Temperature sensors and API - questions
I noticed someone said -
"A room with Smart Vents needs a temperature sensor for the automation to work."
What specifically does that mean? Does that mean the vent will notopen and close that vent automativally? For example, this is everything I have currently from Flair or related to flair:
1. Nest Thermostat and Flair Vent in DIning room
2. Flair puck (powered - not on batteries) and a flair vent in Kitchen
3. Flair vent in Den
4. Flair vent in Bedroom 3
So you are saying for the vents in the Den and the Bedroom 3 - they wil not open and close on their own unless there is a temperature sensor in each of those rooms that flair can "see"?
Another question - the rooms that have no temperature sensors - why do they show up in the flair app as "no data"?
Last questions - is there a way to call the API with instructions to tell it what the temprerature is in a room? If not, what is better if I am controlling a room via the API that only has a flair vent but no temperature sensors that flair can "see", should I send commands to simply open and close the vent, or instead send a command to make a room active or inactive?
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I'm not sure what the commenter meant when they said that, but I think I can understand where they are coming from. I think most of us rely on Flair to get rooms to (or close to) desired temperatures based on schedules or occupancy or some other parameter that is automated. For the system to know whether a room needs heating or cooling, and to open or close the vent accordingly, it would need to know the temperature in the room. Unless there is some way for it to figure it out otherwise, I would think a temperature sensor would be required.
I don't think you are required to have additional temperature sensors, but right now I think the only temperatures your system knows are the dining room temperature from the nest thermostat, and the kitchen temperature from the Flair puck. I don't think the flair vents have a temperature sensor built into them, and maybe that is what you were thinking they had. I believe it wouldn't make sense to do that because the temperature would be much warmer/colder right at the vent than in the rest of the room when the system is blowing hot/cold air. Temperature sensors should be placed away from the vent, so they are not unduly affected by the air blowing directly on them.
So... I suppose you would want a sensor in every room in which you have a flair vent in order to provide the data the system needs to make the adjustments (system on/off, warm/cool, vents open/closed) to get your desired results. The way you have it set up right now, the den and bedroom 3 vents will probably open/close based on some average.
For my system, I was taken aback at how many sensors I ended up buying, and maybe I bought more than I needed but they were the lowest cost item of the entire setup... I think I bought 3 packs from amazon and ended up paying something like $30 per sensor.
As for "no data"... my guess is that the system is telling you that it has no temperature data from those rooms - precisely because there is no sensor.
If you simply want to be able to remotely open/close the flair vents according to a schedule, then I would think you don't need temperature sensors. But I have been very happy with the improved level of comfort in our home from automating that decision in the Flair app through schedules that are specific to each room.
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Thank you chuck. I may buy pucks for each room - eventually.
How can we figure out for sure: "The way you have it set up right now, the den and bedroom 3 vents will probably open/close based on some average."
FYI, I can see all the values returned by the API, the duct pressure and temperature are measured by the vents, but obviously the duct temperature is not used for sensing the temperature of the room. My guess is the duct temperature is used by the Flair logic but only when flair does not know about any other temperature sensor in the same foom as the vent and when the HVAC has been off for a long time (or some other goofy logic they are required to use in that case).
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I don't believe you need a puck for each room. I think that's probably overkill. But I have a Honeywell thermostat and Honeywell sensors that are all integrated with Flair. I don't know anything about how Nest works with them. I suspect you can find sensors that will work with it.
In some other threads, Flair has answered with links to a page with the logic used to determine priority for adjusting a room. That could help you. As I think about it, I just can't think of a way the system would know what to do with a room if it didn't know the current temperature in the room, which is the situation I think you have in the two rooms without a sensor, puck, or thermostat. That's why I think it has to assume some average.
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Hi Kruse Ludington,
I want to clarify one particular item here.
If you have a Flair room that has Smart Vents assigned to it but no temperature sensing device (Puck, integrated smart thermostat, or compatible sensor) then the Smart Vent in that room operates manually. In the Flair app, you will see a room slider so you can manually dictate the position of the louvers.
Regards,
The Flair Team
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