I used to have a Hive Home ecosystem until one fateful day where they limited my heating to 15 degrees and tried to freeze me to death unless I bought their newest thermostat and paid for their subscription. I ended up saying fuck the extorting bastards and bought a cheap Zigbee Thermostat to get me through the winter. It’s been truly excellent, I really can’t complain. However I got my Raspberry Pi for Christmas and am now trying to take everything into my own local control, so time to say goodbye to Smart Life and hello HA Companion.

It’s all been fine for the most part but I have two issues.

  1. I don’t seem to be able to automate my heating. I can manually set it to whatever temperature I want, but I can’t automate or script a boost of my heating. Edit: If anyone else has this issue in the future, the solution is to Call A Service and set the temperature there.

  2. My temperature sensors aren’t reporting as often as they were in the Smart Life app.

I’ll replace the thermostat eventually, but I would like to delay it as long as possible so I can buy other stuff first 😂

  • @NarrativeBearEnglish
    6•10 months ago

    Take a look at zigbee2mqtt this is what I use to add any of my ZigBee devices to home assistant. You may find there is more frequent reporting/polling with this so you have more updated information in your home assistant instance.

    ZigBee is the way to go IMO for the most “local control”. Your thermostat is probably pretty good and would not need replacing for a long time.

    For automation of your thermostat and other items in the house you will need to setup your own automations that work for you. Home assistant won’t do this for you automatically like other 3rd party thermostats that “learn” your patterns.

    Home assistant is pretty powerful in what you can do with automation as it’s allows you to use other sensors around the house, even poll outside stats like weather. So in theory you can set automations that turn off your heathing if your phone or all phones have left the house. You can set automations that turn on the heathing when the outside temperature reaches a certain temperature and the house temperature drops to a certain point.

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      3•10 months ago

      Regarding the thermostat, this is in the state tab of Zigbee2MQTT

      {
    "child_lock": "UNLOCK",
    "current_heating_setpoint": 12,
    "heat": "OFF",
    "linkquality": 184,
    "local_temperature": 20,
    "local_temperature_calibration": -2,
    "max_temperature": 45,
    "min_temperature_limit": 1,
    "preset": "program",
    "preset_mode": "program",
    "program": {
        "saturday_p1_hour": 6,
        "saturday_p1_minute": 0,
        "saturday_p1_temperature": 14,
        "saturday_p2_hour": 8,
        "saturday_p2_minute": 0,
        "saturday_p2_temperature": 16,
        "saturday_p3_hour": 8,
        "saturday_p3_minute": 30,
        "saturday_p3_temperature": 15,
        "saturday_p4_hour": 20,
        "saturday_p4_minute": 0,
        "saturday_p4_temperature": 12,
        "sunday_p1_hour": 6,
        "sunday_p1_minute": 0,
        "sunday_p1_temperature": 14,
        "sunday_p2_hour": 12,
        "sunday_p2_minute": 30,
        "sunday_p2_temperature": 16,
        "sunday_p3_hour": 14,
        "sunday_p3_minute": 30,
        "sunday_p3_temperature": 15,
        "sunday_p4_hour": 18,
        "sunday_p4_minute": 30,
        "sunday_p4_temperature": 12,
        "weekdays_p1_hour": 6,
        "weekdays_p1_minute": 0,
        "weekdays_p1_temperature": 14,
        "weekdays_p2_hour": 8,
        "weekdays_p2_minute": 0,
        "weekdays_p2_temperature": 16,
        "weekdays_p3_hour": 8,
        "weekdays_p3_minute": 30,
        "weekdays_p3_temperature": 15,
        "weekdays_p4_hour": 20,
        "weekdays_p4_minute": 0,
        "weekdays_p4_temperature": 12
    },
    "running_state": "idle",
    "sensor": "AL",
    "system_mode": "heat",
    "deadzone_temperature": null,
    "max_temperature_limit": null
}

      I theorize that I need to give it a hard reset to clear everything that got ported over from the previous set-up?

      • @NarrativeBearEnglish
        2•10 months ago

        I should add you need to install Mqtt broker from the addin store as well.

        Once you get this installed under integrations you should see Mqtt and this is where your new ZigBee devices will be listed. (As opposed to the ZigBee integration)

        No need to hard reset the thermostat as once you add it through zigbee2mqtt and get mqtt integration added the device will be new to your HA installation.

        • @[email protected]OPEnglish
          1•10 months ago

          I have it coming through Z2M, hence why I thought maybe a hard reset might fix it and give me the new climate card.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•10 months ago

      I definitely recommend zigbee2mqtt over ZHA. I originally went with ZHA and just recently went through the hassle of converting over. It was worth it. IMO, it’s best to just start with zigbee2mqtt, and to convert before you have a lot of devices and automations.

      Edit: before I posted this comment, I couldn’t see any comments other than the one I was responding to.