Detect heat pump defrosting cycle / detect compressor 4-way valve state

[Domoberry]

I would like to be able to use in my home automation system (Domoticz) a variable indicating the heat pump (Bosch CS5800i AW-7) is performing a defrosting cycle.
Defrosting mode would imho be indicated by the status of the '4-way valve' (VR4) in the compressor unit (see the diagram in section 10.3 of the installation/instruction manual for this heat pump).
Asks:

• is the status of VR4 available as one of the EMS-ESP entities?
• if not, could this be a suggestion for a future enhancement?

or...
is there some other way to obtain the defrosting mode which I obviously missed? (in which case, apologies for misusing the bandwidth of this discussion)

[proddy]

The entity is in EMS-ESP and called hp4way and has cool_defrost and heat_ww as options. See also #1388

Can this work for you?

[Sbried]

I use hpactivity for this purpose. I coded the hpactivity as 0=off, 10%=heating, 20%=cooling, 30% hot water, and 60%=defrost. This allows to see over time what my HP does...

[Domoberry]

@proddy thanks for the reply!
Prior to posting, I reviewed all entities to convince myself that a related entity would not already exist by scanning through all entities for the 4 devices shown (boiler, thermostat, mixer and heatpump). For some reason I did not stumble onto hp4way, which I would expect to find with the heatpump device. Could you please point me in the right direction?
fyi: my hybrid setup includes a MH210 mixer, CS5800i AW-7 heat pump and a nefit 9000i CW6 boiler, running V3.7.1 on the BBQKees E32 V2 hardware interfacing to Domoticz via MQTT-AD.
@Sbried that sounds like an interesting option. I have no experience with creating a (what I assume to be) custom entity. Any part of the documention you would recommend for starters?

[proddy]

if you go Customizations and select the boiler, in the search box type 'hp' do you see the hp4way at all? Maybe you do but it has no value (which is another issue we'll need to fix). I don't have a heat pump so difficult to test myself.

[Sbried]

(in my setup) hpactivityis not a custom entity. It is detected automatically and is listed in the customizations

as well as the 4-way-valve

I never looked at the hp4waybefore, but the shown value cooling&defrost does not look ok while the HP is heating.

[Domoberry]

@proddy, thanks for the quick reply, brief results:
Modules / Customizations / ..... (Boiler) and search for 'hp' does not yield any results; hp4way not found.

[proddy]

hmm, ok. Could you send me your system info and I'll try and reproduce

[Domoberry]

My current setup:

• Nefit 9000i HRC30-CW6 (natural gas boiler)
• Bosch CS5800AW 7 OR-S (heat pump)
• Bosch CSH5800iAW O Hybrid-Set-box (MH210, pump, filter in-a-box)
• Bosch CT200b (thermostat)
  @proddy: tried to email you some additoinal information on entities found.

[proddy]

we would need to add it to EMS-ESP. In the meantime, to confirm it actually works, create a custom entity for this and it'll show up in the Dashboard. See if it cycles between 0,1 and 2. And then 3 when its defrosting.

[Domoberry]

I have added a (first ever :-) ) custom entity:
name: Hpmp_Status; Value Type: EMS-value; non-writable; DeviceID: 0x53; TypeID: 0x99A; offset: 2; Value Type: RAW; Bytes: 1.
During normal operation the value reported is '01' (e.g. heat pump is 'heating'). After forcing a defrost cycle using the service menu on the CT200b, I noted the value changing: 01 -> 00 (~1 min) -> 03 (~3..4 mins) -> 00 (~1 min) -> 01 (times must be taken with a grain of salt).
So, yes it seems to cycle as you both predicted. Not sure why the '00' in between, possibly the system needs a bit of time before 'reversing'. (my hybrid system is not using the heat pump for dhw, so I do not expect to see '2')
(and... could you point me to the section in the EMS-ESP manual on how to make a custom entity report out over mqtt ?)

[proddy]

custom entities are sent to MQTT in a topic called custom_data. I noticed this is missing from the documentation so will add that later.

But...since you confirmed its working we can just add these new values to EMS-ESP. Thanks @Sbried for finding this. What shall we call the entity? "hpStatus"?

[Sbried]

Well, the 00in between means off. So, I guess the system has to turn off first before it can start the defrosting.
Thinking about the naming: Since the 0x099A telegram is for hybrid systems, and not mix up with the 0x048D for heat pumps, this should be found in the entity name. For normal heat pumps it is called "hpactivitiy". Maybe something like "hybridhpacitivity"?
In the source code the telegram 0x099A is called "HpStarts". Since there is more in that telegram and it is for hybrid systems I also suggest to rename the telegram to "HybridModuleMonitor"

[MichaelDvP]

We can also use hpactivity, it's no conflict because these are different devices (boiler, heatpump). I agree to rename the telegram.