[Release] Rheem Econet App and Hybrid Water Heater Driver

Apparently it's just me then. Oh well. I can go without it connected to HE.

I'm playing with dropping the temperature when I'm not home. Normally I keep it at 120, but when I'm gone at work it's set to 100. Has anyone done any research into the optimal settings? What temp is the best to lower it to and still see savings when you have to heat the water back up?

I have not, but I drop my after 9 pm and during the day after 7 am.

Bring it back up at 5 am and 3 pm.

It is off when away.

I have been mulling over the same idea. We run on heat pump only mode, so during the summer, the water heater will be most efficient when the indoor air temperature is highest, and that would be right before the AC begins the morning and afternoon recovery. Here's what I'm thinking:

-When the bathroom fan kicks on for the last shower of the morning (via humidity with Zooz multsensor), drop water heater temp by maybe 10-15 degrees. This should give just enough hot water to finish the shower without the water heater trying to recover to the normal setpoint
-If mode changes to away within the next hour, set temp to 100. Otherwise if staying home, go back to normal setpoint
-When HVAC begins its afternoon recovery, or at a time corresponding to when we return home or the inside air temp is highest, return water heater to normal setpoint
-Possibly do the same at night, though most of our hot water use is in the morning and I don't want to risk a failure to recover before AM showers.

I think the same idea could be transferred to the winter when heating the house with natural gas, but likely running at different times. Would also want to make sure this doesn't needlessly short-cycle the compressor, and would have to evaluate if heat pump mode is actually more efficient in the winter than the normal high efficiency mode.

Speaking of that, it looks like this driver does not work to change modes (heat pump, efficiency, high demand). Anyone else give this a shot?

I couldn't get the modes to change either, but I didn't know if it was something I was doing or some other error. Hubitat's Dashboard also makes it hard as the water heater modes don't align with the HVAC modes.

I wouldn't use the scheduling daily like you, but what I would like to do is set water heater mode by outside temperature and/or season. I only switch modes a few times a year, but when I was on Wink Hub, I used to schedule "High Demand" on Saturday for laundry, and back to "Heat Pump" mode if it was warm outside, or "Energy Saver" mode if it was during winter.

I hope I don't offend brianspranger by posting this here. He and I have found an issue with this driver (not his fault). Apparently there are more than one version of this water heater and they use different commands for the heating modes. I love it when companies do this stupid stuff that is done for no apparent reason.

  • Brianspranger's water heater and likewise his driver code want to see "Heat Pump Only" and "Electric-Only" for those modes.
  • My water heater version needs "heat pump" and "electric" commands for those modes.
  • The other modes (off, energy saver, and high demand) are the same between models.

To make this code work with the (presumably newer) water heaters, you simply need to change the mode names in the driver code from "Electric-Only" to "Electric" everywhere you find it. I think there were about 4-5 places. Same goes for "Heat Pump Only" that gets renamed "Heat Pump" I left the capitalization, word spacing, everything as written, just erase the extra "only or "-only".

It isn't a big deal once you are aware of it, but it was strange because things somewhat worked enough to make it appear everything was fine. so it took me a while to figure out something was up. For reference, my water heater is a "Heat Pump Water Heater Gen 4", but I am not sure what all models this code modification applies to. My heater reports the following.

  • model number: 10E50-HP4D
  • software Version: WH-HPW4-H2-01-10

I thank brianspranger for his time in helping me to track this down. Thanks again for this code, it will be very helpful to automate this water heater.

1 Like

No offense here.

I have been thinking about this and if I get some time I think I can make the driver handle the two different naming schemes.

I also need to play with a dashboard to see if I can get it to work properly.

Wow great work both of you! I'll make the changes and test it out later today :slight_smile:

Would you consider doing something for a furnace? I have a furnace/AC hooked up to econet. Would love to connect it to HE.

I believe someone already has. It might be over at Smart things.

It is easy to adapt from ST to Hubitat

That's ok. I prefer to use something by someone I know. I'm not experienced enough to dabble and feel comfortable messing with my heater and ac. Eventually something will come in that I can use. :slight_smile:

I just loaded this and connected it to my Sharptools dashboard. Very cool, and shows everything I wanted. Thanks for the app and driver!

It was the first 3rd party app and driver I've loaded, and it was easier than I expected.

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Im having trouble logging into my econet app on habitat . I install app, update OAuth and then install driver taking out the "ONLY" I get to the part it asks for Username and password and " COULD NOT FIND DEVICES" pops up I've been going at this for a week. back and fourth between app and habitat and I can't figure it out. Thanks for any help.

Curious if anyone is using this App for Thermostat ONLY? I Had my Rheem HP replaced (after 20 years of great use) with a new Rheem with the newest Econet Thermostat. While I'm happy with the setup, I thought I'd see if there was a Hubitat use so I found this thread and installed the device drivers and app from Github but while it took my sign in, it appears to be not working properly and I wondered if anyone was still using it. Here's what I see on the Dashboard app.
Rheem

Okay, got it going with a ? On one thing but it is functioning.

Hi, I have a question app Driver/App, I have Gas Water Heater.

  1. Can I have information about the temperature or just about Setpoint?
  2. What is the difference between "heatingSetpoint" and "ThermostatSetPoint"?

Below you can see the print od Hubit and Econet at the same time.

image

Hi, @brianspranger Did you have time to see my message here?

My waterheater has current temp and lower tank temp, this code updates the states:

def updateDeviceData(data) {
sendEvent(name: "heatingSetpoint", value: data.setPoint, unit: "F")
sendEvent(name: "thermostatOperatingState", value: data.inUse ? "heating" : "idle")
sendEvent(name: "thermostatMode", value: data.mode)
sendEvent(name: "lowerTemp", value: data.lowerTemp as Integer)
sendEvent(name: "ambientTemp", value: data.ambientTemp as Integer)
sendEvent(name: "temperature", value: data.upperTemp as Integer)
}

I think I tried to add some additional capabilities to the driver to see if my Google Home integration would pickup my water heater. So far I have not succeeded.

But the two setpoints should be the same, look at this function:

def setHeatingSetpoint(Number setPoint) {
sendEvent(name: "heatingSetpoint", value: setPoint, unit: "F")
sendEvent(name: "thermostatSetpoint", value: setPoint, unit: "F")

parent.setDeviceSetPoint(this.device, setPoint)
refresh()
}

You may need to turn on the logs and see what the water heater is sending back for data.

When I was trying to track down some issues, I went to https://econetreg.myrheem.com I then did a right click > Inspect. It has all the commands in fairly plain English. I only see the ones for my particular heater, so you would have to find some of those and see if you can figure out what is missing or incorrect.

I also did like Brian said, I watched Hubitat and pressed every button on the Econet phone app and also on the water heater control panel, and recorded what it said or did in Hubitat. I think I had to view the "Devices" page in Hubitat instead of logs. The "Refresh" button in the devices page also brings up more info sometimes. Between the Rheem web page, and Hubitat, I was able to figure out the changes needed in the code.

I don't know what sensors they have for the gas heater, what does the heater's control panel have for data? In my case, the following data is available in Hubitat and on the water heater itself:

  • heatingSetpoint :
  • temperature :
  • thermostatMode :
  • thermostatOperatingState :
  • thermostatSetpoint :
  • Critical Alert :
  • Alarm Message :
  • Vacation Mode :
  • lowerTemp :
  • upperTemp :
  • ambientTemp :

Greetings all. Has anyone had issues with the driver? Today it won't accept my username and password. I tried changing the password, but that didn't work. The IOS app works fine though. I do see this in the logs: