Feature: Manage (Add and Remove) NeoStat devices from Home-Assistant

[MindrustUK]

As mentioned: #60 (comment)

It would be nice to be able to manage adding and removing devices directly from Home Assistant.

[PhillyGilly]

Supported. Will this include the "phantom repeaters" mention in #196 (comment)

[ocrease]

@MindrustUK @PhillyGilly what are we talking about here exactly?

1. Adding and removing devices from Home Assistant so they can/can't be controlled
2. Or actually pairing new devices to the hub so you don't have to use the heatmiser app?

If its the second point, I would argue that this is not something that belongs in this integration or in HA at all. Physically setting up your devices is something that should be done following the heatmiser instructions. Also its something you do once per device and never again? If I compare the experience to say one of my Shelly devices, I can't do the initial device setup from Home Assistant. Once it's set up, I can then add it to home assistant (either manually or via auto discovery) so I can control it from HA. If I want to change advanced settings on the device itself I have to go to it's configuration page. Another example is a new zigbee device. In order to pair it to my coordinator I have to use zigbee2mqtt itself. Once it's paired, the device is added to HA. Do you have an example of an integration where you can do the initial setup of a device via HA?

If it's point 1, then I agree. It should be possible to add a new device to HA once it's been added to the hub. For example if you add a new plug, repeater, temperature or contact sensor to your heatmiser ecosystem, then it should be possible to easily add it to HA. I think at the moment you would have to delete the integration entry and re-add it? Equally it should be possible to remove a device from HA and it should remember that and it shouldn't be added back in automatically. Not sure how this would be handled, but I assume via the config flow.

Regarding repeaters (and possibly all devices), we could consider adding a button to unpair the device from the hub, but if you then wanted to add it to the hub again you would need to go through the heatmiser pairing instructions. (Adding the requirement to unpair can be added to the repeaters ticket)

Just my 2 cents.

[PhillyGilly]

I agree 100% that pairing devices to the hub should be a Heatmiser App unique task.
What I was thinking was:

1. that HA users should be able to add/remove devices from the HA regime, my logic being that there is quite a lot of traffic going on for devices that don't change very often, and some people may only want devices that are used in automations.
2. that the repeater delete snippet of code should sit in here because not everybody wants to run a bit of python on the side.

I hope that's helpful.

[MindrustUK]

@ocrease I think the original intention (as I understood it) by @stikonas is probably to have as much of a FOSS solution as possible, avoiding Heatmiser first party apps where possible. I maybe wrong in this assumption so I'll leave it for @stikonas to clarify. This would Parallel other integrations such as Philip's Hue which can be completely deployed in Home Assistant with no additional software required.

My only horse in this race is on principal, in that I don't like being restricted to the manufacturers application. I'd like to support open solutions wherever possible.

[stikonas]

@ocrease I think the original intention (as I understood it) by @stikonas is probably to have as much of a FOSS solution as possible, avoiding Heatmiser first party apps where possible. I maybe wrong in this assumption so I'll leave it for @stikonas to clarify. This would Parallel other integrations such as Philip's Hue which can be completely deployed in Home Assistant with no additional software required.

My only horse in this race is on principal, in that I don't like being restricted to the manufacturers application. I'd like to support open solutions wherever possible.

Exactly, I thought that it would be good to have an open solution that does not need proprietary software. Not sure if it's still possible with current Hubs. I keep my Neohub firewalled from internet and I can still pair my thermostats to the hub with no proprietary apps.

If I compare the experience to say one of my Shelly devices, I can't do the initial device setup from Home Assistant.

For shellys, you can flash Tasmota on them. Which is probably the main reason why nobody bothers to reverse engineer Shelly pairing protocol. Why waste time when you can just flash an open firmware.

[rtb1965]

I have just added a neostat-hw V2 and managed to get it paired with the neohub v2 but I am struggling to get it to appear in Home Assistant. The hub and 5 neostats V2 for each room with underfloor heating are all working fine in HA. What do I need to do o integrate the new device? Many thanks

[ocrease]

Try reload, or restart home assistant. If that fails, share the version that you are using and upload the diagnostics output (also visible in the screenshot above)

[rtb1965]

Perfect - it worked! Thanks so much