New plugin for control of Intergas Incomfort Lan2RF gateway

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I just published another plugin for Pimatic. This one can control an Intergas heaters by interacting with the Lan2RF gateway. See http://www.intergas-verwarming.nl/zakelijk/productcategorie/incomfort/ for more information.

I got it when I got my new heater and found out it was pretty easy to control through the exposed web interface.

The plugin can provide a thermostat to control the heating and a temperature sensor to monitor the current temperature as reported by the thermostat in the room.

The code is available on https://github.com/sirchia/pimatic-intergasincomfort

Although it is fully functional, I do have two questions:

1. I’m getting an error when I press the eco/comfy buttons. I also get the exact same error though when I do the same on a DummyThermostat.
2. While the Auto/Manu modes might be useful in certain rules (they don’t have any other use a.t.m.) I really don’t need the ‘Boost’ mode in the HMI. Is there an easy way to get rid of it?

Any update on this one? I also have an incomfort gateway and i would love to use it with pimatic.

@derksuh said:

Any update on this one?

The plugin is listed at https://pimatic.org/pages/plugins/ but it is not listed in the plugins list of the frontend. May be this is due to some kind of build problem, @sweetpi can you please have a look at it?

For the time being you can try to install the package from the command line

cd /home/pi/pimatic-app
npm install pimatic-intergasincomfort
sudo service pimatic restart

Followng this you need to edit the configuration (you can do this via the frontend) to add the entries as described in
the README

@mwittig i installed the plugin through the mobile frontend and added the devices in the config. I only face the same problems as @Moustaggio. I also would like to be able to see the pressure and the percentage on which the boiler is working. Through the incomfort app you can also see this.

@derksuh said:

@mwittig i installed the plugin through the mobile frontend and added the devices in the config. I only face the same problems as @Moustaggio. I also would like to be able to see the pressure and the percentage on which the boiler is working. Through the incomfort app you can also see this.

I know the app shows that information and I would like to include it as well. Unfortunately I did not find a way to retrieve it through the lan2rf gateway. It is not in the JSON responses I could retrieve from it. If you know a way how to retrieve it then please let me know, I would be happy to integrate it in the plugin.

Regarding the two items I was struggling with as mentioned in my first post: unfortunately no dev has posted any reply so I’m kinda stuck on it

On the positive side: I’ve been using the plugin since I’ve posted of its existence and I think it works fine. Please let me know if you’ve found any other problems with it.

@Moustaggio which thermostat do you use?

@derksuh said:

@Moustaggio which thermostat do you use?

Honeywell round, simple non-connected version. But that doesn’t matter, the plugin only communicates with the Lan2RF device.

@Moustaggio

I have filed a PR with a couple of suggested changes to improve compatibilty with teh upcoming pimatic release 0.9. Amongst these changes I have also changed the peer dependency constraint on Pimatic which possibly also resolves the issue why the plugin does not show up in the frontend plugin list.

I’m getting an error when I press the eco/comfy buttons. I also get the exact same error though when I do the same on a DummyThermostat.

Which error do you get?

@mwittig
The error i get is that the expected setpoint is undefined.

I also have a few other questions,

• how do i let my thermostat take over again?
• In the incomfortapp i see the values changing when i change them in pimatic but when i change the values in the incomfortapp the values in pimatic don’t change.

I saw that for domoticz there is also an implementation for the gateway. Maybe the code they use is helpfull?

Here is the link https://www.domoticz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7745

@derksuh said:

i installed the plugin through the mobile frontend and added the devices in the config.

OK, I have realized it is a problem with my pimatic installation.

@mwittig said:

Which error do you get?

I believe it is indeed the error @derksuh mentioned. If you just create a DummyThermostat and press the buttons you can see for yourself.

@derksuh said:

I also have a few other questions,

• how do i let my thermostat take over again?
• In the incomfortapp i see the values changing when i change them in pimatic but when i change the values in the incomfortapp the values in pimatic don’t change.

I saw that for domoticz there is also an implementation for the gateway. Maybe the code they use is helpfull?

You’re right, I noticed that the values set on the thermostat directly are not picked up in the plugin. The settings on the heater however will be impacted by this, it will be set to the last effectuated settings (from either thermostat or app/plugin).

I agree there is room for improvement there, but I do foresee that it may be impossible to completely resolve if changes are made in quick succession by the thermostat/app/plugin as the Lan2RF gateway takes an undefined amount of time to synchronize its ‘override’ settings (set by app and plugin) to the actual heater settings. I will look into it later.

