"switch" type entity to be controlled by Better Thermostat, i.e. Shelly 1 that controls dry contacts for gas heater

[qoff]

I have a gas heater that heats water for the floor heating and traditional radiators installation.
Currently I control this gas heater by using its NO (normally open) dry contacts that are closed (switched together) by the external Shelly 1 device.
So my whole heating device is represented by the Shelly switch itself, with possible options: ON / OFF.

Shelly devices are extremely popular to control lights, shutters, garage door and other equipment.
https://www.shelly.com/products/shelly-1-mini-gen3

The thing is that the Shelly device through its Shelly Integration in Home Assistant has its entities configured on the "switch" level and not on the "climate" level.

The device is a ON / OFF type for these dry contacts, so when ON, gas heater works and for OFF it stops working.

So I have an entity of "switch.shelly_gas_heater" which cannot be controlled by Better Thermostat just because it's not a "climate.shelly_gas_heater" as BT only accepts "climate" type entities as heating devices.

This way I can't currently start using / configuring BT for my purposes.

Where is the real issue? I would expect BT to switch the gas heater on when heating is needed and switch it off when set temp is reached.
Standard Home Assistant's Generic Thermostat can configure heating device with entity type "switch" without any issue, so I would make an educated guess the Better Thermostat should do it as well.

[Zahradka-CZ]

I have the same problem/requirement. How can I control the relay via the Better thermostat?

[rudiratlos]

i'm using generic_thermostat, which creates a climate entity.
better_thermostat can use this climate entity

you can use this:
in configuration.yaml entry:
climate: !include climate.yaml

file: climate.yaml:

• platform: generic_thermostat
  name: "Wohnzimmer Climate Regelung"
  unique_id: wohnzimmer_climate_regelung
  heater: switch.wohnzimmer_thermostat_switch_out # shelly
  target_sensor: sensor.wohnzimmer_temp_humidity_temperature
  cold_tolerance: 0.75
  hot_tolerance: -0.3
  min_temp: 15
  max_temp: 28
  away_temp: 16
  eco_temp: 18
  comfort_temp: 22.5
  precision: 0.1
  ac_mode: false
  initial_hvac_mode: "heat" # "off"
  target_temp: 22.5

set shelly output with auto off timer in 3600sec

keep_alive:
  minutes: 15

[qoff]

Thank you for your input, I will explore this direction.

At the first glance this looks like using a middle-man, a component "in between" which may potentially work (like I said I will give it a try) however I am a bit worried about the stability of it as Home Assistant undergoes a constant development and something may change in the future. As this is nothing bad, the bad thing would be further investigation of what broke down when something broke down.

I prefer simple solutions in the way of "set it and forget it" so today I'm gonna set it and I would like to not remember its internal methodology of utilization of some middleware components to keep working, let's say in 2 or 4 years in the future (assume then something broke down).

Still, if the Generic Thermostat is capable to utilize Shelly configured on the "switch" domain then Better Thermostat should do it as well.

In fact I was planning to extend my initial post by adding more light ( :) ) to other possible use cases.
You may believe it or not, many of Zigbee relays/switches that are at least from its look chinese clones of Moes brand (this includes popular OXT, RTX brands like these )
identify themselves in Home Assistant on the "light" domain.
Although these identify themselves internally in HA as "light" they may control anything you want. So for me I utilize these for garden irrigation and have Home Assistant entities like "light.garden_irrigation_valve_1" that is controlled to state ON or OFF by HA.

If I used OXT dry contact relay - this one
to control the ON/OFF of my gas heater instead of the Shelly 1 I use today, for instance for the reason of better Zigbee coverage/stability than WiFi or personal preference, I would have to control the "light" entity of my gas heater:
"light.oxt_gas_heater" which still is not the "climate.oxt_gas_heater" - which means the problem persists.

