Anyone automate anything with smart thermostats and outdoor temp?

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨weastie@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

I have a pretty simple smart thermostat without many fancy features. Every Spring and Fall I tell myself I should set up some kind of system where if the outdoor weather is good enough, maybe I dial back the heating / cooling, maybe send myself a text to open windows, etc.

Small example: I normally keep my house at 72 in the summer, but if it’s up to 76 or so outside, it’d be nice if the thermostat turned off the cooling. I could manually turn it back on if I have guests over, etc.

I’m sure some of this logic would be easy to code myself, but wanted to check out what anyone else is doing first.

Using home assistant.

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AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I don’t have a thermostat, but I have indoor and outdoor temp and humidity sensors, and a window position sensor. It notifies me (via lighting color) if I should open the window because the outdoor conditions are better than indoors, or vice versa.

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- xep@discuss.online ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Elegant!
  
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gdog05@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Using the Ecobee thermostat, I use the built in weather module in Home Assistant to give local weather data to the system. In summer, I set it up to watch for the lowest overnight temps via forecast, and trigger on the lowest temperatures we’d see. Then I’d drop the house temp to 66 or 64 degrees when the AC had to do the least amount of work. Then I’d use the basement air to keep the upstairs cool enough and use the AC as little as possible.

My last house was old and had some drafts I couldn’t find. So in the winter, if the weather turned to windy I’d increase the temp a degree or two for comfort.

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themadcodger@kbin.earth ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I did the notification thing. If the outdoor temperature is lower than my indoor temperature and above 17° and the humidity is under 60% and the windows are closed, it sends me a notification to open them.

Same if the outdoor temps get above 24° and the windows are still open, it reminds me to close them.

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yaroto98@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I have one where I put a door/window sensor on a window and anytime that window is opened it turns off the HVAC, then when closed, turns it back on.

I tried omce to setup a notification to open the windows if the weather was nice, but I’d never gotten to work quite like I wanted, and so I turned it off.

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philpo@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I have central (water circuit based) heating with individual control per room. Additionally I have a weather station on my roof that tracks the sun and wind,temp, etc. and presence detectors in almost all rooms and electric blinds. The components are all KNX based, the logic part is home assistant based.

Basically what we do: I have a “normal mode” that is supported by two addon modules. Normal mode means:

On schooldays the system tracks when school starts. If none is present in the kids rooms for more than 30min it assumes the kid is gone and goes into energy saving mode for that room (18 instead of 21). The system then looks when the kid is likely to come back and puts the room temperature up on time.

Our offices are always in energy saving temp and only get into normal temp once someone has been there for 15min or one of our computers is put on - both the wife and I work home office full time,but travel a fair bit.

The system tracks if our mobile phones are “pingable” locally. If they aren’t for 30min it assumes we are all gone and puts the whole house into “away” mode,including reducing the temperatures. Then it looks at our outlook calendars (and the school schedule) and puts the temperature back on as required.

Additonally a room that has a window open is always cut off from heating and the system sends a message when the outside temp is either too hot or too cold after a certain time.

Additionally we have two prediction based module The system looks at three different weather predictions (my area is a bit of a problem for these) and creates a mean expected minimum and maximum day temperature.

If the expected max and min is below a certain point it switches on “winter mode” - this means the system tries to keep the shutters up as much as possible and open them as early as possible (based on the sun position) so the house absorbs as much sun as possible. Doesn’t help that much,but at least a bit. Additionally the time for “open window notifications” is reduced.

If the expected max is above a certain degree the system goes into summer mode. Then it’s basically vice-versa. The system tries to keep the blinds/shutters down as much as possible according to the position of the sun and opens them only after the sun has passed. That works fairly well and reduces the room temperature significantly - in the worst room around 3.8° on average. It also reminds the inhabitants to open windows in the morning when it’s still cold and close them in time.
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solidgrue@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I have some logic around notifications and a few actions. My spouse and I both grew up in houses with heat, but no AC, so I’ve programmed HA to send notifications to our phones if the setpoint on our Ecobee thermostat is warmer than the outside temperature in Cooling mode, and cooler than the outside temp in Heating mode. Outdoor temps are a blend of three weather service feed “feels like” observations and two outdoor temperate/humidity sensors.

The outdoor sensors are a ZigBee sensor, and some area sensors I snoop a few times an hour with an RTL-SDR radio single via MQTT bus. I have a helper that blends the weather service and local obs to compare with the thermostat. It bothers us every 2 hours to open some windows.

We both also have a bad habit of not closing the back door all the way, so the Assistant bugs us if a door or window is open for more than 10 minutes and the outdoor temperature is below the heating setpoint, or above the cooling setpoint. It turns off the HVAC a few minutes later if the condition persists and sends a snarky notification about not being made of enough money to fix climate change. However, it will turn the heat back on to 60F if the house falls below 58F and send notifications every hour til the condition is addressed.

Otherwise the ecobee does a fair job adjusting itself to maintain a desired inside temp on its own.

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antsu@lemmy.wtf ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It’s nothing fancy, but I have phone alerts if any windows are open when the heating comes on, and I also use the average temperature inside the house as the input temperature for the thermostat (sensors in several rooms are averaged and published via MQTT to a DIYless thermostat).

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