Enhancement Make Climate Add-on fully configurable from UI

[edwardtfn]

Enhancement Summary

Make Climate Add-on fully configurable from UI, enabling the use of this on the pre-built version and following the project's goals of reducing need for playing with yaml.

Detailed Description

The idea is to set what is connected to each relay, if a heater, a cooler, or something else (or nothing), so the system knows what is needed and enable the thermostat component accordingly.

1. Ideally we don't wanna the climate entity exposed to HA until one of the relays is set to climate.
2. To support all the 3 modes (heat, cool or dual).
3. Support the common settings.
4. Support appropriate climate modes.
5. ??

Additional Context

@MichaelHeimann might be able to help with requirements, ideas and tests, as this fits well with the pre-built firmware.
@andythomas played a lot with the climate settings and may have some tips for what should be adjustable via the UI.

[edwardtfn]

Resources:

• API
  • https://esphome.io/api/classesphome_1_1climate_1_1_climate_call
  • https://esphome.io/api/classesphome_1_1thermostat_1_1_thermostat_climate.html

[MichaelHeimann]

Sure, I'll use this on my prebuilt testpanel as soon as there's code I can use - is there already something built?

[edwardtfn]

Not yet, but a lot on my mind. I will try to start something basic very soon.

[andythomas]

For heat only, TL;DR:

• heater_relay
• heat_deadband
• heat_overrun
• temp_min
• temp_max
• C or F
• home temperature

hard code

• temp_step: "0.1"

Maybe less nerdy names in the UI would be a good thing?!

---

Let me try to summarize my experience with the setup (heating only):

The absolute minimum:

• heater_relay

To enable proper regulation, i.e. holding the temperature constant:

• heat_deadband
• heat_overrun

and maybe

• temp_step

The necessity for adjustment of the last one is debatable, it might also just be fixed to 0.1C Being able to set the maximum and minimum (settable) temperature is a nice-to-have feature:

• temp_min
• temp_max

I would also imagine that our American friends would appreciate a

• Fahrenheit/ Centigrade

setting. Finally, I set

climate:
  - id: !extend thermostat_embedded
    visual:
      temperature_step: ${temp_step}
    preset:
      - name: Home
        default_target_temperature_low: 21.2 
        mode: "heat"

the former because of a bug in esphome. Note the following line in the project (nspanel_esphome_addon_climate_base.yaml):

target_temperature:` 0.5  # This is hard coded for now as ESPHome isn`t supporting a substitution here. In contact with support.

0.5 is not fine enough, and a default temperature is nice to have, but it seems that I am using a legacy mechanism since a substitution seems available as well. However, this will certainly lead to people asking for additional defaults (away, night ...)

[Bascht74]

One more idea:
The outputs used by the climate should not be published as switch entities to Home Assistant.
Right now I use the add-on and get my climate entity and both switch1+2 entities. These two should be gone...