I live in an area where it frequently gets up to 80+ degrees during the day but below 50 in the evening. I have my sleeping temperature set to 60-67 for ideal sleeping. Oftentimes, the house may not be quite cooled to that temperature by the time the Sleep smart schedule kicks on but it’s too cold outside to run the AC without damaging it. The thermostat needs a way to automatically not run AC if it’s too cold outside even if the house isn’t at the desired temperature.
Currently, the only way I’ve found to do this is to create an automation to turn heating mode on or turn the thermostat off when it drops below 55. Then I have a second automation to set the thermostat back to auto mode one minute before the Home smart schedule turns on. This generally works okay but is a bit wonky and other thermostats handle this much better.
There are a couple potential solutions here.
- Add a setting for the thermostat in the app to not run AC when it gets below a certain temperature outside.
- Add the ability for an automation to resume a smart schedule.
The first option is the better option, but ideally we would have both.
Obviously, I can open windows or manually change my thermostat to heating mode each night if I know it will be cold out, but that defeats the point of a smart thermostat that can run on a smart schedule and other thermostats (including dumb thermostats) have this ability natively.
@steve_rg I was struggling with the same issue early on. I wanted the heat/cool mode to use the temp from our outdoor weather station to control said mode. I found the automation to be clunky at best.
I now have Aqara temp and humidity sensors in the specific rooms I want climate control in based upon the current mode schedule. The automation is using offsets to control to those sensors. We also have presence sensors in those rooms so the automation is a combination of presence along with the temp sensors.
I have also moved away from using the built-in schedules in the W200 and use my own schedules in HA. No need to force the mode in the W200 this way.
I have attached a summary of our current automations for your reference. Hopefully that will help to spur some ideas.
W200 Thermo Automations.pdf (175.9 KB)
Moving everything to Home Assistant is definitely the way to go, but you are solving a completely different problem here.
Room presence and indoor sensor offsets are great for comfort, but they don’t fix the core issue: protecting the outdoor compressor from running when it’s freezing outside.
If your HA automation decides that a room needs cooling because of high indoor temperature/presence, but it’s $+5^\circ\text{C}$ outside, the W200 will still blindly fire up the AC. Unless you have a hard lockout in HA based on an actual outdoor temperature sensor, your compressor is still at risk of liquid slugging.
The point remains a thermostat shouldn’t require a web of custom home-brew automations just to handle basic HVAC hardware safety.
You’re absolutely correct, I misunderstood the original question.