Building 36 Thermostat

Mass Save installed 2 of these for me today and I was wondering if anyone has them and integrated into ST? They offered 3 on their site (Honeywell 9000, Ecobee Smart SI, and Building 36) but after they got here said they no longer offered the Honeywell or Ecobee since virtually no one has a common wire so they never installed them. It attaches to a hub and I found the Z-Wave certification below but can’t find much other info. Would prefer to not have an extra Z-Wave hub if I could make it work via ST.

It looks like it conforms to what a typical zwave thermostat should do in ST, so it won’t hurt to include it and see what the default device handler does.

They are still setting up which means they will pair to the Building 36 hub, but once they leave, I’ll unpair and see what happens if I try and connect to ST. If it doesn’t see it automatically I’ll parse through the Thermostat handlers and see if one connects. Any idea if the programming is held on the thermostat and the hub is used to set that programming or do you think the hub is where the programming is and just pushes instructions to the thermostat? Just wondering what integration I might lose by swapping hubs.

All the thermo’s I’ve used had the schedule/programming on the device, not the hub. I looked at the user manual for your thermostat, and you should be able to exclude it and add it to ST’s hub without a lot problems.

I bet the default thermostat DH works, but I decided to put one together for myself. Here it is if you want it. It doesn’t report battery even though your thermostat has the capability to report it. With a little work this DH could be modified to add battery reporting.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/constjs/jcdevhandlers/master/devicetypes/jscgs350/my-zwave-thermostat.src/my-zwave-thermostat.groovy

Awesome, thanks! I got it unpaired from the original hub and paired with the ST hub. Tried a bunch of handlers and none seemed to fit well nor really trigger the heat to come on. Fast forward about 2 hours and I realized the heat would not come on even if I controlled directly on the thermostat. . . then I realized I think they were installed wrong! So I am re-wiring then will try again later.

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Well good news is got them re-wired and operational and one of them paired back with ST for trying it out. Bad news is the Device Handlers are way more difficult than I thought they would be. I did VBA app development about 15 years ago and at the time I just taught myself by reverse engineering other people’s code so thought I could do that here. Then I realized I can’t find any references to what the functions and properties are, and even if I could, the DH structures just seem so foreign to me. I found that Z-Wave cert reference doc but either I don’t know how to turn those attributes into the right code versions or just don’t know how to use them. The standard DH seems to work as does the custom one you provided, but I was going to try and add some of the custom features the primary Hub has like setting the min and max cool points so I don’t blow out my AC compressor in the winter. Then I had visions of finding an app that has a nice scheduling UI which so far I can’t seem to find, so then on top of that, would have to figure out smart app coding as well. The reason I am doing all this is to avoid having the native app poll my location for for geofence control in addition to ST but that may be the path I have to go.

In the development web site, there is an API/Programming reference link under the “Documentation” ‘tab’. Some code examples, but the big part is the API reference. The Groovy language is very familiar to anyone with any OOP experience.

Did the device handler that @johnconstantelo shared not work?

I tried so many handlers last night they are starting to blur, but the short version is it worked, but is missing a lot of attributes (not sure I have right name) that the OEM software has. For example I can set a temp range and set to auto and it will flip back and forth ac to heat. Or set max and min temps that can be set on device or programmatically. I thought I could just tweak the code and add them, and I’m pretty sure it’s possible, but I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t even add known attributes much less the ones I’m not sure what they are named. Then I realized to make a schedule programing ui was going to be tough as well.

That being said the OEM software failed to recognize we were away today and adjust so that will likely drive me back to tinkering lol.

Just a followup fyi on this, I ended up bailing on these. Went and got Ecobee Lite’s instead. Now I wish I had gone and gotten the full E3 since only 30 more a piece, but so far really liking them and the interactions with ST. Saw the 199 deal on the full E3 show up again and am tempted to return these and upgrade this weekend but I think my wife will shoot me.

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Hi all, I’m bumping this topic, as I’m currently messing around with this Thermostat, or rather the Alarm.com version - and have info to add about pairing this device.

Thanks to John Costantelo for the DH. I’m currently using it and planning to add battery level support when I get a little more Groovy savvy :slight_smile:

Anyhow, just a little something I learned about this particular thermostat. I was trying to get it to pair with my ST hub to no avail. The only thing the documentation tells you, is to hold the down button until the Radio icon (looks more like a wi-fi icon to me) comes on. However in my case, the radio symbol lit up on the front panel, but that’s all she wrote. Nothing else happened.

Turns out one can reset the Thermostat by holding down BOTH the up and down buttons at the same time. After a few seconds, the display reads RST (pretty sure that meant reset). After that you hold the down button and after about 5 seconds the radio light starts PULSING. This is where you can add it to the ST hub. Once paired, the Radio lights solid.

Hope this helps somebody

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