Compatibility of EEBUS devices is not transparent

DerAndereAndi commented 1 year ago

Pairing is technically only a process for the two devices to be allowed to talk to each other. The UX for any user without this technical understanding has no idea about this, its implications and results in a bad experience.

An Elli wallbox can be paired with another Elli wallbox. Then nothing happens afterwards. There is no warning that nothing will happen or can happen.

A lot of users tried to pair the Elli wallbox with an SMA Home Manager 2.0 as both say they support EEBUS. Pairing worked and some people thought now charging is controlled by available PV surplus energy. Even though technically this can not work. The Elli wallbox limited the charging speed to 6A per phase and never changed it. The Elli wallbox doesn't even show an information or error message that the other device doesn't support required features and falls back to this charging mode. It only shows an yellow LED instead of a green LED.

Even electrical engineers setting up the devices do not have such an understanding and will not have sufficient understanding. It is just too complex and the varieties will only increase with more devices supporting EEBUS in the future.

Solutions:

The specification should be improved so the UX only allows pairing that can potentially be used together
The specification should include a further compatibility state that has to be presented in the UI by using NodeManagementDetailedDiscoveryData and NodeManagementUseCaseData responses and presenting this in an end-user friendly way
A UX guideline should be provided that covers all the possible scenarios the devices UX should cover to allow a seamless setup process.
A public up to date website should be established which contains a list of the supported UseCases and Features and their respective role, and which are required on the other end. So planning and purchasing can be made transparent

wimleers commented 1 year ago

As both a software engineer and a user of multiple EEBus devices (washer, dryer, heatpump) and the SMA Home Manager: YES!

DerAndereAndi commented 1 year ago

@wimleers would you be interested in providing EEBUS data for your devices to https://github.com/enbility/devices ? Feel free to open a discussion in that Repo if so and you need help on how to do that

wimleers commented 1 year ago

Yes! On it!

I have a Vaillant 75/5 and VR921 gateway since last week. I want:

To log/observe the behavior of the machine over time.
Ideally the ability to create automations that modify the target temperature based on e.g. surplus PV power.

I know this can be done using ebusd but I’d rather not. EEbus seems the future.

wimleers commented 1 year ago

@wimleers would you be interested in providing EEBUS data for your devices to https://github.com/enbility/devices ? Feel free to open a discussion in that Repo if so and you need help on how to do that

Did that: https://github.com/enbility/devices/discussions/2.

CommanderROR9 commented 1 year ago

Bringing this to Home Assistant would be really cool. It would be much more streamlined than messing around with ebusd

enbility / eebus-go

Compatibility of EEBUS devices is not transparent #54