Hi everyone, I stumbled across smart tiles yesterday while browsing the community and I think it’s brilliant. Exactly the type of thing which can help bring together control and monitoring of smart home devices and make it look good.
I have the Honeywell evohome system and wondering that if I install the community project which is out there, will i be able to add it to my smart tiles dashboard so I can see status of all my zones? Or is there a reason that won’t work?
Welcome to SmartTiles, Freddy! Hopefully you won’t have to wait too long for ActionTiles™ (the "next generation of SmartTiles and our new name) to be released… cleaning up a few things… yada yada!
As for Honeywell… (etc.):
ActionTiles tries to support as many “official” standard SmartThings “Capability” interfaces as possible, because that means the product will be usable by the most number of customers.
So that means we support all the standard functions of “Capability Thermostat”.
Honeywell Evohome does more than a standard Thermostat, though, right?
Unfortunately, the source code for its DTH (Device Type Handler) is closed, so that makes it particularly difficult for us to even consider how to incorporate all its features.
The source code of many official and “lab” DTHs (and many SmartApps) is in GitHub, and I can’t find Honeywell. I seem to recall it is proprietary… GitHub - SmartThingsCommunity/SmartThingsPublic: SmartThings open-source DeviceType Handlers and SmartApps code
However…
This SmartThings Community is very clever. Some or all of the special features of the Honeywell can perhaps be exposed as “virtual devices” … e.g., Virtual Temperature Sensors and kept in sync with a SmartApp.
That would let more Honeywell features be compatible with many other SmartApps, including ActionTiles.
For now, all we can offer is “standard thermostat” capability as linked above.
Hi @tgauchat - many thanks for the useful and prompt response! I had no idea a new version of smart tiles was imminent but given the current version is so good I’m really looking forward to it. With smart tiles I realised for the first time that if I can put together my dashboard with the right info I would invest in a cheap tablet to use as a wall mounted smart home control panel - it really is a nice consolidated interface.
The driver behind adding my honeywell status to it is with that consolidated control panel in mind, and you’re right the evohome does a lot more than a standard thermostat in that you get a thermostat and control in each room, not just the whole house. I will have a look at the link you’ve posted and see if anyone on the community here can offer any solutions. At the moment, I’m really only interested in having the status of my various zones shown on the dashboard - not so concerned about changing their states which for now I think I’ll continue to do via the official honeywell app.
Thanks again!
Anyone know of any clever solutions for displaying the status of my evohome zones in smart tiles?
Can you share a screenshot? / Explain what you’d like to see (i.e., at minimum); link to some website, etc. to help me understand what you’re aiming for?
I think an assortment of virtual Things will do the trick, but … too little information so far.
Apologies! I’ve been posting on other forums so much about the Honeywell system I’ve started referring to it as if it is commonplace! So I’ve attached a pic here of the main controller (which is the equivalent of the nest thermostat device). The system also allows you to fit motorised radiator valves to each radiator in the house thereby allowing you to create a zone containing one or more of the thermostatic radiator valves. That’s how you get the room by room temperature view you can see in the pic which you don’t get with nest. I get a similar view in the app, almost like tiles representing each zone showing current temp and my set target temp.
So if there is a way to connect into my evohome system via smart tiles to pull in a view of all my heating zones (and ensure that view gets refreshed say every 5 or 10 minutes or more frequently) I could then see my heating status alongside the status of all my smart things in the smart tiles dashboard.
To take it one step further, it could be setup in a way where not only can I view status of heating zones but also make changes, like I can via the Honeywell app. The evohome system allows manual overrides to a specific zone or you can invoke “quick actions” which do things like set to economy mode (reduce all zones by 3 degrees), away, all off and custom. So these quick actions would be available via the smart tiles dashboard too.
A link to a review of the system by automatedhome is here:
Finally, as mentioned in my initial post there is a community project already out there to integrate the evohome with the Smartthings app but I don’t know if setting that up will then simply allow me to add the relevant tiles to my smart tiles dashboard…
Hope that clarifies and thank for looking into this!
So each of those “Zone squares” displays the current temperature in the zone as well as the current set point (trigger temperature)?
If you just want to see the current temperature, that’s just Capability Temperature Sensor, and creating a SmartApp that can sync up a set of Virtual Temperature Sensors with the EvoHome isn’t very hard.
If you also want to see (and change?) the set point for any Zone, then you actually have to create a Virtual Thermostat for every Zone, and the SmartApp is more complex as it has to sync the Temperature, setPoint, and handle “change setPoint” events from each Virtual Thermostat … and even, I suppose, change the “Heating vs Cooling Mode”.
Both are technically possible and a “fun” project, but anyone would be wise to start with just #1 first (read the temperature in a Zone into a Virtual Temperature Sensor), and then, if that works fine with ActionTiles, do project #2.
Cool, sounds sensible and logical. And yes, each of the zone squares displays zone name, current temp and target temp. So where do I start if I want to try and build that integration? (I’m a techie but have never done any Smartthings dev) or can someone else help…? I’m happy with just having the current temp for each zone showing on my dashboard, for now at least.
It may be a bit boring, but it doesn’t hurt to skim through the developer docs (http://docs.smartthings.com) so you’ll know where to find official information.
Try various search terms on the Forum itself … virtual temperature, virtual thermostat, grouping lights, FAQ, … it’s laborious, but possibly rewarding because there are so many helpful topics.
Browse the SmartThings public GitHub for lots of working code samples.
The unofficial Wiki has some good starting points, e.g.,: http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=How_to_Create_a_Virtual_Device
And @JDRoberts is super amazing at pointing out relevant threads and places to jump-in for new ST developers.
And post here as you progress and hit bumps.
Okie dokes - I will start doing the reading 
Many thanks for the suggestions.