I have a samsung mini split air conditioner connected via smart things.
I’ve added a tile for this and have it set as a “Standard Thermostat” in the layout section.
It displays correctly, however, I’m hitting 2 speedbumps.
When I press the up and down arrows on the tile to adjust the temperature, it tries to adjust by half degree increments, and more so, I get “error sending command”. If I click the “adjust” in the bottom left, I can properly adjust the temperature.
When I’m in the “adjust” section, I only get “Auto” and “cool” as options. Not heat. My mini split DOES have heat. When I put it into heat mode in smart things, the bottom right side of the tile (opposite of “adjust”) does properly show “heat” and I do get the flame Icon…however, if I"m in cool mode and want to change to heat, I am not able to do this via the dashboard.
If via the remote control, I put the device into “auto” or “cool” mode, the up down arrows go by single degrees and do send the commands to the air conditioner. It is only when I’m in heat mode that it does the half degree issue…so probably related to the fact that I don’t have the option to select heat mode in sharp tools?
It implements the Thermostat Cooling Setpoint which is why you are seeing the cooling mode, but it does not implement the Thermostat Heating Setpoint which is why you aren’t seeing the heating mode as an option.
It looks like they’re using a substandard implementation that defines custom UI controls to expose the heat mode within the mobile app rather than using a proper implementation which uses the proper Thermostat Heating Setpoint capability so it uses the default / automatic UI controls.
It’s further evidenced in their heavy use of custom.* capabilities especially for things that should use standard capabilities instead: custom.airConditionerOptionalMode, custom.thermostatSetpointControl, etc.
–
Let me see what options we have here. It looks like there’s a supportedAcModes attribute that we might be able to use as a fallback to detect that the heat mode is supported.
The bigger problem comes with setting the heating setpoint. Since the device doesn’t have a Thermostat Heating Setpoint capability, it’s likely also missing the setHeatingSetpoint() command.
I suspect that the heat being adjusted in 0.5 degree increments is related to this substandard implementation as it’s looking for the heatingSetpoint and it doesn’t exist on this device.
With the heat…when I go into “adjust” section, those up down arrows do properly do single degree changes and the air conditioner DOES respond. It is only when adjusting the heat temp on the main tile that it does the half degree.
Its a friggin samsung…how odd that it sucks at integration. I’d have thought that they would have made it awesomely integrated.
Having said that, works flawless in smart things…figures.
I’m with you - it’s really frustrating. Unfortunately, it’s a common thing with a massive organization like Samsung.
Keep in mind that SmartThings was originally a startup focused on smart home automation and focused on things like lights, locks, etc. Samsung bought them out and the big money for Samsung is their appliance business. SmartThings enabled Samsung to simplify the 50+ apps and backend platforms they had at one point into a single app to control everything. You still have each division doing their own device integration in some cases and they end up getting away with substandard stuff like that.
I’ve seen similar substandard implementations from third-parties like Cielo and you can almost excuse it since that third-party likely integrates with lots of platforms (and of course expect that they would ultimately fix it). But yeah, it’s surprising when it’s a seemingly ‘first party’ integration that is substandard.
When you are in the modal, are you adjusting the “cooling” setpoint in that case though?
Since the thermostat doesn’t report the Thermostat Heating Setpoint capability or attribute, the modal shouldn’t be showing the heating setpoint nor the heating controls… so I would presume it’s just the cooling setpoint and cooling controls… and perhaps they are using the Cooling Setpoint as a proxy to actually set the Heating Setpoint.