I know about the Domoticz implementation. That is where I got the idea to create this plugin in the first place . I do believe that at the time that plugin also did not retrieve those missing properties. In fact, the implementation I created for Pimatic is more complete in the amount of information retrieved than the one for Domoticz was.

@Moustaggio did you already see there is a version 1.1?
When i starter with pimatic i believe there was onlya version 1.0 for domoticz.

And in domoticz you can also see the following

Monitor whether the temperature setpoint is changed via the physical thermostat or the app and update the virtual thermostat setpoint

@derksuh said:

Monitor whether the temperature setpoint is changed via the physical thermostat or the app and update the virtual thermostat setpoint

Yeah, that is the part that I believe I can at least improve. I already have some ideas on what to do, but currently still at work
I’ll look into it when I have time…

@Moustaggio said:

I’m getting an error when I press the eco/comfy buttons. I also get the exact same error though when I do the same on a DummyThermostat.

I think I found the problem eventhough I don’t have the full picture yet. I suppose it is a bug in the mobile frontend code.

Solution:
If you add “comfyTemp” and “ecoTemp” properties with temperature values to the config it works. This is not intuitive as the device config schema defines default values for these properties. So, it should work without setting them as part of the device config. Here is my working config for DummyHeatingThermostat:

{
      "id": "dummy-1",
      "name": "dummy-1",
      "class": "DummyHeatingThermostat",
      "comfyTemp": 21,
      "ecoTemp": 17
}

It basically works the same way for your IntergasIncomfortHeatingThermostat, however there is a bug in the code as @_lastAction as part of the IntergasIncomfort plugin is missing an initialization. See my last commit on the pull request I have filed. https://github.com/sirchia/pimatic-intergasincomfort/pull/1. Btw, the changes suggested for pimatic 0.9 are backwards compatible.

If you have a pimatic setup with installed packages and you wish to trial my fork you can do as follows:

# Make sure git is installed, e.g. by simply executing the git command.
# If it is not installed you need to execute:
# sudo apt-get install git
cd /home/pi/pimatic-app
sudo rm -rf pimatic-intergasincomfort
sudo npm install mwittig/pimatic-intergasincomfort
sudo service pimatic restart

@mwittig Thanks for figuring out what’s wrong!

I’ll have a look at the PR and integrate it with the improvement of tell-back from physical thermostat.
Should I await the fix on the mobile frontend code and leave things as they are or do you think it is better to remove the default values of the comfyTemp and ecoTemp for now so users are ‘forced to prevent the problem’ by specifying them in the config?

Can you perhaps also help me with an easy way to remove the Boost mode from the GUI?

@Moustaggio I have the incomfort gateway working with an Honeywell chronotherm touch,
must say this works for me. I programmed i believe 3 time clock throughout the day and the boiler listens to the programmed settings in that clock. In the gui i see the temperature changing (i thought it didn’t, but had to wait a little longer )
Then when i change the temperature in pimatic the thermostat gets taken over by the gateway until the next time comes that the fysical thermostat comes in one of its programmed clocks in then it takes the value that clock is programmed in. This is exactly what i was looking for.

I have learned that the boiler works on the temperature from the device that maked the last change.

Next i’m going to try what @mwittig told in the above post

@mwittig

I tried what you mentioned in the above post and it works! Thanks!
I also would like to know if it is possible to remove the manual auto and boost button.

@derksuh said:

I tried what you mentioned in the above post and it works! Thanks!

That’s great. I am glad things are progressing.

@Moustaggio said:

Should I await the fix on the mobile frontend code and leave things as they are or do you think it is better to remove the default values of the comfyTemp and ecoTemp for now so users are ‘forced to prevent the problem’ by specifying them in the config?

My suggestion is to remove the default values for now as the potential bug on the mobile frontend code has not been confirmed and I have now idea how to fix it. May be @sweetpi can have a look at the issue

Can you perhaps also help me with an easy way to remove the Boost mode from the GUI?

As fas as I know it is only possible to deactivate all mode buttons. So, deactivating the “boost” mode would be new feature to be implemented in the pimatic core and front end. Unfortunately, I am not able to work on this one.

@mwittig so if i read the above post right it is possible to deactivate all mode buttons. If i would do so are they still shown in the gui then or not? Bacause i don’t want to have them at all.

@derksuh you can deactivate all mode buttons by adding the following to your device configuration: "guiShowModeControl": false. If you still see the buttons in browser after having restarted pimatic make sure to clear the browser cache & reload or use an icognito tab (with chrome).