Better Thermostat in my opinion should be able to control third party switches/relays that ON/OFF physical heating device, but for some technical restrictions are configured on "switch" or "light" or even other (today unknown to me) domain in Home Assistant.
This would make Better Thermostat more "bulletproof" in terms of supported types of devices.

[qoff]

In using this middleware Generic Thermostat just for pure "climate" entity creation for Shelly switch, how to make sure that this middleware Generic Thermostat stays dumb and inactive?

That's how understand your proposal - to create a non-functioning (dead, not-acting at all) Generic Thermostat that will only expose "buttons and knobs" that can be controlled by the Better Thermostat only.

Is this the other way round temp tolerance you propose in your example:
cold_tolerance: 0.75 <-- positive value instead of negative one for cold temp
hot_tolerance: -0.3 <-- negative value instead of positive one for hot temp
that makes this Generic Thermostat not fire at all?

[rudiratlos]

to be honest. I'm using better_thermostat, because it has a more neat gui than generic_thermostat. I tried some other thermostats, but I get the best result in combining BT with generic_thermostat for my heating stuff. I have an underfloor water heating system which is very laggy. the hot_tolerance:-0.3 helps that my shelly switches the heating off, before the temp reaches the setpoint e.g. 22degrees. with hot_tolerance=-0.3, it switches at 21.7 off (22-0.3). I can prevent an overshooting. cold_tolerance: 0.75 will start the heating at 21.25degrees (22-0.75). so my shelly is on beetween 21.25 and 21.7 degrees.
currently better_thermostat (BT) has only one tolerance parameter.
I agree, that BT should support switches natively. also it should support hot_/cold_tolerance.

pls. see description of these parameters:
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/generic_thermostat/

my real paramters are:
cold_tolerance: 2.50
hot_tolerance: -1.30

side-note: generic_thermostat doesn't support a window_sensor, but BT does. In combination, it works for me.

[qoff]

If I'm not mistaken it seems that you take an advantage of both thermostats' logic in your configuration, where some functions are provided by Generic and some by Better Thermostat, while altogether you use BT's UI.

Well, this may work for some and if the combination of both works for you then I'm happy as well (for you).

In the course of my experiments with setting Generic Thermostat to work as a proxy for Better Thermostat I found that I don't "feel it". This is exactly that this proxy function (General Thermostat) can't be effectively disabled and available at the same time (to expose controls for BT only, without its logic being active).

I found that there are incompatibilities or imperfections in their cooperation with one another, starting from simple setting the desired temperature on BT where on GT it sets different value, ending on BT switched from heating to idle while GT continued heating (most probably due to its own logic and criteria met at the very moment).
To sum up, using GT as a proxy for BT totally doesn't work for me. Perhaps it's doable, I just don't want to get a doctorate in the area of configuring them to work one with another and configuring possible logic collisions.

Thank you, much appreciated Rudiratlos for this discussion. If it works for you then good for you, but in general it makes an impression of a thin workaround, which contrasts with the bulletproof and set it and forget it approaches.

I see the ultimate conclusion as:

• enable Better Thermostat to natively/directly control heating devices controlled by switches/relays (ON/OFF) in Home Assistant (for various reasons) configured on "switch" and "light" domains (or possible other today unknown to me as well, as I don't know how all switches that are available on various markets exactly work in HA).

The only way I see it is that Better Thermostat doesn't support "switch"es and "light" switches is that there must have been made an assumption to control heating devices directly - that these devices are smart out of the box and connect to Home Assistant and therefore expose proper "climate" domain entities.

The practice shows that with a few EUR it is possible to buy an external switch/relay made by various manufacturers like Shelly or OXT or Moes or other, attach it to a dumb or just older type of heating device, and whooaaa you just made your dumb heating device to be SMART. And it's successfully smartified with this approach, just general purpose switches expose "switch" and/or "light" domain entities in Home Assistant.

This approach to having a smart heating device in our homes must have been overlooked by the creators of Better Thermostat. I hope it's easy to fix and include these type of devices to be supported by BT. This could bring value.