WiFi enabled Coleman/Airxcel thermostat coming "sometime this fall"?

[RV Wanderers]

The thermostat can not turn the Aqua-Hot burner (electric/diesel/propane) on or off.

eRVin has a solution for being able to control the Aqua-Hot burners and you can link it to Alexa. I am sure you could set up some rules/conditions to trigger it. I personally have the eRVin solution and use it mainly for controlling the lights but haven’t modified it for the Aqua-Hot control.

https://myervin.com/ervin-installation

[voltdoc]

Originally Posted by oneknight

This is great stuff! Rob, thanks for everything you're going through helping MicroAir to get this working for us.
I'll be ordering mine as soon as you give the word.

I do have 2 questions that I didn't see answers to.

Can this thermostat actually turn the diesel burner on?

Standard fare sleeping with the heatpump on... outside temp falls too low. System switches to "gas" but cannot turn on the burner.
Floor registers blow cold air until I wake up.

Does (or can it) do a heatpump defrost?

Home units do this and can work in cold weather. I had an '08 Monaco with Dometic Penguin units that had a defrost. Periodically they would reverse, kinda groan a bit, make a fart sound, and keep on heating. The Monaco's units would keep working down into the 20's.

To the best of my knowledge, the defrost works with existing hardware, just puts the unit back into cool mode for a bit to defrost the condenser.

Jim, good question on the defrost, I will ask about that. Do you know if the Airxcel tstat does that? I don't recall ever hearing it do so and the manual doesn't mention it. Have you had problems with your Coleman's freezing up? I know they do have a freeze sensor.

I know exactly what you mean tho, the Dometic on my boat, in cases of hot weather when it basically never shuts off, will occasionally stop, wait for the pressure to subside, then briefly run in reverse cycle to defrost the evaporator.

One thing to consider is the Coleman units have their controller out on the roof and I believe that's where the smarts are (like sensing a freeze up), even the room temp sensors go to the roof control board and not the tstat. So I don't know if the tstat has access, for example, to the freeze sensor or actually knows how long the compressor has been running.

In regarding to controlling the Aquahot burner the tstat can't do that.

RV Wanderers is correct though that eRVin can do that. I have my coach set up with those controls which require adding a relay to a couple of the unused lighting channels and paralleling the contacts with the AH switches.

It would be fairly straightforward to add a routine to eRVin to say, sense the outside temp (even just from a weather web site) and turn on the burner if the temp falls below a certain setpoint. Good idea I'll consider adding something like that.

In fact I just released eRVin OS v0.5 which adds a number of new features including the ability for the end user to download and install updates. Currently there is a config file already built for the Aspire 44B, other Aspire floorplans will be very similar and easy to modify. You can build the hardware yourself for around $160 or less and control all your lights (and Aquahot if you do the mod) remotely.

[Turbojack]

Originally Posted by oneknight

Does (or can it) do a heatpump defrost?

Home units do this and can work in cold weather. I had an '08 Monaco with Dometic Penguin units that had a defrost. Periodically they would reverse, kinda groan a bit, make a fart sound, and keep on heating. The Monaco's units would keep working down into the 20's.

To the best of my knowledge, the defrost works with existing hardware, just puts the unit back into cool mode for a bit to defrost the condenser.

If the RV AC/Heat pump does goes into defrost mode when the heat pump is running due to the outside coils freezing up, this event is being controlled by the AC/Heat pump brains and not the thermostat.

On Home Heat Pumps when the unit goes into defrost it turns on the strip heaters so it is not putting cold air back into the home. Once the outside coils are defrosted the unit then goes back into the heat pump mode and turns the strip heaters off. The problem I see with RV AC/Heat pumps doing this is they would have to have a strip heater and when it would go into defrost the unit would pull more then the 20A circuit is feeding it.

[oneknight]

Originally Posted by Turbojack

If the RV AC/Heat pump does goes into defrost mode when the heat pump is running due to the outside coils freezing up, this event is being controlled by the AC/Heat pump brains and not the thermostat.

On Home Heat Pumps when the unit goes into defrost it turns on the strip heaters so it is not putting cold air back into the home. Once the outside coils are defrosted the unit then goes back into the heat pump mode and turns the strip heaters off. The problem I see with RV AC/Heat pumps doing this is they would have to have a strip heater and when it would go into defrost the unit would pull more then the 20A circuit is feeding it.

The heat pump in my former Tennessee home did not have a functional emergency heat strip.
Even if it did, the strip would be inside the house in the air handler, not outside in the condenser unit.
the heat strip had nothing to do with the defrost cycle.

[oneknight]

Rob,
The Dometic Penguin units in my former Monaco "seemed" very similar in design to the AirXcel (formerly Coleman) units in the Monaco.
Dometic used a 5 button thermostat (same) that was operated the same way.
Interconnect was through a 4 pin "telephone" cable from the thermostat to the front AC (master) and phone cable from the front AC to the rear.
In this propane furnace coach the 2 furnaces were run by the respective AC units.
Other than the unusual sounds, the heat pump defrost worked very well, and kept the heat pumps useable down below freezing.
This system would do a clean switchover from HEAT/ELECTRIC to HEAT/GAS if the heatpumps couldn't keep up, I never woke up cold.

