Introducing Keenect, a vent management smartApp for your Keen vents.
Keenect a clean slate design, event driven vent and zone management smartApp.
It is a parent/child application consisting of:
–Keenect, the parent, which responds to changes made to your main HVAC thermostat, distributing these events to
–keenectZone, the child app, which then controls your vents based on local temperature conditions and your selected temperature set points.
–A keenectZone consists of one or more Keen vents and a temperature sensor.
What it can do:
- Even out temperature variations across your configured zones
- Disable or enable any zone from other smartApps
- Allows separate and independent heating and cooling settings for each zone
- Supports C and F temperature scales automatically
- Prevent excessive static pressure when too many vents are closed when used with an optional pressure sensor DIY Pressure sensor
What it won’t do:
* Fix a horrifically out of balance HVAC system
* Manage your thermostat and its set points
* Provide any thermostat scheduling
What you need to use it:
- A smartThings integrated thermostat connected to your HVAC system
- The selected thermostat must be capable of notifying smartThings of its physical and programmatic state changes within a few seconds.
- I can’t tell you if your wiz-bang thermostat will work or not, but you can.
With your thermostats device tile open in ST, go up to the thermostat and make some changes, do the same thing from the thermostats native application if it has one.
If these changes show up in the device tile in ST within a few seconds (and no cheating by hitting refresh), then your thermostat should work fine.
If it doesn’t, you will need to change thermostats, or find another device type, or find some way to get your thermostat to report properly. - Keen vents, it may work with other vents, I do not know.
- A temperature sensor in each “zone” where you are placing the vents.
The temperature sensor in the vent cannot be used for this purpose, if you think it can, and will provide me an algorithm supporting your or someone else’s theory, I’m all ears, and you will be my hero. - So you will need a source of temperature in each zone, accuracy isn’t so much of an issue as the sensors ability to report temperature changes.
- The more granular these changes are the better your temperature control is going to be. A sensor that reports (or is modified to report) 0.1F degree changes works well.
Installation:
Pop into your ide, click the my smart apps tab, then settings, then perform steps 1 and two below…
After that, click update from repo, then select Keenect and keenectZone, then publish both like you normally would do.
In the mobile app, find and install Keenect from the marketplace, smartApps, My Apps. Do not install keenectZone from the market place, Keenect will manage this application for you.
If your Git integration is broken and the above doesn’t work:
Review the manual process here if required
Source code is here:
https://github.com/MikeMaxwell/vmgr/tree/master/smartapps/mikemaxwell
On the initial install you will need to select your thermostat, the thermostats temperature sensor and your system type: AC capable, or heat only. Do not confuse this with your current operating mode, this selection just lets Keenect know if your system has AC or not. Keenect automatically detects heating and cooling state changes.
That completes the initial installation.
Close and then re-open the Keenect from My Home, SmartApps.
Select create new zone…
Give your zone a name, select your vent(s), and the temperature sensor you will use, and again do not use the temperature sensor in the vent.
Select the minimum vent opening, this is the minimum that Keenect will close the vent to, 20% is a safe starting point.
Maximum vent opening, start at 100%
Select your desired temperature control type:
Offset from main HVAC set point, provides +/- 5 degrees above or below the currently active thermostat set point.
OR
Fixed, the zone set point is static, and will not follow your thermostat settings around.
That’s it for a basic zone configuration, complete the rest of your zones and you should be good to go.
Zone tuning tips:
Set the zone set points to a level where the vents will not close during an operating cycle.
Run a complete cycle, then review the last results report in the reporting section of Keenect.
The end temperatures represent your system balance base line when compared with your thermostat set point.
Now set your zone set points to the desired value.
Observe the last results report when the cycle is complete.
For zones that did not meet their set point, there is little that can be done using a basic configuration.
More than likely you have one or more zones that exceeded your set point.
Start by reducing the maximum opening in intervals of 10% to try to meet your set point. If that still doesn’t do it, you will need to decrease the minimum vent opening level.
You may find a zone that still ends up beyond your set point, even with the vent closed all the time, Keenect can’t fix that as one can imagine.
Advanced options and features:
Keenect:
- Force vent opening to, is provided for testing purposes, and will set your vent levels all at once to the specified opening, once done using this, return the selection to “Do not change”
- IDE logging level, primarily used for debugging should the need arise, the default is Lite, which shows reasonable readable output of what’s happening, a None option is also available.
- Send Lite level log events to notification feed, Lite log events will appear in the mobile app, notifications, Messages panel (this is where your Routines display their output)
- Delay zone cycle end notification, delays notifying the zones of the thermostat IDLE state change by the specified amount, should the need arise.
- Over pressure contact sensor, when used with this DIY Pressure sensor, Keenect will prevent your system against excessive static pressure by having too many vents closed. When a pressure event is detected, all vents are opened fully until pressure is relieved, at which point participating zones will have their openings increased by 5%, should additional pressure events occur during a given cycle, an additional 5% is added until the over pressure is resolved.
keenectZone:
* Quick recovery, overrides a zones maximum vent opening, forcing the vent to full open until the zone temperature is within a degree of the zone set point.
- Close vent options, various options for closing the vents at cycle end, and when disabling the zone from a zone control switch.
- Zone control switch, an external switch, physical or virtual that allows enabling or disabling a zone. A disabled zone will not respond to thermostat or zone temperate change events.
- IDE logging, same options as Keenect.
- Send Lite…, same options as Keenect.
- Pressure management, allows excluding a zone from the gradual opening increases due to pressure events, this will not exclude a zone from the initial 100% opening that’s used to relieve the initial event.
Reports:
Several in app reports are available from Keenect, on the Available Reports page
Configuration, a snap shot of the currently configured settings.
Current state, the current state of the main thermostat, and all the zones
Last results, a summary of results from the last completed HVAC cycle.
And now the disclaimer and over pressure rant:
- I make no claims and take no responsibility over the suitability of this software in providing and supporting the features outlined above.
- In other words, if you or this app does something bone headed, there’s nothing I’m going to do about.
- It is a piece of software, written by a person, and while it’s been through about a month of beta testing with 20 some odd users, that alone will not guarantee perfection, or suitability in your use case.
- I will endeavor to fix bugs as they are reported and within the constraints of my life and full time job.
On the pressure protection subject:
- I expect you to have done your research in regards to installing automated vents in your home.
- I offer no support in determining the suitability of this application, or the vents themselves with your particular HVAC system.
- I will not make any best guesses concerning what the total safe amount of vents to have closed at any one time is, nor the number of vents required to do XYZ.
- I have exhausted all my various attempts to use Keens on board pressure and temperature sensors to assist in determining over pressure system states, so please don’t ask about it. Having said that, if you have a demonstrated proven algorithm that could be used in this application using these sensors, and care to share it, you will be my hero…
- The pressure protection system that is included in this release requires a DIY pressure sensor, the build page for this is here:DIY Pressure sensor.
- If you have concerns currently about what your safe pressure parameters are, I would contact your HVAC folks and have them do a system assessment.
Acknowledgements:
I would like to extend my thanks to all the beta testers that have been a part of enduing some 20+ builds over the past month, but in particular to @SBDOBRESCU and @keltymd who have been there with me from day one, and on a daily basis.
Without these two, this app would not be what it is right now, many thanks guys!
