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Getting the best out of a heat pump - is Homely a possible answer?

cathodeRay · 2023-01-03T10:37:51Z

Homely, currently only available for Samsung and Midea heat pumps, claims to be a 'smart' control system for these heat pumps, smart insofar as it can tune the weather compensation to suit varying conditions, thus solving the basic weather compensation curve's Achilles' heel of being a 'dumb' curve. Apparently it uses modbus and RS485 to interact with the heat pump, which makes sense, the Midea unit has these. No doubt Homely have plans to make it applicable to other brands in due course. Has anyone had any real world experience with Homely? If so (a) does it work as in achieve more effective (rooms more reliably at desired temps) and efficient (lowest possible COP at all times) control and (b) what if any monitoring does it do (and if it does monitor, can the data be downloaded, or is it a pencil and paper job, as it is with that blasted Midea app)? Lastly, how does it compare to the various open source home automation projects like Home Assistant and domoticz? Clearly it is proprietary, and it only manages an ASHP, but does it do that better or worse than the open source projects. The latter, so far as I can tell are still at the 'enthusiasts' stage, fiendishly complicated to set up, and more often than not definitely do not work 'out of the box'.

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Toodles

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25/05/2025 7:45 pm

@benson Ours is ‘resting’ for the summer now (unless we have a typically British summer and have to turn the heating back on!) and our DHW is solar via a Sunamp Thermino, I’m sorry, but this is no help to you I know. ☹️ Regards, Toodles.

Toodles, heats his home with cold draughts and cooks food with magnets.

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benson

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26/05/2025 4:49 am

@el_presidente yes I have the installer app. Connectivity/system check is all coming back fine.

The heat pump modbus which should show a snapshot of current parameters clearly isn’t right and is stuck to a set point a couple of days ago, so this is why the graphs are displaying as they are. Looks like one for homely support…

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benson

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26/05/2025 7:07 am

Actually I might try just turning it off and on again….see if that sorts it.

annoyingly we’re away for a few days so will have to fiddle with it when back later this week.

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benson

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29/05/2025 8:18 am

Posted by: @marct

↑

@johnmo and @benson Thanks!

I was aware there was a portal, but had never stumbled across any means to access it - when I directly requested access to it when discussing issues with Support, it is always a "no".

@benson if you login to https://account.homelyenergy.com/account/settings/dataPreferences/ you can change a toggle

Do you want to allow your installer access to your system monitoring data?

The problem with this is that it will remove one's own access to the dashboard, should you have it...

Incidentally regarding the problem above with our homely and everything being frozen and it stuck in HW mode, this was resolved by unplugging the hub for a couple of mins, and plugging it back in again...

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Toodles

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29/05/2025 9:13 am

@benson Micro$oft pay engineers megabucks to say that to customers!

Toodles, heats his home with cold draughts and cooks food with magnets.

👍

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Mars

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29/05/2025 9:18 am

@toodles there's little in life that's not resolved with a reboot.

Get a copy of The Ultimate Guide to Heat Pumps

Subscribe and follow our Homeowners’ Q&A heat pump podcast

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Toodles

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29/05/2025 9:37 am

@editor Cobbler’s Mantra that!

Toodles, heats his home with cold draughts and cooks food with magnets.

😂

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benson

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07/06/2025 12:31 pm

Turns out this wasn’t anything to do with homely, and turning it off/on again. The problems escalated over the last day or two and turns out an external junction box and conduit entry hadn’t been installed properly. This has wiring connections for the cylinder temp sensor that were completely submerged in water that had been getting into the box. Luckily an easy fix once I’d figured it out.

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Toodles

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07/06/2025 1:05 pm

@benson Cable entry at top rather than from the underside of the box? Inquisitively, Toodles.

Toodles, heats his home with cold draughts and cooks food with magnets.

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benson

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07/06/2025 1:08 pm

@toodles exactly that. I can’t quite believe the installers did it. I assumed it might have had fully weatherproofing grommets or similar at entry points but from what I now know from researching this morning is you simply shouldn’t have cable/conduit entry points on top!

This post was modified 5 months ago by benson

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Toodles

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07/06/2025 1:15 pm

@benson Rain will always have its’ wicked way into anything that needs to be dry! The IP rating is no better than a lock when a lock picker gets to work! Philosophically yours, Toodles.

Toodles, heats his home with cold draughts and cooks food with magnets.

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Transparent

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08/06/2025 3:05 pm

Posted by: @benson

↑

turns out an external junction box and conduit entry hadn’t been installed properly. This has wiring connections for the cylinder temp sensor that were completely submerged in water that had been getting into the box

That's awful!

... and should've been flagged as an Alert by the software when the cylinder-temp readings no longer passed a sanity-check.

It's likely that water will have been sucked back up the wires due to capillary action.
It might cause further corrosion in time, depending on the cable composition.

I recommend you write some labels with a date, and place them at relevant points in case the corrosion causes another fault in a year or two.
"Sensor wire, water ingress 07jun25" should do it.

Place one inside that external box, and another on the cylinder next to the temp sensor.

Or alternatively, if there's sufficient spare cable to pull through, snip out 150mm each side of the junction in the box and re-make the connection.

Save energy... recycle electrons!

👍

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