NGBS iCON Thermostat Homebridge Plugin

Supported Features

Native HomeKit Thermostat Control for NGBS iCONs

• 🌡️ Temperature Control: Adjust the target temperature of your NGBS iCON Thermostat directly from the Home app.
• ❄️🔥 Heating and Cooling Mode: Toggle between heating and cooling modes to keep your home at the perfect temperature.
• 🌡️ Current Temperature Display: View the current temperature in your home within the Home app.
• 💧 Humidity Display: Monitor the humidity level in your home.
• 🔋 Battery Status: Check the battery status of your thermostat.
• 🗣️ Siri Integration: Use Siri voice commands to control your thermostat, such as "Hey Siri, set the temperature to 72 degrees."
• 🤖 Automation: Create automation routines and scenes to set your thermostat based on your preferences.

Upcoming Features

• Add support for manually switching between heating and cooling for supported homes
• Add Farenheit support and Display unit switching
• Manage timetable settings
• More testing

Introduction

This homebridge plugin exposes all of the NGBS iCON thermostats for native control.

Note: The thermostat accessory in Home app shows a single button to change the control mode. 'Heat' and 'Cool' show the season the system is running and are the same as manual mode (the thermostat heat / cool the room to the specified temperature and maintain that). 'Off' is the same as Eco mode (the thermostats set the temperature to a low / high value, specified in the documentation of the manufacturer, to turn off the heating / cooling). Changing the temperature when set to 'Off' turns off Eco mode and starts heating / cooling if the desired value is higher / lower, than the current temperature.

Compatibility

Although I have not personally conducted rigorous tests to verify this claim, preliminary indications suggest that the plugin exhibits potential compatibility not only with the NGBS iCON 200 series thermostats but also with the iCON 100 series devices.

Installation

To install the NGBS iCON plugin:

• Install the plugin through Homebridge Config UI X or manually by:

$ npm install -g homebridge-ngbs-icon-thermostat

• Configure within Homebridge Config UI X or edit config.json manually e.g:

"platforms": [
  {
    "platform": "NGBSiCONThermostat",
    "username": "YOUR_NGBS_USERNAME",
    "password": "YOUR_NGBS_PASSWORD",
    "iCONid": "YOUR_NGBS_HOME_ID",
    "manualHeatingCoolingSwitch": false
  }
]

Configuration settings

• username is the username for the NGBS web interface
• password is the password for the NGBS web interface
• iCONid is the id for the specific Home you want to add
• manualHeatingCoolingSwitch (optional, defaults to false) lets the thermostats ask the controller to switch between heating and cooling

The plugin will add all of the thermostats associated with the given Home.

Heating and cooling

Each thermostat reports the season the system is actually running — Heat while it is heating, Cool while it is cooling — so the Home app draws a warm dial in winter and a cold one in summer. Off stands in for Eco mode.

Most installations, apartments in particular, switch between heating and cooling centrally, and the controller simply ignores a thermostat that asks to switch on its own. Such a thermostat still accepts Heat and Cool — the tile in the Home app uses them to switch a thermostat back on, so turning them down would leave the tile unable to do it — it just takes them to mean "on" and goes on reporting the season the system is in. The same goes for Auto, which older scenes and automations may still ask for.

If your system does let the thermostats decide, turn on manualHeatingCoolingSwitch and Heat and Cool will ask the controller for the season and be remembered. There is no way to ask in advance whether it will accept the change, so the plugin tries it and watches the result: if the season has not changed within about half a minute, it logs a warning and goes back to following the system for the rest of the session.

If heating and cooling come out the wrong way round, run Homebridge in debug mode and look for the season: line — it prints everything the controller says about the season, which is what an issue about it needs.

Troubleshooting

I will add a proper FAQ...

Getting help

If you need help troubleshooting, create an issue and I'll try to help you fix it.

Also it's always good to restart the HomeKit app after changes made to the Homebridge configuration as HomeKit does some background cleanup to the states and presence of devices in its accessory database.