The video below goes over how one can create a Sensor Trigger to control an HVAC Unit's Heating Stage (Dry Contact) within Portal 2.0. This video and others can be found at our Growlink University webpage.
Audio Transcript:
Hey, this is Josh with Growlink and in today's walkthrough we'll be going over how to make a sensor trigger that controls the heating stage of an HVAC unit when it's set up as a dry contact.
A dry contact means that we're sourcing voltage from the unit and when we turn on a relay, it sends that voltage back towards the unit. In this case, it would be engaging the heating stage of the unit and start to heat up the room.
To make this rule, we'll need to first log into Portal 2.0, select the controller that we want to make it on, and then head to the rules page up at the top.
Once we're at the rules sub page, we'll select the default folder and the default rule group.
In this case, because we want this heating stage to activate when the room falls below a certain temperature, we'll want to make a sensor trigger, so we'll select the Sensor Trigger tab and hit Add Sensor Trigger in the pop up form that follows.
We'll start by putting in display name so we can easily identify this rule, such as example heating stage Sensor trigger.
Next, we'll want to input the time of day in which this rule will be active.
In this case, we'll select all day so that any time it goes beneath a certain temperature in the room, the heating stage will activate.
Next, we want to specify the sensor that we want to associate with this rule, and in this case, we want to use the environmental sensor that's in the room and specifically the room temperature reading for that sensor.
For the devices drop-down, we have a couple different devices that we can choose from in this example. In a previous walkthrough, we went over how to make a cooling stage sensor trigger, and in this example, we're going to choose heating stage one just to engage the first stage heating of this HVAC unit.
Next, we want to choose if the set point's going to be static or dynamic. In this example, we're going to use static because it's the most straightforward; You set a specific point at which you want the heating stage to engage in, a specific point at which you want to turn off.
Next, we want to specify the value to trigger this rule. In this case, we'll choose a value of 70°F.
Next, we want to choose the dead band around this value that the heating stage is going to activate and turn off around. We're going to choose a dead band of two degrees Fahrenheit.
Lastly, we want to specify an activation point for this rule. Considering this is a heating stage, we'd want to use the below set point so that when the temperature falls below a certain value, it will activate the heating stage, and when it goes above a certain value, it will turn off the heating stage.
With these values put in place, a logic summary sentence will populate as well as a graph illustrating the logic that you're attempting to employ.
In this case, heating stage one will be switched on when the room temp falls below 68°F and switched off when it returns to 72°F.
With these values put in place, all that's left is to hit the Add Trigger button, followed by the Update Controller button in the top right to push the configuration of this new rule to the controller.
In this case, now we have 2 rules set up, one that will cool the room if the room gets too hot and one that will heat the room if the room gets too cold, and this can help keep the room within some specific environmental parameters.
This concludes how you would make a sensor trigger to control the heating stage of an HVAC unit when set up as a dry contact within Portal 2.0.