Venstar Thermostat Binding

The Venstar Thermostat binding supports an interface to WiFi enabled ColorTouch and Explorer thermostats manufactured by Venstar[1].

Prerequisites

Venstar WiFi enabled thermostats provide a local API that this binding uses to communicate with the thermostat. This binding does not require "cloud" access and may be used independently of Venstar's Skyport cloud services.

The Local API is not enabled by default, so you will need to set up your thermostat by configuring its WiFi connection and enabling the Local API. In order for the binding to connect, you will need to enable HTTPS support and set a username and password. While it is possible to enable the Local API without HTTPS and authentication, the binding doesn't support it, in an effort to provide as secure an installation as possible.

When you've set the username and password, make a note of these, as you'll need to enter them in the thermostat configuration in OpenHAB.

Installation

Version 2.1.0

This version of the binding requires a few bundles to be added to your OpenHAB 2 installation before it will work. It is easiest to do this before downloading and installing the thermostat binding. To do this, enter the following commands from your OpenHAB 2 console:

bundle:install http://central.maven.org/maven2/org/apache/httpcomponents/httpclient-osgi/4.3.4/httpclient-osgi-4.3.4.jar

bundle:install http://central.maven.org/maven2/org/apache/httpcomponents/httpcore-osgi/4.3.3/httpcore-osgi-4.3.3.jar

Once that's done, you can download and drop the binding jar into your addons directory and then restart OpenHAB. You can download the binding from the Downloads link to the left, or use this direct link for version 2.1.0:

https://bitbucket.org/hww3/org.openhab.binding.venstarthermostat/downloads/org.openhab.binding.venstarthermostat-2.1.0.jar

Version 2.2.0 and later

Newer version of this binding include all of its dependencies built into the binding JAR, which makes for a simpler installation. Thus, you can download and drop the binding jar into your addons directory and then restart OpenHAB. You can download the binding from the Downloads link to the left, or use this direct link for version 2.2.0:

https://bitbucket.org/hww3/org.openhab.binding.venstarthermostat/downloads/org.openhab.binding.venstarthermostat-2.2.0.jar

When things start back up, the binding will attempt to discover any thermostats installed on your network and add them to the OpenHAB inbox.

You can verify that the binding has loaded properly by looking for its startup messages in the OpenHAB log file. You can use the "log:tail" command in the OpenHAB console to look at the logs.

Release Notes

2.2.0:

• This version of the binding includes all of the prerequisite libraries built directly into the binding jar.

• Less verbose logging by default

2.1.0:

• The binding should now be able to detect thermostats on any interface that is running IPv4.

• If a thermostat goes offline, the binding should switch into reconnect mode, and will use new information reported by the discovery process. If a thermostat receives a new IP address via DHCP, this should be automatically detected.

• The binding is more careful about its communication with the thermostat, and should be less likely to send bad information to the thermostat.

[1] http://www.venstar.com/thermostats/colortouch/