[BETA RELEASE] Keenect V2.7 and Keenzone 2.8, Proportional Vent Control with System Wide Zone Balancing

[Brian_Murphy]

V2.8.3 a bug fix for return air vents

[eicher_ian (Ian Eicher)]

Hi @Brian_Murphy, I need to do a tweak to your app that I also had to do in the keenect1.0. I have a vent downstairs that controls the airflow that goes upstairs by modulating air allowed downstairs (weird, I know). It’s all controlled off of a temp sensor upstairs. Anyway, on the 1.0 app I switched maxvolocal to minvolocal in order to force the vent to open/close the opposite of what most people do. Can you point me to the section in your app I need to do this in? Your app is a bit more lengthy than the 1.0, so I want to make sure I’m doing it correctly.

Thanks for your help!

Edit: Here’s my post on the other app: [RELEASE] Keenect V1.2.0, optional separate vo settings for cooling, vent obstruction auto clear

[Brian_Murphy]

just so i understand, you would like to change when the vent thinks to open to close?

[Brian_Murphy]

what you want is an inverse vent control, the more the upstairs opens the more the downstairs closes proportionally.

do you have more than one vent? or one sensor?

[eicher_ian (Ian Eicher)]

@Brian_Murphy- Exactly right, when the sensor asks for more hot or cold air, I need the vent to actually close. It’s a 1 vent, 1 sensor zone

[Brian_Murphy]

Do you have other zones? Could you create a virtual dimmer switch app that inverts the position and controls one vent.

You would:
Create a simulated dimmer switch for keenect to control
A small app to watch the dimmer and inversely open or close a vent

This would allow you to stay with the existing builds and reduce testing needed to support an auxiliary main code design that you would reverse engineer.

If you wanted help I could provide more guidance.

[eicher_ian (Ian Eicher)]

This is a good idea as I was thinking to myself I’d have to adjust the code everytime your code updated. More work up front, but worth it.

I’d really appreciate any help you could provide.

Edit - and no other zones. 1 works fine with my condo as I have all the other vents balanced well within the upstairs or downstairs.

Edit 2 - virtual dimmer switch is created and keenect zone created. Now about that app… I have no Idea where to start.

[Brian_Murphy]

try this

brianmsailing/SmartThingsCode/blob/master/smartapps/brianmsailing/inverse-vent.src/inverse-vent.groovy

How to create a virtual dimmer?

Hi can anyone tell me how to add a virtual dimmer. I don’t see “virtual dimmer” or “simulated dimmer” as an option for a device to add. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Brian

[eicher_ian (Ian Eicher)]

Thanks Brian, I will give it a shot!

Edit - @Brian_Murphy, 1 thing…I need to be able to change heating and cooling min vent openings all the way from 0-100 since the setting becomes counter intuitive with my inverse setting app. I need to be able to close the vent to less than 40% (highest setting in app is 60%). This is very confusing…

[Brian_Murphy]

I can update to allow for 0-100

[WC1 (WC)]

@Brian_Murphy love the evolution of this app. I am finding an issue with my Keen Vents and this new iteration though. Specifically with the fan only function of the Nest. According to the Nest view in SmartThings it is on Circulate mode with Fan Only when I schedule that for certain times. I leave the Vent Minimum Opening During Fan Only to Fully Open however I am seeing that a few seconds after the fan comes on, and vents open, that they close again. In the old version of the app (pre the merge :)) where heating/cooling was supported only, the vents opened fine in those conditions and I always set to close at end of cycle which worked too.

If you can give me some pointers on what to look for will happily pull the log info etc to try and determine this. The only other SmartApp I run is the JSON Complete which I use for HomeBridge but in checking across that app and the Homebridge routines, none are controlling the vents at all, just natively through this app on SmartThings. Thanks for any help you can offer

[WC1 (WC)]

Tried this again last night and still does the same thing, closes vents after a few seconds of fan running. Settings are at 20% minimum opening on heat and cool, 90% on fan only and set to close 3 mins after cycle completes. Cannot get these vents to stay open using this app now, the original doesn’t have an issue but it seems related to this release. When I look at the simple log to start, I do see that the zone is the one issuing the command to close so again it does seem to point back to this SmartApp. I may have to revert to Mike M’s original version for now and use something like CoRE to automate on fan/recirc for now. Any tips, ideas etc to resolve this would be great. Thanks for your work so far @Brian_Murphy

[Brian_Murphy]

Will look into it over the weekend.

[Brian_Murphy]

After this weekend I am going to be away from this project for a few months with the birth of my 4th child. Additionally I lead a large med device product team that sucks up my day job. I plan on rolling out one bug release this evening for some small issues.

[Brian_Murphy]

Bug fix

*V2.8.4 bug fix for vent name setup error

[tonesto7 (Anthony S.)]

@Mike_Maxwell

That section of code is clearly part of the dth implementation, it is forcing a null value when changing modes, this isn’t being set by the thermostat proper, and I doubt setting it to null (or not), has any effect on the nests internal functionality. The dth is clearly overriding the setpoints when changing modes, and I can see no valid reason for it to do so. Maybe this was put in place as a simplistic way of determining what operating state the system is in, but there are thermostat attributes for that, even when the stat is running in auto…

This was added in order to hide the heat and cool temp up/down buttons based on the operating mode in the UI.
This is so users would stop trying to change cool temp while in heat or away mode. Nest just rejects the commands and it was hard to send feedback to the users.

@napalmcsr

When I can sit down and spend some time looking at it, I will go in and comment out the code.

I know i’m late to the party but it would have been nice to have been consulted that you were having issues.
We would have worked to try and accommodate your needs and the issue you are seeing.

[WC1 (WC)]

@Brian_Murphy just checking in to see if you were able to find the issue I mentioned whereby Vents were closing when fan was on even though set to full open ? Is that included in 2.8.4 fixes ? Thanks

[redawg]

Anymore work on this? I reenabled zone switch control, because I use ecobee with a ventilator on it and want to disable the zones. To open the vents 100% when running. The fan only vent setting didn’t seem to work for me.

But on another note has anyone looked into creating virtual thermostats that could be used to set the temp you want in each room instead of from this app. Basically we could create a virtual thermostat that the app checks for heating and cooling Modes.

Thoughts or any help point me in a direction I can try to hack one up and working. I wrote a simple app that watches for a switch press, sends ventilator on command to ecobee and turns on the bypass switch for keenect, then sets a master dimmer for all vents to 100%. And after it turns off via smartphone auto. It enables the keenect program. It work but I’m sure there is a batter way to do it or even integrate to this app.

[napalmcsr]

I’ve been playing with it for my own usage. I totally removed the ecobee only and added enablement by mode. I can probably help you through what you want to do.

[redawg]

That would be cool… I just want to setup virtual thermostats…so it will pick the vent opening and close based on the virtual thermostat instead of whats set in the app. If we don’t hack it up to much we can push it out for others to use.