Hello again folks.
Hopefully some of the more adept Cortex people out there will have an answer to this one - or indeed there may be just a really obvious answer that I'm staring in the face! Please ridicule, or suggest complex solutions as appropriate....
I have an HVAC object set up for the whole house - essentially I take the average temperature from a number of rooms and use that to control the on/off of my central heating. Even though it's a simple setup, it works very well in terms of maintaining correct room temperature and in saving energy.
Trouble is, in the morning, the house is cold. I have to get out of bed for Cortex to realise I'm still in the house, infer my presence and then to switch on the heating.
The HVAC object derives its presence input from the ground floor and first floor objects - their presence times out after the last room in them with movement has itself timed out. This time will be no more than 11 minutes, as for example the bedroom presence time out is 10 minutes , and the floor time out is one minute. So at that point, the HVAC will have no presence input, will run on for 10 minutes, then flick over to the unoccupied profile. The unoccupied profile is a much lower temperature setting than occupied, hence my house is a bit chilly in the morning.
So you may say 'just use the house object to infer presence to the HVAC' - which of course has the ability to check external doors to see whether someone has actually left the house and is therefore much smarter than floor level presence.
Here's the rub - I have external lighting, controled by PIR's that are within the house object. The occupied profile is correctly maintained overnight when using the house object, however if I leave the property via an external door and Cortex changes the house status to unoccuipied, then of course, an external movement detected by the lighting PIR's will result in an occupied state for the house - I don't want next door's cat controlling my heating! This is why I use the presence output at floor level for HVAC.
So I've tried dragging and dropping my external 'rooms' to a location outside the house object, in the hope that presence would not then be inferred to the house (until very recently I didn't know you could do this...) but this seems to be not allowed by Cortex.
I have an idea for a solution based on my alarm system's outputs forcing an occupied or unoccupied state to Cortex, but I'm not sure how to realise it. Essentially, I'm fairly security conscious, so always part set my alarm at night - which would be an ideal way of forcing Cortex to an occupied state. Also, I always full set my alarm when I leave the house, which would of course be an ideal way of forcing Cortex to unoccupied. This may solve my heating problem.
So - answers on a postcard please......
Cheers
John
Hopefully some of the more adept Cortex people out there will have an answer to this one - or indeed there may be just a really obvious answer that I'm staring in the face! Please ridicule, or suggest complex solutions as appropriate....
I have an HVAC object set up for the whole house - essentially I take the average temperature from a number of rooms and use that to control the on/off of my central heating. Even though it's a simple setup, it works very well in terms of maintaining correct room temperature and in saving energy.
Trouble is, in the morning, the house is cold. I have to get out of bed for Cortex to realise I'm still in the house, infer my presence and then to switch on the heating.
The HVAC object derives its presence input from the ground floor and first floor objects - their presence times out after the last room in them with movement has itself timed out. This time will be no more than 11 minutes, as for example the bedroom presence time out is 10 minutes , and the floor time out is one minute. So at that point, the HVAC will have no presence input, will run on for 10 minutes, then flick over to the unoccupied profile. The unoccupied profile is a much lower temperature setting than occupied, hence my house is a bit chilly in the morning.
So you may say 'just use the house object to infer presence to the HVAC' - which of course has the ability to check external doors to see whether someone has actually left the house and is therefore much smarter than floor level presence.
Here's the rub - I have external lighting, controled by PIR's that are within the house object. The occupied profile is correctly maintained overnight when using the house object, however if I leave the property via an external door and Cortex changes the house status to unoccuipied, then of course, an external movement detected by the lighting PIR's will result in an occupied state for the house - I don't want next door's cat controlling my heating! This is why I use the presence output at floor level for HVAC.
So I've tried dragging and dropping my external 'rooms' to a location outside the house object, in the hope that presence would not then be inferred to the house (until very recently I didn't know you could do this...) but this seems to be not allowed by Cortex.
I have an idea for a solution based on my alarm system's outputs forcing an occupied or unoccupied state to Cortex, but I'm not sure how to realise it. Essentially, I'm fairly security conscious, so always part set my alarm at night - which would be an ideal way of forcing Cortex to an occupied state. Also, I always full set my alarm when I leave the house, which would of course be an ideal way of forcing Cortex to unoccupied. This may solve my heating problem.
So - answers on a postcard please......
Cheers
John
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