Home Automation Domotica Forum Europe, Bwired Forum

Hi,

I have bought a Opentherm Gateway LAN/WIFI from opentherm-gateway.com and use it in combination with a Remeha Calenta 40C and an iSense RF (wireless).
After changing the VR (voltage Reference) from 3 to 7 everything was working fine except the remote override room temperature function.
After reading a lot of posts on this forum I changed the settings on the iSense RF Remote Imput menu from Disallow to allow. This allowed me to remotely set the temperature (the main reason for buying the gateway).
The problem is that setting the remote temperature setpoint does not work most of the times. I've tried this with several beta firmwares and in combination with otMonitor. Below the logging when the setpoint works:

18:09:38.243728 T00090000 Read-Data Remote override room setpoint: 0.00
18:09:38.263218 BF0090000 Unk-DataId Remote override room setpoint: 0.00
18:09:39.267805 AC0091700 Read-Ack Remote override room setpoint: 23.00


Below the logging when the setpoint does not work:

18:26:18.579949 T00090000 Read-Data Remote override room setpoint: 0.00
18:26:18.694905 BF0090000 Unk-DataId Remote override room setpoint: 0.00
18:26:18.712737 AC0090000 Read-Ack Remote override room setpoint: 0.00

Please let me know why this is not working and if the iSense RF is compatible with the Opentherm Gateway. I've Submitted the equipment information to http://otgw.tclcode.com/equipment.html.

Looking at the logs you provided, the gateway must have identified your thermostat as an iSense (you can check with PR=R), so it applies a number of work-arounds for iSense quirks.

One of those iSense quirks is that the remote override function bits are only picked up at the time the remote room setpoint is first set. The work-around for that is that after the iSense asks for the remote override function, the gateway clears the remote room setpoint and then sets it again. The gateway wants to see a room setpoint message as confirmation that a remote room setpoint message was picked up by the thermostat.

What appears to be different in the iSense RF compared to a regular iSense is that it doesn't seem to report the room setpoint very frequently. Unless the setpoint changes, it reports it only about once every half hour.

Now let's examine your logs with that background information. At 18:17:06 you gave the TT=23.00 command. At 18:17:36 the thermostat sends a Remote override function message (MsgID 100), even before there has been a Remote override room setpoint message (MsgID 9). As a result of the work-around I described earlier, the gateway now wants to clear the remote override setpoint. So every time the thermostat asks for a remote override setpoint (MsgID 9), the gateway returns 0. It continues doing that until it receives a Room setpoint message (MsgID 16). Since the setpoint never changed, the iSense RF uses its normal schedule of only sending that once every half hour. Your timing was very unlucky in this example as the first Room setpoint message (MsgID 16) doesn't happen until 18:49:02. Then on the next Remote override room setpoint message (MsgID 9) at 18:53:51, the gateway finally returns 23.00. The thermostat then promptly confirms the new room setpoint at 18:54:01. So the override did work, it just took a whopping 36 minutes!

As far as I can see, this scenario will only happen if, after you issue a TT or TC command, the thermostat happens to send MsgID 100 before MsgID 9. The logs seem to suggest there's about a 15 second interval every half hour for that. So, nice job of capturing a log of it.

A fix for this exact scenario could be for the gateway to check if the override setpoint has not yet been sent to the thermostat when it receives an override function request. In that case the override setpoint does not need to be cleared.

If you feel you run into this problem more frequently than about 1 in 100 tries, please collect more logs. It would be helpful if you could set the debug pointer to address 0x63 while collection those logs (DP=63 FW=4.0b2).

Hi,
On my isense with callenta 40C,
There is no override setting.
The firmware of the iSense is 1.5
Do i need an upgrade?
Rob

hvxl wrote:A fix for this exact scenario could be for the gateway to check if the override setpoint has not yet been sent to the thermostat when it receives an override function request. In that case the override setpoint does not need to be cleared.

This fix has been implemented in firmware 4.0b3. Please let me know if it improves the situation.

