Sharing my app settings and details, please check yours is similarly setup:
I use the Ecobee Suite with the smart vents helper app (Iām replacing keen vents with Flair once the keen vents fail). I assume there is no benefit for this use case to enabling the new dynamic balancing feature. Correct?
I got this working and tested for about a week and it didn't work well in my case. As I said previously, there is a VERY narrow range of adjustment on the vent that has any impact on airflow. With this algorithm enabled the spread in temps across room grew over time, where it tracked pretty closely with the auto setting enabled.
It especially seemed to struggle when switching between heating and cooling (we had a few days last week with cold nights and hot temps during the day.) It had been staying fairly close when only heating was running, but when the mode switched to cooling it didn't do a good job of balancing at all.
I appreciate the ingenuity and still am making great use of your plugin with that feature disabled.
Again, would it be possible to add your package to Hubitat Package Manager to handle updates automatically? Do you see any other features or updates you want to add?
Last question: I had to contact Flair to remotely make an adjustment to my vents to a "tighter" setting to close the vents all the way without air leaks when the HVAC was running. Is that setting exposed in the API? Any way you can add controlling it?
@grooves12 - I really appreciate you taking the time to thoroughly test the dynamic balancing feature and provide thoughtful feedback. Your help has been invaluable improving the app.
The Dynamic Air Balancing feature is still in beta, and I'm continuing to enhance it based on real-world feedback. I have recently integrated a unit test framework that allows me to simulate and test various scenarios. This will help improve performance across different seasons and climate control modes.
I appreciate you noting the issues switching between heating and cooling cycles. The unit tests will assist me in addressing these kinds of mode switches.
Thank you again for suggesting integrating with the Hubitat Package Manager. The app is now available there for streamlined install and updates.
Regarding your last question - I did not see an API setting for the "tighter" vent adjustment you mentioned. If you have more details on where that is exposed I'm happy to look into adding it. Please let me know!
Since you have switched over to using Flair smart vents, the dynamic balancing feature could be beneficial.
The logic is designed to work with Flair vents specifically by optimizing based on each vent's temperature data and position.
I'd recommend trying it out for a few days to see if it helps maintain better balance between rooms compared to the default Flair automation.
The key advantages are minimizing vent re-adjustments while still keeping temperatures in sync with the thermostat setpoint. It also helps maximize battery life by keeping vents steadier.
Feel free to toggle the setting off and on to compare performance. Let me know if you have any other questions!
I wanted to share a side-by-side comparison showing how the Dynamic Airflow Balancing (DAB) feature minimizes temperature fluctuations compared to Flair's default algorithm.
This image shows my home's vent behavior over a few hours of heating:
- Left side: Using standard Flair app balancing
- Right side: With Dynamic Airflow Balancing enabled in the Hubitat integration
As you can see, with the Flair algorithm, room temperatures swing significantly, changing 3-4 degrees up and down.
But with Dynamic Airflow Balancing (DAB), the temperature curve is much steadier, staying within about 0.5 degrees.
This demonstrates how DAB optimizes vent positions to reach and maintain the target temperature precisely, while reducing vent re-adjustments.
Why is your heating set point all over the place on the left side? Is that with the Falir app as the set point controller?
Is that with an ecobee thermostat? If so, you can use beestat.io to get a lot more stats and room by room temps.
This is an example when I had the dynamic balancing enabled.
Thanks for the feedback @grooves12! To answer your questions:
- The fluctuating set point on the left is from letting the Flair app take over the thermostat. It seems to adjust it trying to balance rooms, causing that impact.
- Yup, using an Ecobee thermostat here - and good call on beestat.io, it looks great! I signed up and will share some graphs once I collect more data there.
- Appreciate you sharing your example graph as well. The fluctuations do look significant. I actually just pushed a fix to properly handle cold air - it was incorrectly using the hot air metrics before. This is now corrected in the latest version available in the Package Manager.
Let me know if the new update improves performance for you when cooling. As always, feedback is super helpful for continuing to refine things!
