Add boost_duration for WaterHeaterEntity

[lboue]

Some water heaters feature a boost mode.
I propose to add a new attribute to specify the duration of this boost? For example boost_duration.

It is mandatory for Matter Water Heater device type (Water Heater Management Cluster). It would be usefull for Matter implementation:

• Support for Matter 1.4 Water Heater core#131505

There is a struct for that:

class WaterHeaterBoostInfoStruct(
    duration: uint = 0,
    oneShot: bool | None = None,
    emergencyBoost: bool | None = None,
    temporarySetpoint: int | None = None,
    targetPercentage: uint | None = None,
    targetReheat: uint | None = None
)

We have to call a command to enable boot made with boostInfo keyword argument:

      await self.send_device_command(
          clusters.WaterHeaterManagement.Commands.Boost(boostInfo=boostInfo)
      )

Best regards

[frenck]

Hi there @lboue 👋

Thanks for opening up an architectural discussion. We have discussed your proposal in an architectural core meeting and decided not to move forward with this proposal.

While this is part of Matter, we don't see other integration able to benefit from this at this point in time. Therefore, we thing this should be a custom feature (using other entity platforms) for the Matter integration for now.

If things change in the future, we may revisit a proposal like this.

../Frenck

[lboue]

The problem is as follows:
To activate boost mode, the user must choose the duration.
To use another type of entity, you must have a Matter attribute to associate with it. This is not the case here. It's a value passed as an argument to the boost activation command. So I don't really see how the solution proposed here could work.
You'd have to be able to create a select/number entity attached to the WaterHeater entity, but I don't really see how.

[emontnemery]

Matter can implement a custom service for its water heaters for controlling boost mode, including the duration.