I’ve done a bunch of research on smart thermostats recently, mostly from NY Times, Popular Mechanics, and Consumer Reports. These two models consistently rank high:
I need a thermostat that can handle a house with multiple appliances like room heaters, ACs, refrigerator, and small devices. I want something efficient and easy to control via Wi-Fi.
If you’ve tried either, or have another suggestion, I’d really appreciate your advice!
Check out the zigbee thermostats in AliExpress, you can use it to set the temperature in the room, or to change the modes, and in OpenHAB define what does actually get turned on.
It is Missing quite a few items present on the T6 Pro like fan state and heating/cooling state
Home/Away presence support is ONLY through the First Alert app, NOT local
It just snapped into my previous T6 Pro mounting bracket.
I really wanted LOCAL Home/Away presence support so I’m Going back to the T6 Pro
Honeywell T6 Pro Z-Wave
Z-Wave is a LOCAL protocol and supported by OH
A much richer implementation compared to the X2S
I’m still working on LOCAL Home/Away presence support. I am fairly confident I will get it working
It has worked very reliably for the last 4 years
While you can still find it available online, it is discontinued
You will get ZERO support from Residio as it is supposed to be sold ONLY through PRO installers. They DO NOT care to answer ANY questions.
Every PRO installer I reached out to was absolutely uninterested in providing support UNLESS I would install a security system with them, and my impression with them was
Z-Wave? What’s that?
There you go. I would discourge you from the Ecobee, but it will work fine
The X2S is BRAND NEW, available this month
If I were you and the T6 PRO is out of the question, I’d suggest the X2S
I second smitopher’s recommendation of the Z-Wave Honeywell T6 pro. I bought it second hand through e-bay and has been working without any issues for about 1 year. I can even use the HOME/AWAY settings.
The one thing I don’t like is that it has 2 temperature setting one for cooling and one for heating, instead of a single temperature like every other thermostat I have used, but that is nothing a little bit of programming cannot take care of.
I used to have a Honeywell WiFi T5 Lyric but the OH binding did not work reliably for me.
If it’s like the WiFi version of the T6 Pro, there’s a menu option that can change that. However, that means you have to manually (or though OH) change the thermostat between heating and cooling mode. It won’t change over automatically when you only use the one setpoint, which makes sense because you don’t want it flapping between heating and cooling when the ambient temp is near the setpoint. There has to be hysteresis.
I prefer to have the two setpoints to save on energy anyway.
I like the idea of going with Matter if possible. Zigbee and Zwave are fine, but Matter appears to be taking over. The Google Next thermostat here says it is Matter certified. Then you can use it directly with Amazon, Google, Apple systems and also be able to control with OH. There will be a few bumps in the road with Matter as an early adopter.
Please share your dark magic. Are you talking about Economy Heat and Economy Cool thermostat modes?
Mine is the 2003 variant. What is yours? 2007 variant?
As far as I can tell, I need to go to the OpenSmartHouse z-wave database and modify to T6 Pro entry to enable the CommandClass Basic V1 to have a Thing channel where I can link an Item. I’m waiting on getting write permission from the site admin.
I could not find the setting you mentioned but I already use a single temperature setpoint and I have a rule that checks if the thermostat is in heating or cooling mode and sends the correct heating setpoint or cooling setpoint to the thermostat.
It’s hidden away in Installer Setup Menus. Like the post I linked to mentioned, see pg. 11 of the linked to manual. You have to press the Menu button for five seconds to get to the “advanced menu”.
I’ve used an Ecobee model 3 for years. I agree with others that it does require the Internet, so there is a risk of the device no longer remotely controllable if the business is under. That said, for years up to today, it has been working very well.
Yeah, I saw this too.
They do switch the Thermostat to Away and hold either the cool or heat set points until you set the mode back to Auto
Not quite what I want.
I have tried geofencing on two thermostats, a Lux and a Honeywell, and two people so using two phones, neither one worked consistently for me. The geofencing would work for a while and then it would just stop updating home/away for one or both of the phones.
