EvoControl - custom Alexa skill for Evohome

[jweaver]

Yesterday I was really warm in the UK but heard the boiler fire and realise the heating was still on, so figured it was time to work out how to turn off the heating for good until the Autumn.

I tried saying "Set standby until September" as a test and was greeted with "system is now in standby".. But when I looked at the GUI when I went to bed, only a few zones were in standby.. The rest were set at their normal temperature.. So it was in a strange state.

So how exactly do I put it in standby permanently? Can I just say "set standby" with no "until"?

Edit: Probably overthinking this.. Just realised there is a "System Off" button on the Evohome controller.. That will do it.. No need for me to do this by voice as its just a one time thing for many months.

[philchillbill]

[jweaver]

Sorry.. I typed it wrong.. Of course its ACTIVATE not SET.. It was just a typo.

What you say makes sense and is now obvious now I come to think about it.. The reason why some zones were still "standby" and others not was because the schedule had kicked in.. Of course.. Doh!

So "permanently" is the key.... Is there a way to a date in the future? Say you were going on holiday for 2 weeks in the winter? Can you say say a date/time?

[philchillbill]

Sorry.. I typed it wrong.. Of course its ACTIVATE not SET.. It was just a typo.

What you say makes sense and is now obvious now I come to think about it.. The reason why some zones were still "standby" and others not was because the schedule had kicked in.. Of course.. Doh!

So "permanently" is the key.... Is there a way to a date in the future? Say you were going on holiday for 2 weeks in the winter? Can you say say a date/time?

[bruce_miranda]

I will divide the room with this statement but "I no longer like System Off on the controller after Resideo fixed the bug that used to allow local overrides even when the System was Off".
So now "Activate Standby Permanently" is it. That way, should I ever need heat in a particular room, I can just lean over and turn the TRV knob. Rather than walk up to the Controller, turn off System Off, the whole house starts heating, then faf around trying to get all the setpoints down etc etc.

[bruce_miranda]

I do often set System Mode to off, so having quick actions available from my echo show would be useful for me.

Just curious...Why? Standby Permanently is so much better than System Off. All the benefits of System Off without the shackles that come with System Off.

[bruce_miranda]

Yep, it's still dev-only so unpublished. Not sure if I can beta-invite for it. The skill needs to be recertified to add widgets for the greater public so I'll wait a bit and get it really pretty/useful before I submit it.

Would it also be nice to be able to set the System Mode via quick-actions in the widget or does the availability of Activities make that somewhat redundant?

My vote would go for Activities as Quick Actions on the EvoControl to conserve widget screen estate. If someone did want one of the limited feature based controller Quick Action, they can always do that on the Controller or using the Voice command.

[Midland45]

Just curious...Why? Standby Permanently is so much better than System Off. All the benefits of System Off without the shackles that come with System Off.

It’s just sometimes quicker via the Evotouch Controller or Domoticz if I’m nearer my iPad/iPhone etc. Actually I probably don’t use it that often, but more likely at the start of the summer shutdown. You’re right that during the heating season, being in standby is ideal, as more easily allows transitions to activities.

[philchillbill]

Just pushed out a small update to the skill's code to disable the setpoint-editor when the system mode is HeatingOff.

[bruce_miranda]

Have I said this before, I hate Heating Off mode :-)
I cannot remember if I coded this in Domoticz or not, but does EvoControl support HW Setpoint changes? Via Domoticz ofcourse because I don't think the api supports that. It's the only use case I can think of where a setpoint change during Heating Off, should be allowed.

[philchillbill]

Have I said this before, I hate Heating Off mode :-)
I cannot remember if I coded this in Domoticz or not, but does EvoControl support HW Setpoint changes? Via Domoticz ofcourse because I don't think the api supports that. It's the only use case I can think of where a setpoint change during Heating Off, should be allowed.

You might have mentioned it once or twice

EvoControl does not allow HW Setpoint changes. I have no idea if Domoticz supports it or not because I do not have DHW myself so cannot experiment. Can it be done in HA? I must revisit the HA integration for the skill. I started on it but found the learning curve steep. While the HA docs might look fancier than the Domoticz docs, they are still quite patchy in places on actual content. Plus, nobody has yet managed to convince me that accessing HA via the API from the Amazon Cloud will do all I need to do for this skill. I've asked this before, but what would the API call look like to set a zone to a particular setpoint for a particular duration?

[bruce_miranda]

Yes HA definitely has the ability to change the HW setpoint. It uses the RF API that I had decoded a while ago for HW setpoint and overrun.

[philchillbill]

Yes HA definitely has the ability to change the HW setpoint. It uses the RF API that I had decoded a while ago for HW setpoint and overrun.

And the syntax is? Show me e.g. a Curl statement (with fake tokens and params, but with the correct structure/syntax) to achieve a setpoint change...

[bruce_miranda]

Hopefully what I provided will one day result in HA being integrated into EvoControl

[philchillbill]

Hopefully what I provided will one day result in HA being integrated into EvoControl

Many thanks for the docs, Bruce. For others to reference: https://github.com/zxdavb/ramses_cc/...g-the-REST-API