I got an idea, but that’s is temporary solution or it could be good solution, as is not giving choice of temperature sensor change in device settings. @Mariano_Colmenarejo said place fingerprints in virtual thermostat, which let me thinking why not opposite.
We were trying to bring external devices’ data to virtual thermostat, but I’ll ask, if opposite is actually the solution:
Temperature Sensor with Thermostat capabilities
Could we modify temperature sensor driver to have thermostat capabilities?
It would be still temperature/humidity sensor with a little bit of extra
I was going to use Aqara’s Temperature sensor, as it has temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure capabilities.
Currently I am using DTH, I think, created by orangebucket (Graham), Anidea for Aqara Temperature sensor
This way plain “Temperature driver” can be swapped for “Temperature driver with thermostat capabilities”. Only same fingerprints need to be added to both drivers.
As I missed some responses I can see pluses and minuses of bith solutions.
Temperature Sensor Driver with Thermostat capabilities, needs to be upgraded with additional fingerprints for each protocol, zigbee, z-wave etc…
Virtual Thermostat, would be more flexible as will allow any temperature sensor to be used as Current temperature value.
Can an Edge driver be ‘bilingual’ ? In otherwords, can you take a zwave or zigbee driver and add LAN type device support to it? Since right now Edge virtual devices are treated as LAN devices in order to use the try_create_device function. If that’s possible without breaking the zwave/zigbee stuff, then this approach sounds pretty straightforward.
I like the last option you listed, however I’m not sure why anyone would want to do this on an ESP when, for not much more $, you can have a full blown compute environment on a Raspberry Pi or Raspberry Pi zero. You could actually use the SmartThings RESTful API to retrieve the temperature device reading on some periodic interval and send it to an Edge LAN driver with a virtual thermostat device.
Of course SmartThings could make this much easier, just by (1) giving Edge drivers access to the RESTful API, or (2) giving Edge drivers access to any Edge device state on the same hub.
Sorry everyone, but this is funny as I started replying like 3 hours earlier, got stuck with some family duties, and continued with my reply 3 hours later, not checking for any responses.
In meantime same thoughts came up, and my reply was too late.
Anyway looks like we are getting somewhere
One of advantage @Mariano_Colmenarejo solution, driver with extra capabilities, is that it would be local, and there is no need for any SmartApp or intermediate server (ESP),
In my opinion this is the easiest option right now.
The common philosophy of a virtual device is that it communicates with the ecosystem by automations and thus you can use any type of device to execute the actions.
The temperature capabilities work very well with the default libraries and could be used for many types of sensor. Simply adding fingerprint and having multiple profiles.
In fact, with a single driver you have everything, you don’t need have one for the sensor and a virtual one for the thermostat.
If you have several sensors and individual heating per room, with each sensor you have a thermostat.
You will always have the option to change your sensor to a stock driver.
In fact when I finish what I am doing I will make a multifunction driver starting from my st-motion sensor.
I’m going to add profiles for temperature, humidity, and thermostat and switch control capabilities, for fixed and variable fans and underfloor heating valves.
