Venstar Thermostat Usage Monitor

Here it is, an attachment script that will allow Venstar Insteon Thermostat users to monitor their daily usage of AC, Heating, and Fan usage… This is a basic attachment script that is designed to extend Indigo… (Please note, this has been updated for Indigo v5…  See Here).

When installed, the changes are most noticeable in the Log file…

Received INSTEON “Furnace Link” off (button 2)
Thermostat Insteon Thermostat Event being processed
Thermostat Thermostat requesting Heating – Off
Thermostat Furnace Heat Ran for 14 Minutes
Thermostat Thermostat Event Processing Done

The attachment will monitor for the Venstar to announce Button 1 (AC), Button 2 (Heat), and Button 3 (Fan) traffic, and use these to track the usage for AC, Heating, and Fan. The attachment script will also create new variables to allow the tracking of Heat (Heating_dailymins), AC (AC_dailymins), and the Fan (Fan_dailymins) these variables will contain the the number of minutes that Heating, AC and the furnace fan have been on since the last “reset”.

Please note, you will need to make a new timed action that runs thermo_reset.scpt whenever you want to reset the counters… I would suggest midnight, so that you are capturing the 24 hrs period… The script will append to a csv file in your documents folder that contains the value that are in the AC, Furnace and Fan variables, and then reset the variables to 0.

To Install:

  • Download the Venstar Thermostat Usage Monitor Script (See below)
  • Copy the script (Thermo)  to /Library/Application Support/Perceptive Automation/Indigo 4/Scripts/Attachments
  • Copy the Thermo-reset script to /Library/Application Support/Perceptive Automation/Indigo 4/Scripts/Attachments
  • Create a Time/Date action, with the action of “Run Applescript”, choose External File, and point it to the Reset script.  Set the time for when you would like it to run (for example, Midnight).
  • Restart the Indigo Server

To Uninstall:

  • Remove the Thermo & Thermo-reset script from /Library/Application Support/Perceptive Automation/Indigo 4/Scripts/Attachments.
  • Restart the Indigo Server

Recommendations:

  • Turn on SQL Logging (Log Device State History to SQLite or PostgreSQL)  if you have a Pro license.  This will be used in another Venstar related web server plugin that I am creating, and I plan to leverage this feature in more scripts.  If you turn it on now, then the Venstar data will be there for the next plugin.

Versions for Download:

Click here to see plugin download links.

Version History:

  • 1.00 – Public Release
  • v1.01 – Fixed issue with the Hex Character Decoder.