Premise HVAC / Premise Integration

Motorola Premise

123

Senior Member
...
Here's my situation. I have a second home about 2 hours away, it's zero right now which kept me from heading out there. Which got me to thinking....

I have a premise system right now with Insteon switches and dimmers (pretty basic). The house has boiler heat with a basic thermostat on the wall. How would you integrate the thermostat into premise? Which product would you install and any tips?

Thanks,
Adam

PS.. Premise is a great tool - many of today's tools do a great job imitating it. Maybe if we produce enough traffic (not about viagra or degrees), Motorola may give us the source code or pick this back up.
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Not to be pessimistic or anything, but it would have to be a very great deal of traffic for Motorola to release the Premise code base to the masses. They are using the SYS code in its most basic form for many internal and commercial projects. Motorola did after all pay good money for the product IP (and the product team), and I think corporate counsel is not likely to let them give it up very easily, just as a matter of principle. Selling it may be an altogether different matter...

On a lighter note, we are still installing Premise (albeit for only the most high-end custom opportunities), and using it for other projects as well. Premise is still the best middleware automation/control platform ever created and it's almost a decade old. Premise Rocks!!

Good work Tim/Christian/Behnaz/Jim/Jim/Jim/Benji/Mike/Dan/Dave/David/Fragmo/Jeff/Eric/Irene/Todd/David/Jill! Oh and me too.

To answer your question below: The Aprilaire 8870 is still the best and most widely used (even OEM'ed by AMX) thermostat out there.

Damon
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All you need is the 8870 and a power supply for it. To connect it to premise, you'll need either the 8811 protocol adapter (to connect using a regular RS232 serial port), or a UDS10/UDS100.
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I made the mistake of buying the 8811 protocol adapter and then finding out that the UDS10 could connect to the thermostats directly.

Patrik
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You're probably right, but it never hurts to hope. It'd be great if premise would be open-sourced as a framework - I think support from the open-source community would be huge.

Re the 8870 - thanks for the tip. I found it online and am making my parts list. Is there any way to run bypass the controller? Seems like a lot of money for 1 zone.... I only have 1 zone (not a big house) and I'm just looking for something cheap I can integrate into Premise so I can turn the heat up before headed out there.

Thanks,
Adam
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Damon,

Thanks for adding a few more details to Premise's history. Kudos to the whole team for breaking new ground in the HA market.

I read the SDK's doc recently and it gave me a better appreciation of SYS's architecture. I know I still have a cursory understanding of its inner workings but enough to make me wonder why they gave up on such a powerful tool. Now I know better; they shelved the product (Premise) but continue to use the technology (SYS). Definitely seems unlikely they'll give it up to open-source.

Clearly there were a few ex-Microsofties on the development team because Builder's UI appears related to Visual Studio. :)

Not meaning to dilute this forum but Premise users ought to know that there is considerably more HA-related traffic on the Cocoontech forum ... and they filter out the spam. I posted a question asking who uses Premise and several people stepped forward (and the post has
received over 400 views within 5 days). People are interested in Premise.

The major hurdles are a lack of good drivers for current, popular lighting technologies (zwave, insteon) and Premise's dated browser-UI. Plus the driver SDK is intimidating ... examples beyond "helloworld" would've been handy.

Damon, your Jukebox example refutes the notion that premise's UI must be boring. I can only imagine what you've invented since jukebox!

If the folks at Digital Residence aren't members yet, may I suggest they join Cocoontech. Several Home Automation and Home Security companies regularly post in the forums and increase their public profile by helping the DIY community and expanding HA awareness.
Cocoontech's moderator encourages its professional members to sign posts with their company name.

If you had a driver for zwave, insteon, or the Elk M1 and you made it available (free or for a nominal fee) you'd be an instant hit with the community. In return, you'd inspire others to discover Premise and develop new drivers that you could use for your projects. Even if you chose not to give away your R&D dollars, simply answering questions is an easy way to get publicity.

Taras

PS
If you got a sec, could you take a crack at my HR12A question (posted here)?
<sheepish grin>
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I read Cocoontech almost every day. A good resource for the nuts and bolt of automation/control.

We've developed a Z-Wave driver, but use it for many pursuits and would have to consider licensing it or giving it away.

As for your HR12A question, sorry but we don't touch anything to do with X10.
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Taras,

Check out the Files area. You might find some interesting modules (i.e. Insteon).
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What kind of begging would it take to get you make the Z-Wave driver available?

