Bug (4/22/21): Away mode is not permanent

Sometime this winter my system behavior changed. I'm pretty sure the following is what is going on:

• Autoclimate sets the system to "Away"
• The ecobee sets it back to "Home" on the next scheduled run
• I think it comes from #46613 / #40520
• If you look in ecobee/climate.py, you'll see

        if preset_mode == PRESET_AWAY:
            self.data.ecobee.set_climate_hold(
                self.thermostat_index, "away", "indefinite", self.hold_hours()
            )

• The function signature is def set_preset_mode(self, preset_mode):
• As far as I can tell there is no way to override the default. So if you set the ecobee to "Until next scheduled" it will always do that. Which, of course, sucks.
• Todo - for now, until next winter, just deal with it. (One solution is permanent hold). But winter is pretty much over.
• Next winter, test and see if HA core has fixed this. I think this is a bug but I don't feel like raising it, because since I am using Appdaemon, I can't give them a clean test case.

AutoClimateApp for AppDaemon

This provides an app and several lower-level services for thermostat management.

The key goals are to enable:

• Monitoring multiple thermostats to see if on, off, or offline
• 1 button click to turn off multiple thermostats
• Automatically "turn off" thermostats if unoccupied for some amount of time.
• "turn off" can be defined as setting to Away mode, setting a low permanent hold temp, or even turning off completely.
• Make the underlying functionality available as services / sensors / states so you can roll your own apps, either within AppDaemon, or directly from Home Assistant.

(This is an Appdaemon application that works with Home Assistant home automation.)

Sample Use Case

I have a cabin that has a main thermostat (ecobee), one in an unheated garage gym, and a Nuheat floor heater. I want to be sure that we don't accidentally leave the heat on and either cost us a ton of money (heating an uninsulated garage in the dead of winter) or even burn up our whole tank of propane.

With this, I press one button to turn it all off when I leave. If I forget, after a configurable amount of time it will turn things off properly. For the house, that is setting the ecobee to "Away". For the garage, it is turning it completely off. For the floor heater, which does not have an "Away" mode, it is setting a "permanent hold" to 41 degrees - the lowest it accepts.

Finally, this also enables cool dashboard monitoring (with Lovelace) that shows the temperature, if it is "offline" and a color for red (bad), yellow (warning), or green (good).

Sample Dashboard

This uses custom-button-card, card-mod, and my forked version of bignumber - bignumber-fork.

Features

1. AutoOff Application
   Automatically "turn off" any climate after it has been unoccupied for too long. "Off" could be "Away" mode, a preset temperature, or literally off.
2. Summarized State
   (Eg: app.autoclimate_state)
   This listens for changes to watched thermostat climate entities and creates a master state. See "Exposed State" below.
3. Event: Turn heat off
   app.autoclimate_turn_off_all - When fired, will turn "off" all climates.
4. Sensors: Temperature
   • Creates temp sensors like sensor.autoclimate_cabin_temperature. This is the same as normal temperature sensors except if the climate is offline, this sensor will report a null value.
   • The existing sensors defined by the integrations will always show the last value, even if the sensor has been down for a week! Github Issue
5. Sensors: Unoccupied Since
   Creates sensors like sensor.autoclimate_cabin_unoccupied_since: <timestamp>.
6. Sensors: Last On
   Creates sensors like sensor.autoclimate_cabin_laston: <timestamp>. This is the last time the climate went from "off" to "on" (based on your autoclimate config). (Without this if you turn your climate on remotely to warm up your house, AutoOff will turn it back off. :) )
7. AppDaemon Services
   Creates AppDaemon services: is_offline, is_on, is_off, entity_state, is_hardoff. This makes it easy to build your own AppDaemon apps. (Note - you can NOT call these from HomeAssistant.)
8. Test_mode with Mocks
   (This is for advanced users and developers.)
   When you set run_mocks: true and test_mode: true, it will run the automation and print to the log, but not actually take the actions (like turning off the thermostat.) If you set mocks (see autoclimate.yaml.sample), it will set each entity to the given state, wait a second, and then run the next mock.

Requirements

AdPlus

Configuration

See autoclimate.yaml.sample

AutoOff functionality

• Relies on the configuration to determine if an entity is off or not
• Requires: auto_off_hours to be set to attempt auto-off
• Will run on every climate update and will poll at frequency: poll_frequency
• If turn_on_error_off: true will attempt to turn on a thermostat that is incorrectly in a hard-off state. ("hard_off" is when the thermostat is set to 'off' and won't run at all.)

Exposed State

The app will expose a helpful state object under: app.{name}_state where name is defined in autoclimate.yaml. (For instance: app.autoclimate_state.)

Here is an example:

# app.autoclimate_state, in yaml
friendly_name: autoclimate State
summary_state: 'off'
cabin_offline: false
cabin_state: 'off'
cabin_unoccupied: 43.35
cabin_state_reason: 'Away mode at proper temp: 55'
floor_heater_offline: false
floor_heater_state: 'off'
floor_heater_unoccupied: 43.35
floor_heater_state_reason: Perm hold at 41
garage_offline: false
garage_state: 'off'
garage_unoccupied: 68.02
garage_state_reason: Thermostat is off

Details

field	type	values	explanation
friendly_name	string	{name} State
summary_state	string	on | off | offline | error	Summarized state across all entities. Same as the state of app.autoclimate_state.
entity_offline	boolean	true | false
entity_state	string	on | off | offline | error	Summarized state for this entity
entity_state_reason	string	explanation	Explanation of why. Helpful for debugging.
entity_unoccupied	float	duration	How long the autooff sensor has shown unoccupied.

Event: Turn heat off

app.autoclimate_turn_off_all

Will turn off all entities

# In AppDaemon app
self.fire_event('app.autoclimate_turn_off_all', config=config_object)
# config= is optional. If absent, use autoclimate.yaml config

# In Dashboard - requires a script, below
...
tap_action:
    action: call-service
    service: script.fire_event_autoclimate_turn_off_all

# Script, for dashboard
fire_event_autoclimate_turn_off_all:
  alias: "Fire Event - autoclimate_turn_off_all"
  sequence:
  - event: app.autoclimate_turn_off_all
    event_data:
      test_mode: false

The config_object above is optional. If not present, then it will rely on the configuration from autoclimate.yaml. Or you can send the configuration as a python object with the same content as the entity_rules portion of autoclimate.yaml. EG:

configobj = {
    "climate1": {
        "off_state": {
            # ...
        }
    },
    "climate2": {
        #...
    }
}

app.autoclimate_turn_off_climate

Will turn off named entity. Very similar to the above, but requires a climate= to be passed to the event. Once again, config={...} is optional. If not sent, send just the config for a climate, such as: climateobj = {"off_state":...}

Sensors: _temperature

See the description above in Features. A few sub points:

• Created if: create_temp_sensors: true
• The sensor name is: sensor.{name}_{climate_entity_name}_temperature
• Return value when offline: math.nan
• Github Issue

Sensors: _unoccupied_since

See the description above in Features.

Sensors: _laston

See the description above in Features.

AppDaemon Services

• autoclimate/is_offline
• autoclimate/is_on
• autoclimate/is_off
• autoclimate/is_hardoff
• autoclimate/entity_state Will return a boolean (or state) based on AutoClimate configuration.

self.call_service('autoclimate/is_on', climate="climate.cabin")

"autoclimate" / "name: " Config

The states, events, etc. above all reference "autoclimate". It is actually all based off the config paramter "name". EG: app.{name}_turn_off_climate

Integrations

This has been tested with:

• Ecobee
• Nuheat