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Staples Connect manual vs scheduled activities

TimothyWMurray

By TimothyWMurray,
in General & DIY

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TimothyWMurray HSS Member

TimothyWMurray

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I added 2 Trane TZ400BB3VZNNSL - Z-Wave Thermostats to my Staples Connect.

 

They were easy to add.  These thermostats have no way to program them except through a zwave control.  They have manual buttons, but no scheduling.  That is fine because I have my Staples Connect and always intended to use it to schedule them.

 

I had two surprises when doing this, maybe someone has a helpful tip.

 

Staples Connect has activities.  When setting these up you must choose scheduled or manual.   Both of my surprises come from the interaction of scheduled and manual activities.

 

1) I set up a several scheduled activities with names like "wife working from home", "kids home from school", and "sleep time temperature"  And each of these triggers at a set time on a set group of days of the week.  I gave them names like this because I sort of expected that these same activities could also be triggered manually.  Turns out they can not.  I had to create essentially the same activities but in the manual activities section.  A little extra set up, but this gets the job done.

 

​2) I then set up a manual activity called "vacation temperature" in the manual activities.  But if I run this activity, it will only run until the next scheduled activity kicks in.  I don't think I can put the regular schedule into suspend mode.

 

I guess am mentally modeling an activity (temperature settings) as a separate level of abstraction from the trigger (manual or scheduled).  This led me to assume a bunch of possibilities that just are not there in the Staples Connect.  

 

Any help is appreciated.  Would I be able to do what I'm trying to do if I had a different hub?

 

By the way I bought the thermostats from http://www.zwaveproducts.com/ and the have great customer service.

 

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TimothyWMurray HSS Member

TimothyWMurray

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I posted more or less the same question in the Staple Connect support site and got a response that they are working on adding modes.

https://staplesconnect.zendesk.com/hc/communities/public/questions/201062934-How-do-I-override-scheduled-activities-with-a-vacation-mode-

 

But there is one question I asked here that I didn't ask over there: Would other hubs meet my need now?  

 

I would love to get hands on with a few different hubs and see what I can get the interface to do.  (But it would make my wife crazy,  "which app do I use this week?")

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schoondoggy HSS Genius

schoondoggy

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I am happy with SmartThings so far, but I may look at Revolv in the future.

Check to see if all of your devices are supported by SmartThings. The hub is only $99, it may be worth the experiment.

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