Add support for valve opening in climate entities

apolopeix commented 3 years ago

Context

Some thermostatic valves allow to read/set the valve opening percentage (like https://eurotronic.org/produkte/z-wave-heizkoerperthermostat/spirit-z-wave-plus/) and this is not currently supported by the climate entity which limits the usability of these devices.

In the forums there are several workarounds like the ones described here Z-Wave State for 'SwitchMultiLevel' is Ignored where an additional dimmer entity is added to allow to read the valve opening value, however those solutions are currently not properly integrated and in some cases limited (i.e. in some cases it is not possible to change the opening value).

Proposal

Extend the climate entity to support devices with valves by allowing to read the valve opening percentage and to set it when the right mode is selected.

Consequences

Thermostatic valves will be easier to manage and more automations will be possible without having to workaround the missing values.
Smarter climate decisions can be made by analyzing the state of the valve at any given time.

apolopeix commented 3 years ago

Following a proposed PR using lights https://github.com/home-assistant/core/pull/18138, we could introduce a valve type as suggested there by @jmarisk (https://developers.google.com/assistant/smarthome/guides/valve.html) and this way integrate when the feature is supported (a new type of supported feature will be required in https://developers.home-assistant.io/docs/core/entity/climate/)

frenck commented 1 year ago

This architecture issue is old, stale, and possibly obsolete. Things changed a lot over the years. Additionally, we have been moving to discussions for these architectural discussions.

For that reason, I'm going to close this issue.

../Frenck

home-assistant / architecture