Thanks,
Adam
 
I am pretty interested in ordering an Aprilaire 8870 for Premise, but I thought I'd get everyone's thoughts first. Is the 8870 still one of the better thermostat's to buy for use with Premise? Any wireless options out there that use some sort of serial adapter at the computer end?

Here is what I think the pinout is: A- = TX-, A+=TX+, B-=RX- and B+=RX+. I believe I can take these four wires and wire it up to any EIA 485 port using the TX-,. TX+, RX- and RX+ pins. The 485 port I'll actually be using is on a Digi TS 4 MEI (MEI means a single port can act as an EIA-232 or as an EIA-422/485 full or half). The port then acts as a virtual port on my premise server through Digi's realport software. Also, will I have to run cables in the wall to use the 8870 or can I run cables to the front of the 8870?
 
I had planned to buy one but then I discovered it holds no programming and relies on the HA system for everything including its schedule. Nothing inherently wrong with that but not what I wanted. I want a thermostat that can operate independently but can be remotely controlled.
 
I've been using the 8870 for installs, as well as my own home, since the early days. In some ways, it is prob overkill and it doesnt hold the internal schedule, as 123 has indicated he prefers. However, it is straightforward to install, allows for multiple zones, and is reliable. As far as your install, I'm not sure what you mean by 'wires in the front', but...

I have the 8810 adapter, the distro panel, and the 8870. (soon to be 2). SYS->8810->Distro->8870. All cat 5 runs....You can prob bypass the 8810 if you're doing the 485, but I'm not sure...

I'm sure that all of the standards are just the same, HAI, etc.....probably boils down to your choice.
 
I use 3 8870's in my home. Connected via UDS10 - 8811 - Distribution Panel - 8870. They work very well with the Premise driver with a couple of caveats. The first is very limited support for setting the display properties on the 8870's themselves. 123 gave me a couple of code snippets that allowed me to set the local display's but it required creating a fictitious UDS-10 and disconnecting the StatnetController from the actual UDS-10 and adding it to the factious port. This allowed me to connect to the 8870's and change their display properties. Why is this important. Will it's nice to have the date / time correct on the 8870's. The internal clock on the 8870's is only a 24 clock and the calendar is 1 day so it has to be updated daily. I lack skills at programming and Premise so I am sure that someone with more skill would be able to do the whole port switch programmatically, but it's beyond me. The second issue I have is local control is not mirrored through the Premise system. So if like me you have several 8870's and you want to change the temperature throughout the home, or in multiple zones, you have to change it on all 8870's either via Premise one at a time. or on the 8870's themselves. Lastly the Premise driver only supports a minimum temperature of 66 F. So if you want to have events based upon any temperature lower than 66 F your out of luck.

Here is the code I use on occasion to change the date / time and other display properties on the 8870's. Credit to 123 for this code.


gZeroPad
Code:
' Pad a number with leading zeros
function gZeroPad(sNumber, iWidth) 
	gZeroPad = right(string(iWidth, "0") & sNumber, iWidth)
end function

gTaskController

Code:
' Update the date string to be sent to the the thermostat (SN0 DATE=MMDDYY)
Devices.CustomDevices.DT8870.setDate.TxTextData = _
"SN0 DATE=" & _
gZeroPad(month(now), 2) & _
gZeroPad(day(now), 2) & _
right(year(now), 2)

' Send the string to the thermostat
Devices.CustomDevices.DT8870.setDate.send = true

' Update the time string to be sent to the the thermostat (SN0 TIME=HHMM)
Devices.CustomDevices.DT8870.setTime.TxTextData = _
"SN0 TIME=" & _
gZeroPad(hour(now), 2) & _
gZeroPad(minute(now), 2)

' Send the string to the thermostat
Devices.CustomDevices.DT8870.setTime.send = true

' Update Permanent message number 1 (32 characters maximum length)
Devices.CustomDevices.DT8870.setPMES1.TxTextData = "SN0 PMES1= What Ever You Want Here"

Here's the original thread with all the information on setting display properties:

http://www.cocoontech.com/forums/index.php...&hl=kzboray
 
kzboray, Chuck and 123,

Thanks for all the details on this! The 66 F limitation is interesting. I'm going to assume the thermostat operates past 66 F though, and it's only a Premise limitation. I'll have to order one of these from ebay and give it a try. I'm hoping the 485 port works out for me :(

Thanks,

Ellery
 
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