Hi,

Thanks for the quick reply and the implemented fix. I've been testing the fix in firmware 4.0b3 the last couple of days. The fix is giving me better results but it is still not working as should. When I try to remote override the room setpoint it is sometimes working 2 to 4 times in a row and then stops working completely. After that I have to do a gateway reset (GW=R) to get it working again. I've captured the log files with DP=63 enabled but the log files were to big to attach to this post (max 300kb). OTlog files can be downloaded here: https://www.wetransfer.com/downloads/b5 ... 234/5e2d47

logging when the remote overwrite room setpoint is working:
15:38:11.220774 Command: TT=22.00
15:41:22.462977 T00090000 Read-Data Remote override room setpoint: 0.00
15:41:22.627839 AC0090000 Read-Ack Remote override room setpoint: 0.00
15:41:36.048296 T90101300 Write-Data Room setpoint: 19.00
15:41:36.057688 63=E8
15:41:36.194569 B50101300 Write-Ack Room setpoint: 19.00
15:46:11.338801 T00090000 Read-Data Remote override room setpoint: 0.00
15:46:11.589520 A40091600 Read-Ack Remote override room setpoint: 22.00
15:46:25.961173 T90101600 Write-Data Room setpoint: 22.00
15:46:25.970571 63=2C
15:46:26.068210 B50101600 Write-Ack Room setpoint: 22.00

Logging when remote override function is not working:
19:03:40.357568 Command: TT=22.00
19:07:58.516942 T00090000 Read-Data Remote override room setpoint: 0.00
19:07:58.854380 A40091600 Read-Ack Remote override room setpoint: 22.00
19:13:25.791597 T00090000 Read-Data Remote override room setpoint: 0.00
19:13:26.150061 A40091600 Read-Ack Remote override room setpoint: 22.00
19:18:20.100812 T00090000 Read-Data Remote override room setpoint: 0.00
19:18:20.328949 A40091600 Read-Ack Remote override room setpoint: 22.00
19:23:51.243755 T00090000 Read-Data Remote override room setpoint: 0.00
19:23:51.546854 A40091600 Read-Ack Remote override room setpoint: 22.00
19:29:13.273737 T00090000 Read-Data Remote override room setpoint: 0.00
19:29:14.065917 A40091600 Read-Ack Remote override room setpoint: 22.00
19:34:31.602167 T00090000 Read-Data Remote override room setpoint: 0.00
19:34:31.823309 A40091600 Read-Ack Remote override room setpoint: 22.00
etc....
20:57:33.572543 T90101300 Write-Data Room setpoint: 19.00
20:57:33.993810 63=E8
20:57:34.003497 B50101300 Write-Ack Room setpoint: 19.00

The command you mentioned as not working is not a good example as the gateway responded with "SE" to that command. So the command was not understood. Perhaps there was some noise on the serial line.

However, at 09:41:39.086976 the next morning the TT=20.00 command, which was accepted by the gateway, doesn't work either.

Looking at the new logs, it seems your thermostat reports the room setpoint even less frequently than I originally thought. And my current theory is that at 9:41 on Sunday your thermostat schedule calls for a temperature of 19 degrees. Is that correct?

What I think happened is the following: You remotely set the thermostat to 19 degrees at 9:22. At 9:31:42 the thermostat confirms that the room setpoint is 19.00. When you give the TT=20.00 command at 9:41, the gateway first tries to reset the current setpoint, so it returns a remote override room setpoint of 0 (at 09:46:12.643026). The thermostat falls back to its scheduled temperature, which happens to match the old override setpoint. Since the setpoint doesn't actually change, the thermostat doesn't bother to report the room setpoint. But the gateway wants to see a room setpoint report before it will start returning the requested override setpoint.

The bad news is, if you confirm that this theory is plausible, I don't yet have an idea for a solution.

Hi Schelte,

Thanks for the reply and the info. Looks like the iSense RF was indeed reporting the room setpoint less frequently and at some point the remote override setpoint was not working at all. I've been very busy lately and have not been able to spent much time on this matter. I was able to get a different thermostat (Honeywell Round Wireless Opentherm RF Y87RF1004) for a very good price and thought that would solve my issues. I was wrong. The Honeywell is also giving me similar issues. It is working sometimes but after a while it is not updating the override temperature. I've uploaded part of the log file to http://otgw.tclcode.com/equipment.html. Can yo have a look at it? The problem is I really need a wireless thermostat. If this thermostat is also not working as it should can you give me advice on which thermostat to use in combination with the gateway. Thanks in advance.

So you decided you'd rather take your chances with a different thermostat than to answer my question? Your choice.

The logs show that the gateway is doing what it is supposed to do, but the Honeywell thermostat doesn't pick up the override setpoint. I have no idea why. The manual seems to suggest that it is supposed to work in a home automation setup (which Honeywell calls Hometronic). You could contact Honeywell to ask why it doesn't.

Alternatively you could answer my question so I can continue to work on getting the iSense RF to work.

I still haven't received an answer to the question I asked 6 weeks ago. So I'm going to assume you are no longer interested in working with me to see if there's a way to mitigate the problem by implementing a work-around in the gateway firmware.