I have reworked a smartthings driver so it is functional in current HE environment. The driver is specific to the Zigbee Centralite Pearl Thermostat.
This driver adapts to the lack of support for an ‘auto’ mode (by ignoring it!). I also made adaptation for circulate fan feature, creating a 30 min on/30 min off option which will run seperately from Thermostat Mode.
Some other additions include correcting the 24v C-Wire vs Batteries (it displays actual power source as well as Battery level), more efficient ‘FanOff’ and additional logging options not included in the original.
The driver can be located via HPM by searching Centralite or Thermostat or Climate Control keywords. It is found here if you wish to use Import URL:
Outstanding. I assume you have one? Do you like them? I have an offer for one for $4.99 through an energy program. I will not be buying it through that program as it gives “them” control. But I was already looking at them anyway. Thanks.
Over the years I’ve had a few Zigbee Thermo’s. One was a Z-Wave, which I kept zwave running in my c4 Just for that. Later, I moved to an older Centralite that worked beautifully but I left it behind when I changed houses.
Seeking a replacement, and wanting Zigbee - I searched really hard - you’ll see my fingerprints all over the forums asking about Zigbee thermo’s and never really finding a perfect answer. I’m cost conscious and ultimately located this unit on AliExpress.
Initially, with the Generic driver it worked mostly. It is very stable as a unit, but it didn’t participate in Battery Monitoring (it contains backup AA batteries), didn’t reflect power source, and worst of all - it has no Auto mode. My latest house has an integrated Heater and Air Conditioner. I was a bit frustrated with not being able to put 2 setpoints in and the unit switch automatically between Heat and Cooling. I was doing it manually with Rules and it wasn’t simple. I was reading (again) about Thermo Controllers which I had avoided previously and concluded I would do what I had done with my GDO - virtualize it with a front end.
But the Generic driver caused problems because of that ‘Auto’ mode not functioning. So, and thanks to this forum, someone pointed me at the Smartthings driver written years ago and I got to work making it ‘HE’. There were 3 big areas of incompatibility between how HE does it and how Smartthings used to do it. And HE evolved last year (I think) upgrading their libraries which further separated HE from Smartthings at the driver level.
Right now, I’m enjoying ALL the benefits and none of the pitfalls (save the issue of having a Controller AND a physical device and having to mentally keep them clear in my head).
I’m also really grateful the detail the original author put into his Smartthing driver - every cluster and their commands was perfectly documented - it was very easy to optimize this driver, and afterwards, running it through Gemini AI for cleanup really gave me the exact result I desired!
I have a Centralite pearl that I purchased off eBay that I am no longer using if you would like to buy it.
I used it for about a month with my garage heater and it was working great until I discovered that it had a firmware bug if the temperature drops to something like 38F, the temperature wraps and it suddenly thinks it is 180F and turns off the heater. So not ideal for a garage.
I did end up switching to the cheapest ecobee for the garage. I think it’s the essential version or something like that. We already had an ecobee for the house so it made sense for me.
One cool note about the pearl, it is able to run off 12vdc. It does not need 24vac to operate.