dealing with proprietary device data one approach is to sniff and decode the frames between the device and the devices native hub while controlling the device using the native app.

Sorry, been away from this forum for a while.

I wasn't sure how to transparently sniff traffic between the receiver and the thermostat. So I did some hacky stuff with drivers to try and capture events.

I had to park this project as it was eating time. I found that every few days my hive receiver would bork out and would need resetting. If I left hubitat switched off it didn't happen so there is an issue with my integration.

In the mean time when I've been on facebook / twitter I have been trolling them a bit, along the lines of ....

"Don't use hive it's a closed system. They REFUSE to release their zigbee specification. You have to upload your data to the cloud to do anything and if you value your privacy you cannot integrate it."

especially when their promoted messages pop up.

a bit of a pile on might influence their policy!

I've got the Hive Active Heating devices in question here. I have a working system I use every day on their official hub, so if I get around to figuring out packet sniffing (I have a pile of random Zigbee gear, I'm sure something can be repurposed) then maybe some progress can be made with direct support.

I've already had the Computime SLR2 receiver and SLT3 thermostat connected to Hubitat perfectly fine, they find one another and operate with no apparent issues.

Pair the receiver first under normal Zigbee pairing mode and it'll stop double-flashing and begin single-flashing while it waits for the thermostat to appear.

Then pair the thermostat and the status indicator will turn green.

I have no control over either of them and what is logged is a bit thin for what's actually occurring. @dj_bayley, I'd love to see any code you developed.

I'm also not sure of how the two devices communicate. They can be operated in standalone mode with no hub at all, so they must chat directly with one another over Zigbee as well as to the hub.

I don't know if it's any use @andydvsn but I have the following

So after a long back and fourth with Hive I managed to get access to a bunch of data through a Subject Access Request..I am no developer or coder, so most of it means nothing to me, but I wondered if it could be of any use to get hive working in HE

I did manage to find that the Hive system used to be owned by a company called alertme,com which it appears Hive are still using their backend system/service (a lot of data points to alertme.com

I managed to find a couple of (maybe) interesting things (albeit old data)
Hive REST API v6.1 – Data Point - Details the hive API v6, which seems to still point to Alertme.com

the data sent across to me save several references/links to JSON files

there are also a couple of JSON FIles they sent across
image

@dj_bayley Hi, do you have the dual channel receiver (heating & hot water) or single channel one?
Also
are you able to turn ON & OFF each separate relay of the receiver without using the thermostat or hub? eg. Directly from within hubitat itself via zigbee.

Apparently it's supported on Deconz & zigbee2mqtt

Hi I have now been using Hubitat for a month now and trying to put things together. Is there any further development in getting Hive heating to work with HE? I currently have the receiver, hub, thermostat and couple of their TRVs
thanks

I'm in the process of binning hive as it's shite :rofl:

I've done nowt with it. I still have my test one in a drawer though.

To be honest, I have it ticking over in Homekit for the time being so I've not had cause to tinker.

Hehe! It's been unusually reliable for me, though I do only own:

  1. One RGBW lamp (very good colour, btw)
  2. One CT lamp (never used)
  3. One window sensor (never used)
  4. One motion sensor (tinkered with but never used)
  5. The thermostat and boiler controller (used every day and would be shot if it were disrupted)

They were all free organised by AlertMe when they closed down their own service, a very nice gesture and I like the thermostat. Just wish Hive weren't such a closed shop.

I must admit the thermostat has been pretty much solid, nice design. The TRV's are just so bad, did not realise how bad until I got them into home assistant. Got fed up waiting for the HomeKit integration (TRV). Just wait to be hub free. Playing with a z-wave thermostat at the moment. I could do it via deconz and HA but I don't really fancy another zigbee network to maintain.

Ooh, thanks for that. TRVs are on my list, what makes the Hive ones so poor? I do most things through HomeKit these days, so I guess they're completely missing on there?