Multiple windows per room

[ma-ku]

This is again a feature that seems to be overlooked with the different Tado plugins (e.g. also the one from lukasroegner):

I have multiple rooms with two or even more windows, these rooms also have one or more thermostats. Almost all windows have contact sensors to detect open windows. What is missing in the plugin is the ability to link these sensors to the heating control so that it shuts down once ANY of the windows gets opened. Since the sensor would turn the window open switch on and off depending on the window state, it could happen that two windows get opened (switch off, switch off) and when one window is closed (switch on), the heating is turned back on although the other window is still open.

I had implemented a solution for the plugin from lukasroegner (see https://github.com/ma-ku/homebridge-tado-smart-thermostat/tree/feature/SensorSwitrches) that allowed adding an arbitrary number of windows/sensors to a zone. Each would have been connected with the window sensor (quite tedious work) to detect an open window. The plugin then used the information to determine the overall window open state applied for the zone.

Maybe this is already possible with that plugin then I would like to learn how that is accomplished, otherwise I would offer my help to implement a similar solution for this plugin.

[xyz667]

Not pretty, but the problem can be solved with Homekit automations - two automations for every window sensor in the room:

1. Automation to turn the heating off when window opened (no further conditions)
2. Automation to turn the heating on - with the additional conditon(s) that every other window sensor in the room has to be in the closed state.

I have also added a virtual „heating master switch“ (with homebridge-dummy) that I turn off in the summer. Add that as further condition to all the window sensors and you ensure the heating stays off in summer.
As this platform‘s delay functionality is broken I have also added virtual delay switches to delay the heating turning off if a window/door is only open for a short time, but that adds another automation.

[ma-ku]

I have checked that option and it would work with one caveat; the naming of the open window switches is too long and gets truncated in HK so that I cannot distinguish between the different rooms. @seydx: is there a way to change the naming. I would leave out the name of the Home (at least).

Another remark would be that these ‚advanced‘ rules can only be edited with another tool such as Controller for HomeKit and not with the stock application.

[xyz667]

I have checked that option and it would work with one caveat; the naming of the open window switches is too long and gets truncated in HK so that I cannot distinguish between the different rooms. @seydx: is there a way to change the naming. I would leave out the name of the Home (at least).

Another remark would be that these ‚advanced‘ rules can only be edited with another tool such as Controller for HomeKit and not with the stock application.

I have 2 HomeKit scenes for every room (zone in tado speak): one for heating on and one for heating off
Then I set the respective scene when windows open or close. I don’t have any problem with long names that way, and there’s no problem setting it up with the stock Home app.

[ma-ku]

But it becomes an issue if you have more rooms and no way to distinguish the switches:

And even the details do not help:

[xyz667]

But it becomes an issue if you have more rooms and no way to distinguish the switches:

you can rename HomeKit devices in the Home app and give them shorter names, no need to stick with the longish default names from Homebridge. Just tap the gear symbol on the lower right of that device’s screen.
All my tado devices are called „Heating“, in every room the same, that way Siri makes less mistakes when I tell her „set heating to -temperature- in -room name-“. She should know there’s only one heating device (tado zone) in a room, no matter the name, but she can be dense.

[ma-ku]

Well, I know that I can rename things but I already do not know which room these switches belong to because that information is already truncated. That‘s really the essence of my request.

[xyz667]

Well, I know that I can rename things but I already do not know which room these switches belong to because that information is already truncated. That‘s really the essence of my request.

I don’t understand. The names get synced from your tado account, so should be as you set them in the tado app?!

[adavison007]

Make it a large tile and you’ll see more of the nameSent from my iPhoneOn 8 Oct 2022, at 12:25, Mathias Kühn ***@***.***> wrote: Well, I know that I can rename things but I already do not know which room these switches belong to because that information is already truncated. That‘s really the essence of my request. —Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[ma-ku]

I realized that the zone is not even part of the name. So you get <home.name> + ' Open Window'` for each zone. All these switches are grouped into one service so you can combine them into one control in the Apple Home application or you can keep them separately. So from that perspective I have not found any way to associate a switch with its zone.

However, the solution for me was to toggle a switch and look at the HomeBridge logs. There you could then see which zone was affected and this helped me renaming the switches. Hopefully this is not wrecked by some update on the HomeBridge side as I would need to reconfigure everything again.