(Deleted and reposted my reply to clarify my thinking)
Having dived into this deeper, I think I now understand the issue: the HE platform has 4 built-in thermostat modes (cool, heat, emergency heat, and 'auto'), so 'auto' needs to mean either "heat_cool" or HA's 'follow schedule" but we can't have both. @ymerj @tomw Have I got that right?
A suggested solve is to give users an option via a toggle in the HADB driver on whether they want HE's 'auto' to mean 'heat_cool' (default) or HA's 'auto'. Folk who choose 'heat_cool' would get the current HADB behavior with 'auto' events suppressed to avoid breaking any rules and apps. Meanwhile folk like me who have heating-only systems and want the ability to set HA's ‘auto’ mode from HE would choose the latter option. I've got this functionality working now in my fork.
Let me know what you think and/or if you would like me to propose the code change.
