Tracking heating usage with Heatmiser devices

[jayc89]

Our UFH and upstairs radiator zones all use Heatmiser NeoStats (v2). I'm considering getting a NeoHub so I can use the API it exposes to track things like temperature difference and demand frequency per zone throughout the day/week etc.

Before I write something from scratch I wondered if anyone had already done anything similar?

[recoveringbuilder]

We have the Heatmiser stats and just the other day decide to use the Neo app. It’s not the easiest app to use as it doesn’t give instructions as to how to set it but through a lot of trial and error I thought I had it set. I really don’t want the heating on at all just now as we have been lighting the log burner at night and with the design of the house it’s doing a good job of heating most rooms but we have someone staying who said his room was rather chilly so decided to set it to heat only that room, I set every other room at12 degrees so it wouldn’t come on and locked it at that however there are still random zones coming on for a few minutes, we can see this at the manifold but it’s not showing up on the app as being on! Any ideas before I uninstall the app and go back to manually setting the stats 

[JohnMo]

If you have a heat zone in each room, I would really consider looking at energy usage, with all these zones active for a week and then with all the zones per floor, operating from a single stat.

 

Would suspect you are short cycling your boiler/heat pump and using more gas/electric than you should be.

 

I found by monitoring my gas usage almost daily last year, how badly my heating system was performing and was able to reduce gas usage, by almost 50% by making thermostats inoperative.  With further changes made during the summer I am hoping to reduce energy usage by another 20+%.

 

If your demand frequency is more than once per heating period, your flow temp or flow rate in that zone is set correctly.  Spend your time setting up your system by balancing the room flows at the UFH manifold and at the radiators.

[Alan Ambrose]

@jayc89

 

>>> I'm considering getting a NeoHub so I can use the API it exposes

 

Can I ask - did you do that in the end?

 

[jayc89]

Unfortunately not. It's still on my list of things to do, just not high up. Someone I know locally also has a NeoHub so I'm hoping once I start poking they'll also be keen to figure out how it works

[Alan Ambrose]

>>> I'm considering getting a NeoHub so I can use the API it exposes

 

me too and it just surfaced on my stack again (could be only for 10 minutes).

 

Let me note some finds on this subject then:

 

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57873516/trying-to-communicate-with-heatmiser-neohub-using-provided-api-json-over-tcp-an

 

https://github.com/RJ/heatmiser-neohub.py

 

https://faq.heatmiser.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001844820-How-do-I-request-the-API-Documents-

 

https://pub.dev/documentation/neohub/latest/

 

https://gitlab.com/afshar-oss/neohub-dart/-/blob/master/doc/Neohub_Api_For_Systems_Developers.pdf

 

I'll post here if I find any time to write some code...

 

 

[Alan Ambrose]

Also:

 

https://github.com/MindrustUK/Heatmiser-for-home-assistant

 

https://www.openhab.org/addons/bindings/neohub/

 

The latter is useful as it describes how you configure the hub with recent firmware (I think they update the firmware OTA automatically) for socket comms:

 

(a) update the mobile app and set 'Legacy API' on in settings.

 

(b) identify the hub ip using a scantool / your router's dhcp map and then check with nmap or similar that port 4242 is open.

 

Then code something like the stackoverflow link above will work - otherwise you get 'socket closed'.

 

 

[Alan Ambrose]

OK basic access kinda works:

 

 

[Alan Ambrose]

A further update:

 

+ the API seems to work fairly reliably.

+ it's not so well designed or documented: for instance - although the app (and presumably the hub) knows the detailed 'heat-on' schedule by device over time for the couple of months on a 15 minute grid ... the api seems to only give you the number of total hours per day (as a rounded integer) per device for the last week.

+ however there a bunch of large json blobs you can retrieve, including 'GET_LIVE_DATA' which returns a 23K byte blob, 'GET_TEMPLOG' which returns a 5KB blob per device etc.

+ you can also send commands too. So this is, for instance, how the home automation systems integrate with the hub.