Evohome dummy-zone for Outside Temp

[philchillbill]

On the older Evotouch you could display the outside temp in the status line on the display but this is (sadly) not possible on the newer native-WiFi version. If you have a HGI80 and are not using all 12 zones in your system, you could create a dummy zone called 'Outside' and bind a temperature sensor to it. It might even be possible to hijack the unused DHW temp display if you have a combi-boiler and are not using Domoticz for DHW (I'm not).

I guess the problem with this is that it would be a controlled-zone in Evohome's mind and it would need a setpoint and would likely even generate heat-demand. Setting the 'outside' set-point to the minimum of 5 deg would be fine in the summer because the measured outside temp would (hopefully!) be higher and no heat demand would be generated but in the winter if it's (say) -5 outside then there would be redundant heat demand. Or am I reasoning incorrectly?

Just curious if anybody ever played with this idea?

[Ralphpy]

Exactly what i did.
The new software allows for a electric heat zone type which should not generate any boiler demand as i understand it.
To avoid the 5 degree minimum problem anyway (and as a bonus get nice temp dependent coloring ), I send a setpoint PermanentOverride at the same time.

[philchillbill]

Actually, I'm already on the beta for the new firmware that displays the Outside Temp directly on the main EvoTouch screen and it works fine so no need for this idea any more