The AirXcel (Coleman) system seems to work like this:
Is HEAT / ELECTRIC is selected the heatpumps run, UNLESS the actual temperature becomes 4 degrees lower than the set temperature. (this is in the manual)
If that happens the system switches to HEAT/GAS.
WHEN the system switches to HEAT/GAS, the aquahot registers turn on (if there is a call for heat in that zone) BUT if the fan selection for the heat pumps was in high or low (or maybe auto) the fans in the ceiling units continue to run.
IF the aquahot burner wasn't on (AND the only reason I would ever choose ELEC over GAS was so I didn't have to listen to the burner all night) then the AH registers would blow cold air too. I would wake up in the middle of the night freezing, turn off the heatpump fans, turn on the burner, and try to go back to sleep.

It would be nice if they could make a defrost cycle work (although as was said, it might be built into the dometic roof units rather than a function of the thermostat)

As for the Aquahot burner, I am working a fix for that, I'll let you know when it's done.
Earlier AH units had 2 control thermostats, a 190 for the burner, and a separate 200 for the electric. With the electric controlled independently, the diesel burner would never turn on if there was no demand on the system. If the electric could maintain over 190, the burner kept quiet. When a demand hit that the electric couldn't keep up with, temp would fall below 190 and the burner would light off.
I have a plan and all the parts. If it ever stops raining I'll get it done.

[voltdoc]

Originally Posted by oneknight

Rob,
As for the Aquahot burner, I am working a fix for that, I'll let you know when it's done.

So you are basically looking to be able to keep the burner switch on, but prevent it from firing unless the electric can't keep up? Sounds good, looking forward to hearing more about that.

So I have some feedback from microair.

Regarding defrost:
"The Coleman system is a split responsibility system where the control board has a bit more “control” than the thermostat. We do not have access to the freeze sensor temperature which would make adding such a function a breeze."

Regarding "Heat Pump Lockout" which someone asked about earlier in this thread. Yes it is still there, but they are considering making it an option:
"We were just talking about that today. The lockout function is done by telling the control board how many times we used gas heat assist when the electric heat was on. It is possible to create a switch to never tell the control board that gas heat was used and bypass the function. It is something a colleague proposed today but I was not sure it was user friendly since the whole over-ride thing isn’t friendly already. Silly that if they just had the ability to monitor the freeze sensor from the thermostat, this could have been fixed as well!"

In regard to status of the Easy Touch thermostat for the 9330-333, there was a firmware upgrade to the tstat v1.0.2.2 and the Android app is up to beta version 27 (from production v24). Looking pretty good at this point, but there are a few more tweaks coming.

[Holmrun]

This is the 355 model, or is this a different model not on the site yet?

[voltdoc]

Originally Posted by Holmrun

This is the 355 model, or is this a different model not on the site yet?

Yes the microair part is 355, but they are still finalizing the changes to the firmware and app for full Entegra (Airxcel 9330-333) compatibility.

[Golfer Guy]

Now that I have my thermostat all set up with new software etc. it would be great if there was a way to program the software to have a way to turn on the electric floor heat in each of the 3 zones. Also a way to turn on the diesel burner for the Oasis from the thermostat would be cool too. The floor heat control is something Newmar is missing on. No way to turn on and off with a timer or clock so you can have the floors already warmed up in the morning when your feet hit the cold tile floors. Life in a 1st world country is pretty tuff sometimes.

[voltdoc]

Originally Posted by Golfer Guy

Now that I have my thermostat all set up with new software etc. it would be great if there was a way to program the software to have a way to turn on the electric floor heat in each of the 3 zones. Also a way to turn on the diesel burner for the Oasis from the thermostat would be cool too. The floor heat control is something Newmar is missing on. No way to turn on and off with a timer or clock so you can have the floors already warmed up in the morning when your feet hit the cold tile floors. Life in a 1st world country is pretty tuff sometimes.

The Dometic system you have is likely quite different than the Coleman/Airxcel system we have on our Entegra's. You could ask Microair if its possible.

On the Airxcel, I had an idea of sensing when the heat zones were active and using that to drive a relay to turn on the Aquahot burner. I'll draw up a diagram.

[voltdoc]

I'm told the MicroAir Easy Touch 355 model now has the firmware changes being applied to production units to support the 9330-333 Airxcel model installed on many Entegra's since around 2015.

The iOS app has also been updated and released so iOS users should be good to place an order.

The Android app however is still in development. There have been a lot of bug fixes and changes, but there is still a bit more work to do. I have been testing the beta version and it is pretty solid, but it hasn't been released yet. So Android users can place an order but be aware until the new App is released you may have limited capabilities.

The 'Easy Touch RV' App on the Google Play Store is currently v24, the versioning has been changed, so watch for it to go to 1.1.1 or higher.

I have also done a blog post regarding installation, basic configuration and my thoughts on the product.

[NomadRider]

Originally Posted by voltdoc

I'm told the MicroAir Easy Touch 355 model now has the firmware changes being applied to production units to support the 9330-333 Airxcel model installed on many Entegra's since around 2015....

Thanks Rob, placing my order today!

[motorhomeguy]

Thanks for all the information and updates, ordered mine earlier this morning...

[bevandtomH]

Hopefully they will get to my 8330-D331 model this summer....waiting anxiously.