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Is it possible to tell what the unit is doing when in Auto mode?

Open trullock opened this issue 3 months ago • 17 comments

Daikin hardware Faikin 2024-01-06 connected to a Perfera via S21

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Coming from the Daikin Residential (HACS) integration for HA, it was impossible to know what the HVAC_Action (i.e. what the unit was currently doing - heating or cooling) when in Auto mode. Is this information available, and can we expose it?

Describe the solution you'd like HVAC_Action to be set to heating/cooling/idle reflecting the unit's current operation when in Auto mode

Describe alternatives you've considered I currently wrap the HA climate entity in a templated one which guesses the action based on the temperature setpoint vs current temperature.

trullock avatar Apr 03 '24 19:04 trullock

For the Faikin auto mode it does that already.

If you know what the S21 coding is to get from the aircon itself I could add that.

revk avatar Apr 03 '24 19:04 revk

You mean it already does the temperature difference "guess"?

I don't know the S21 coding, is there something I can read to get up to speed on how to sniff it?

trullock avatar Apr 03 '24 19:04 trullock

When you set the Faikin to control the temperature, it turns on or off heating or cooling by setting a set point higher or lower. When it does that it sets the hvac action to match what it is doing.

revk avatar Apr 04 '24 05:04 revk

If your talking about the AC itself in auto, I think you could work this out by looking at fan speed, liquid temp and compressor frequency and target temperature. If compressor is 0 then its fan or idle. If compressor is not 0 it is heating or cooling.

If liquid temp is lower than set point it is cooling, if its higher then its heating. Will need to add filtering to allow time for liquid temp to change etc. But I don't see why it shouldn't work.

44616E avatar Apr 04 '24 09:04 44616E

Yeh, others have suggested this, but it would be guess work, and fooled by fan running for other reasons and so on.

revk avatar Apr 04 '24 09:04 revk

Can this logic not be implemented in HA? That way the user could customise it themselves to suit their application.

I'm only using node red, which would be easy to do.

44616E avatar Apr 04 '24 10:04 44616E

Thats where i do it at present, but can be improved since Faikin now exposes me the liquid temp.

I was hoping the actual state (no guesswork) would be exposed to faikin for it to report 1-1

trullock avatar Apr 04 '24 10:04 trullock

It may be, there is a lot of S21 status? But not one I know as yet.

revk avatar Apr 04 '24 10:04 revk

Thats where i do it at present, but can be improved since Faikin now exposes me the liquid temp.

I was hoping the actual state (no guesswork) would be exposed to faikin for it to report 1-1

The best lead I know is that the official wired "navigation controller" can report the "Stand by" state to indicate that the indoor unit is not running either because the outdoor unit is warming up or defrosting, but that could be done via a heuristic as well (as the indoors refigirant plunging to -25°C with the compressor runnung fut the fans off is otherwise pretty unusual in a heating cycle). Even Daikin One doesn't seem to (from the user manuals, anyway) display when a unit is actively heating or cooling, though, so I'm not holding much hope.

Still, there could be some hidden commands we haven't found yet that do all those things.

sm-Fifteen avatar Apr 05 '24 12:04 sm-Fifteen

I don't have experience much with heating so maybe thats abit more complicated. Most of my units are cool only, the ones that can heat probably only get used to heat 2 or 3 days a year.

44616E avatar Apr 05 '24 13:04 44616E

Yeh, others have suggested this, but it would be guess work, and fooled by fan running for other reasons and so on.

I'd personally rather have a heuristic that's 80% accurate than the current situation of not reporting anything, as is currently the case. If there turns out to be an actual flag somewhere that tells us what the units are doing, we can replace it later, but for now I think that would be an ok solution. There are also a few things we can do to make sure everyone's happy:

  • Allow users to turn off the hvac_mode heuristic in the settings
  • Allow users to specify a unit is single-zone, so that compressor activity can be considered a reliable activity metric and not have to be cross-referenced with fan speed
  • Allow users to set a fan speed theshold below which the fan is considered idle, to ignore the pulses idle indoor units do to run some air over their temp sensor.

We should probably merge this issue with the #290, though.

sm-Fifteen avatar Apr 05 '24 13:04 sm-Fifteen

I agree with @sm-Fifteen's approach.

Re "single zone", my compressor hosts two indoor units, but they both have to be in the same mode at once, one cant be heating and the other cooling. Only certain advanced outdoor units support that I think so the option needs not to be about "single zone" but whether the compressor supports dual mode (probably has a proper name)

trullock avatar Apr 05 '24 13:04 trullock

I agree with @sm-Fifteen's approach.

Re "single zone", my compressor hosts two indoor units, but they both have to be in the same mode at once, one cant be heating and the other cooling. Only certain advanced outdoor units support that I think so the option needs not to be about "single zone" but whether the compressor supports dual mode (probably has a proper name)

Well, the concern reported in the other issue was more about whether compressor activity could be used to tell when the monitored unit is active (even in heat-only/cool-only) or idle. Even if unit A can see that the compressor is running, it may actually be idle (as evidenced by the fan not running), with the compressor actually driving unit B, that the Faikin controller for unit A can't see and doesn't know about. ~~You're thinking of Daikin's VRV line, I believe.~~

EDIT: My bad, it's multi-split systems that can heat and cool at the same time, as opposed to the more common multi-zone mini split.

sm-Fifteen avatar Apr 05 '24 13:04 sm-Fifteen

I'm beginning to wish I had not added this reported value, and maybe I'll make it only appear if there is an explicit setting in future.

revk avatar Apr 05 '24 13:04 revk

I'm beginning to wish I had not added this reported value, and maybe I'll make it only appear if there is an explicit setting in future.

Maybe only appear when the faikin auto mode is enabled. I think there are too many different types and setups to worry about a heuristic mode at the moment. Thoose that want it can do it off board in HA, NodeRed, python etc.

44616E avatar Apr 05 '24 13:04 44616E

Tricky as we send HA config at start and don't update when you turn on/off faikin auto mode. Not sending once we have told HA we have it just causes error messages.

I'll make it a setting.

revk avatar Apr 05 '24 13:04 revk

Tricky as we send HA config at start and don't update when you turn on/off faikin auto mode. Not sending once we have told HA we have it just causes error messages.

I'll make it a setting.

Fair enough, haven't used HA so sorry not aware of these issues.

44616E avatar Apr 05 '24 13:04 44616E