Posted by: @cashback

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Who are these beginners you're hoping to help on their path to heat pump monitoring enlightenment?

That's indicative of a widespread problem in the country; I don't think we can lay that at @cathoderay's door!

Baby-boomers tinkered with Meccano, and Gen X with LEGO Technic.
iGen grew up holding i-Pads, and little experience with handling physical components and tools.

Now we have Gen-Z who prefer building in Minecraft, even further removed from the physical world.

There's a sizeable gap in the employment market which needs young experimenters.

They will have tinkered with Arduino, Raspberry-Pi and ESP32...
... have learned to code from YouTube, and assembled their own 3D printer.

Formal education and examination certificates may not have given them the enthusiasm and inspiration to get started.
Dyslexia or autism will have blighted their academic expectations instead of stimulating skills which still lie latent.

We need 'out of school' technical hubs, sparked into existence by older generations who still remember which is the hot end of the soldering iron.

It's from there that the UK can then find the installers for increasingly complex energy-related technologies.

This Forum is full of reports from consumers about deficiencies in heat-pump installations.
That's unsurprising when you look at the available pool of 'talent' from which companies must choose their employees.

@editor - I have just lost a reply I was going to post. I think what happened is I was logged in when I started the reply (and so had access to the 'Leave a reply box), and behind the scenes got logged out by the system while I was writing the reply, and the reply got destroyed when I clicked 'Add reply' because I was no longer logged in (but had no way of knowing that until it was too late). The reply is nowhere that I can find, not in any cache, and the revision only contain one very short version, presumably any auto-save stopped when I became (unknown to me) logged out.

I suspect this is an inherent WP weakness (I can be very rude about WP at times, but perhaps not as rude as I can be about certain other software!), but I do wonder if there is a way to either notify someone as they are about to be logged out (like say internet banking does), so they can take action to save their work, or have their session persist if they are actively editing a reply (ie have some text in the 'Leave a reply' box). The only workaround I know of is to write the reply in a text editor and then cut and paste into the 'Leave a reply' box which is all rather tedious and boring...

@cashback - see above. The reply said I have defined what I mean by beginner a number of times, and added some further comments to the effect that the 'interested beginner' I have in mind should be able to grasp the basics. I also rehearsed my familiar argument that HA is not necessary (though can be used, should someone so wish) because in my opinion it adds more pain than gain.     

Posted by: @transparent

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little experience with handling physical components and tools

I couldn't agree more. I can think of so many examples, often from the sailing world where the ancient and modern are so very different (new classic boat owner to old salt: new owner: 'what app do you use for navigation?', old salt (me): 'the Mk 1 eyeball'; or sailing with someone (also a classic boat owner) who use an app to tack down a narrow channel in good visibility not knowing that the source survey for the app chart might be decades old, but also from medicine (I learnt anatomy by dissecting real cadavers) where modelling (often little more than whatiffery) has come to be mistaken for the real world.

Modelling also turned up again when I was getting planning permission for the heat pump (listed building so no permitted development). The council had a internal (normally not available to the general public) 'bat map' which they used to pronounce I needed a very expensive 'bat survey' which generally end in tears. I got them to send me a copy of the bat map and it had all the hallmarks of a 'modelling' exercise - an appearance of cast iron certainty combined with totally implausible boundaries (apparently the left hand side of my gable had bats, the right hand side didn't), half of one tree had bats, the other half didn't, bat whatiffery everywhere. I pointed out that there was no evidence of bats on site in the proposed heat pump location, which needed a small lean-to demolished to make way for the heat pump. Amazingly, common sense prevailed, but if I hadn't had the experience or gumption to challenge the bat map, I rather suspect the trouble costs and likely outcome of any bat survey would have led to a withdrawal of the application and yet another heat pump not  installed. Just because you can model something doesn't mean you get the right answer.

The reply which got deleted had the beginners I have in mind as one time Meccano engineers. Interested and capable, but new to heat pumps and their monitoring, and most importantly not at all averse to learning new things. The system I have put together isn't complicated, and interested beginner will get to grips with it in a few hours/days. It is not aimed at techno-phobes, who almost by definition don't want to know the technical performance aspects of their heat pump, but rather those who want a system that does the job but doesn't involve getting into HA, with all that that entails.          

Posted by: @cathoderay

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The only workaround I know of is to write the reply in a text editor and then cut and paste into the 'Leave a reply' box which is all rather tedious and boring...

@cathoderay you have the "Save Draft" option, I don't know if this survives a session time out, my assumption is that it does.  Of course the "user centric" options you have described above likely cost [a bit more] to develop.

Posted by: @william1066

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you have the "Save Draft" option

Yes, there is that, and there is also Crtl + A > Ctrl + C before clicking add reply, but both rely on remembering to use them. The problem is that most of the time you expect 'Add reply' to, well, add the reply, not delete it.

Posted by: @william1066

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Of course the "user centric" options you have described above likely cost [a bit more] to develop.

I didn't have time to look, rather busy this week, but I wondered if there was a WP plugin that does what I suggested or something similar. 

Posted by: @william1066

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you have the "Save Draft" option

Thinking about it, I am not sure that would work. If you had been logged out, but didn't know you had been (as happened to me), then clicking 'Save Draft' before posting might have the same effect as clicking 'Add reply' - as far as WP is concerned you are not logged in, and so can't save a draft (or add a reply). Safest options are either write the post reply outside WP and then cut and paste, or do select all > copy just before posting.  

Anything you can borrow from this HA integration for Nibe ASHP?
It appears to work with a Modbus connection.
core/homeassistant/components/nibe_heatpump at dev · home-assistant/core (github.com)

@leichat - I fear you may have already descended into the HA black hole. I can't on a cursory look see anything that suggests that nodule uses modbus. Can you please be more specific?

Posted by: @cathoderay

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@leichat - I fear you may have already descended into the HA black hole.

Is it too late to rescue him?
Or has he already passed the Event Horizon? 😪 

@cathoderay Indeed. So far though, I have been fortunate to be using HA with devices that already have tried and tested integrations.

The integration has a HA class of "local_polling" which is always a good sign.
(The Vaillant integration, a community developed one, unfortunately integrates with Vaillant's cloud service, so you need their WiFi/ethernet box and to trust the integration with your myVaillant login credentials)

Code search results (github.com)

Posted by: @transparent

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Is it too late to rescue him?

There must always be hope. I, after all, managed to survive, but I did have to use my sonic screwdriver a few times.

Posted by: @leichat

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(The Vaillant integration, a community developed one, unfortunately integrates with Vaillant's cloud service, so you need their WiFi/ethernet box and to trust the integration with your myVaillant login credentials)

This is typical HA complexity. None of it is necessary, honestly!

I use a wired modbus connection, I think that code in your screen grab uses modbus over TCP/IP ie ethernet/internet. I avoided that because...it is just more complexity, and unnecessary complexity, when a wired connection works well, as it does for me.