Hive Active Heating PowerShell Control with PoSHive
Last week I announced PoSHue, my PowerShell 5 class for controlling and scripting Philips Hue lights – this week sees another announcement along the same lines.
I recently bought a Hive Active Heating system to remotely control my home’s heating and thought it would be pretty cool to be able to access that same level of control (and automation) using PowerShell.
PoSHive is the result. It’s another GitHub project meaning anyone can get a copy, fork it, branch and contribute.
UPDATE: It’s now also available from the PowerShell Gallery.
Install by simply using:
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Install-Module -Name PoSHive |
When you want to ensure you have the latest version:
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Update-Module -Name PoSHive |
Why would I want access to Hive using PowerShell? The purpose of this class is to enable you to use PowerShell (v5) scripting to exert more powerful logic control over the state of your heating system. In its basic form, it allows you to set the heating mode of the system and the temperature, including the Boost option, Holiday mode and even to advance the system to the next event. PoSHive offers most (if not all) the features exposed by the app and website but using only PowerShell.
I realised a different benefit for PoSHive as I was thinking about use cases and realised that it opens the Hive Ecosystem (heating only) to those with disabilities that means it’s hard or even impossible to use an app on a phone or the website simply due to impaired sight or the fine motor control that you may need to use a mouse or point with a finger. The app offers disabled users the chance to simply type commands and have the heating system respond to them. No fiddly apps or websites to contend with.
Here’s a basic example showing how to get the current temperature recorded by the thermostat. The first 4 lines of this script can even be included in your PowerShell profile so all you need to type is $Hive.Login() and you’re logged on.
Please check out the project on GitHub and contribute if you can or just let me know how you use PoSHive in your script through the comments section below.
The project is not sanctioned by or affiliated with British Gas in any way and is based on API data formats and responses I’ve observed for my own Hive Active Heating system. The class is designed to work only with the Heating only Hive system (I don’t have the hot water system unfortunately) and is likely also not to work with Multi-zone Hive systems.
-Lewis
