Behavior of target temp when going away

[mcornillon]

I wanna start a discussion with expert users :

I understood from the documentation that it is recommended :

• to manage "daily schedule" via the "Scheduler" integration, that sets the desired presets [e.g. eco 17°/comfort 19°] at the desired times --> 🆗
• to manage "Home/Away" behavior by passing the "presence sensor" to the VTherm configuration, so that it switches to the specific "[e.g. eco AWAY 15°/comfort AWAY 15°]" presets, so that everything goes down to 15° without having to touch the Scheduler (it continues to run transparently) --> 🆗

Do you confirm I have correctly applied the recommendations ?

If yes, then, I'm faced with this situation (as an example) :
if someone (my daughter, my wife) modifies manually the target temp to 20° in the morning despite the "eco 17°" that has been set by the Scheduler, and then we all leave the house to work/school, it will stay to "Manual 20°" in the corresponding room even if I have the "presence sensor" set to Away, and all other rooms will be at 15°, either eco or comfort. It will then continue to run heat @ 20° in this room until ~17:00 when it will switch back to "Comfort 19°" as scheduled.

What would be your recommendations to manage this case, and avoid heating @20° while we're away ?

I personnaly think about setting an automation (for each Vtherm, ouch...) that would do something like that

• trigger : everyone has left home
• condition : if VTherm is ON, AND VTherm Preset is "None" (meaning on Manual)
• action : duh.... don't know what would be the best to do ?
  -- Probably set "Eco Preset" ?
  -- or Retrieve from the Scheduler the preset as it was scheduled ? (but not sure how to do that)
  -- or have an evolution in the VTherm so that it stores the "previous preset" that was active before "manual" mode ?, and retrieve it from the attributes ?

And is there a factored way to do it with a single automation that would apply to all VTherms ? (instead of making as many automations as VTherms ...)

Or even ask @jmcollin78 to make a VTherm evolution to embed it in his integration instead of playing with automations... 😄

Happy to hear your answers !

[mcornillon]

After some additional thoughts, I already found an exception (see second point below) :

• objective : prevent from heating at a manually set high target when away, by automatically modifying the selected preset to Eco when leaving
• exception : leave the manual setting as-is when away when its value is cold, below a given threshold, e.g if manually set at 12°, we can think it is deliberate, so we should let it like this, and not set it to Eco 15°

[mcornillon]

I've just implemented an automation that tackles this behavior, and I think it will work !

Here it is :

alias: After 15 minutes Away from home, reset the preset to Eco if Vtherm was on manual Temp higher than Eco
description: ""
triggers:
  - trigger: state
    entity_id:
      - binary_sensor.statut_presence_absence  # to check presence
    from: "on"
    to: "off"
    for:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 15
      seconds: 0
conditions: []
actions:
  - repeat:
      # "For each" allows, via a regex, to find all climate entities matching the 'climate.vtherm_*" pattern
      for_each: >-
        {{ states.climate | selectattr('object_id', 'search', '^vtherm_') |
        map(attribute= 'entity_id') | list }} 
      sequence:
        - if:
            - condition: template
              # Condition is : Vtherm is ON (not AUTO, not OFF), is on manual (preset none), and target temp is above eco_temp
              value_template: |-
                {{
                  is_state_attr(repeat.item, 'hvac_mode', 'heat')
                  and is_state_attr(repeat.item, 'preset_mode', 'none')
                  and state_attr(repeat.item, 'temperature') > state_attr(repeat.item, 'eco_temp')
                }}
          then:
            - action: climate.set_preset_mode
              # Set preset to eco
              metadata: {}
              data:
                preset_mode: eco
              target:
                entity_id: "{{ repeat.item }}"

mode: single

[jmcollin78]

Hello @mcornillon

Or even ask @jmcollin78 to make a VTherm evolution to embed it in his integration instead of playing with automations... 😄

I will not do that. No preset means the user wants to manage manually the target temp. And the user should always have precedence over the scheduler. Else I will have issues: "i set the target temp to x, but Vtherm switch itself to y".

So what you have done, seems pertinent for your use case, but it is your use case. Mine are different.