yan@dytronix Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 Hi,Recently I was away for few days and something happened on my control4 thermostat. When I came back, the heating was ON and room temperature was around 40 degree Celsius, my thermostat was offline and the display was off (battery dead) .My question is, is there any ways to monitor the thermostat status? like if it went offline or battery is low? because during winter (Canada weather), if the heating is gone, it could frozen the water pipe and cause huge leakage issue. I saw there is a "is_connected" variable, but from testing, it only effected by the pairing connection and the true/false value didn't even trigger when pairing and disconnecting the thermostat. any help is appreciate.Yan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godzilla Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 ihiji can track offline and send an email Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryanjackson Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 i would look at running constant power to the stat, using batteries is never a good idea.... Ryan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyknight Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 Yeah ihiji would be a good way to go to monitor any device being offline as the Tstat itself doesn't have anything for this.Mind you from what you describe, the Tstat may have never gone offline as such but internally failed to respond to commands so that may not have helped you here. Arguably it's much easier to have an extra temp sensor installed (such as the built-in ones from Card Access or Axxess sensors and relays, motion and so on) and have it alert you if temperatures get above or below expectation - that's what I do.This would also cover any situation where the Tstat might be working as such, but is messing up in some other way (such as just being set wrong, remote sensors in use and busted giving wrong readings). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyknight Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 i would look at running constant power to the stat, using batteries is never a good idea.... RyanHeh, I read right over that - yes those things are NOT made to run off of batteries at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CFUG Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 Hi,Recently I was away for few days and something happened on my control4 thermostat. When I came back, the heating was ON and room temperature was around 40 degree Celsius, my thermostat was offline and the display was off (battery dead) .My question is, is there any ways to monitor the thermostat status? like if it went offline or battery is low? because during winter (Canada weather), if the heating is gone, it could frozen the water pipe and cause huge leakage issue. I saw there is a "is_connected" variable, but from testing, it only effected by the pairing connection and the true/false value didn't even trigger when pairing and disconnecting the thermostat. any help is appreciate.Yan. Wow, a few days worth of potential 40 degC? Hopefully you're on cheap fuel. Almost worth having a reliable unit on the wall huh? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yan@dytronix Posted March 4, 2014 Author Share Posted March 4, 2014 ihiji can track offline and send an email ihiji is another monitoring system, right? getting an extra system just to monitor the Tstat seems to be overkill tho. i would look at running constant power to the stat, using batteries is never a good idea.... Ryan it was running on constant power, i guess somehow it lost the power and ran til battery dead Hi,Recently I was away for few days and something happened on my control4 thermostat. When I came back, the heating was ON and room temperature was around 40 degree Celsius, my thermostat was offline and the display was off (battery dead) .My question is, is there any ways to monitor the thermostat status? like if it went offline or battery is low? because during winter (Canada weather), if the heating is gone, it could frozen the water pipe and cause huge leakage issue. I saw there is a "is_connected" variable, but from testing, it only effected by the pairing connection and the true/false value didn't even trigger when pairing and disconnecting the thermostat. any help is appreciate.Yan. Wow, a few days worth of potential 40 degC? Hopefully you're on cheap fuel. Almost worth having a reliable unit on the wall huh? yea, it kick on the heat and went dead, so the heat just keep pumping in. havnt receive this month's gas bill yet.... lol Yeah ihiji would be a good way to go to monitor any device being offline as the Tstat itself doesn't have anything for this.Mind you from what you describe, the Tstat may have never gone offline as such but internally failed to respond to commands so that may not have helped you here. Arguably it's much easier to have an extra temp sensor installed (such as the built-in ones from Card Access or Axxess sensors and relays, motion and so on) and have it alert you if temperatures get above or below expectation - that's what I do.This would also cover any situation where the Tstat might be working as such, but is messing up in some other way (such as just being set wrong, remote sensors in use and busted giving wrong readings). Adding an extra temp sensor seems to be the easiest for now. So there is no way to do it on composer programming? such as monitoring the zigbee connection? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyknight Posted March 4, 2014 Share Posted March 4, 2014 No there is no way to program off of zigbee in composer at this time, with the exception of a few 3rd party drivers that report if they didn't get contact for a long time and should have (Axxess devices) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryanjackson Posted March 4, 2014 Share Posted March 4, 2014 it was running on constant power, i guess somehow it lost the power and ran til battery dead Really the only way it should lose power is if the furnace loses power, in which the battery is useless? So i would look into that before you look into band aids. IMO Ryan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyknight Posted March 4, 2014 Share Posted March 4, 2014 Yeah, I can't help but suspect it's connected using powerstealing, or powerstealing is enabled yet it's connected to the COM anyway. The latter is WRONG, the first is not recommended as it's riddled with compatibility issues with any number of furnaces. What either of those can do is drain the battery and lock up a T-Stat - so it could certainly explain the event. Realistically, the C4 Tstat needs to have a COM connection to the furnace, and you may as well leave out the battery (the battery is more of a legacy thing - 1.7.4 and previous- as these units have been around for a long time) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAV Posted March 4, 2014 Share Posted March 4, 2014 Thinking out loud….. An offline thermostat won’t be sending a change to the current temperature variable, and presuming your home’s temperature changes at least once every 3 hours you could setup the following: When Living Tstat Temp Changes – set tstat1online to true In Scheduler:8:00 If tstat1online is true, set tstat1online to false, stop. If tstat1online if false – send alert11:00 If tstat1online is true, set tstat1online to false, stop. If tstat1online if false – send alert,14:00 If tstat1online is true, set tstat1online to false, stop. If tstat1online if false – send alert,17:00 etc….20:0023:002:005:00 Results – if the current temperature variable doesn’t change at least once in three hours then I’m assuming the thermostat is offline and taking action to send some type of alert. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyknight Posted March 4, 2014 Share Posted March 4, 2014 Except if it's frozen for other reasons, like OP finding his house at 40celcius (and that's HOT for the Fahrenheit people - as in Death Valley) must mean the furnace was stuck on heat. So still temp changes happening and that trick wouldn't have triggered, or at least nut until very late. Plus you're missing some form of timer/schedule to get that variable back to false AND you'd need to be very careful with this reset so as to not create false alarms. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAV Posted March 4, 2014 Share Posted March 4, 2014 Correct it won't trigger if thermostat is reporting as it's suppose to, request was if stat not reporting at all, if tstat offline.(Separate programming is required to monitor if house temperature goes out of range, common programming option, discussed often enough here) Variable resets to false at each 3 hour scheduler event, when the variable is true: "If tstat1online is true, set tstat1online to false, stop." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyknight Posted March 4, 2014 Share Posted March 4, 2014 Ah indeed missed the false setting in there Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yan@dytronix Posted March 5, 2014 Author Share Posted March 5, 2014 i do have upper and lower temperature alerts, but it was useless since TStat was offline and not reporting temperature. in that case, I like to use timer, set timer to 3hr, send alert when expired. If temperature changes, start timer if its not already running, reset timer if its already running. another thing is if I set TStat to hold at certain temperature, then the temperature reading should not be changing at all, right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ILoveC4 Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 The temperature has to change a little. If you set it to 70°, it has to drop to 69° or increase to 71° before it knows to heat or cool. Sent from my Droid MAXX via Tapatalk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CFUG Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 ^Yeah, this is not so good either. It depends on the heat mass characteristic. I've seen my system hang at setpoint (due to placement of T Stat near CA return) for a very long time while the living space was like a sauna. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yan@dytronix Posted March 5, 2014 Author Share Posted March 5, 2014 I set the timer for 5 hrs, lets see if it will work or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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