Death of "Works with Nest"

[marcusone]

Shouldn't there be a way to integrate from Google Assistant, like one can for Calendar, Docs, etc?

[avpman]

I for one will just grab another thermostat that will work with HomeSeer. But agree with upstatemike that this might be part of something larger.

Hi, I realize this is an old thread. But I'm just now in the process of finding a reliable thermostat to use with HS. I would prefer a z-wave unit that could be natively supported by HS ZWave and bypassing any company's API requirement or the dependence on a plug-in that may or may not be supported in the future. Any ideas? Thank you!

[joegr]

Hi, I realize this is an old thread. But I'm just now in the process of finding a reliable thermostat to use with HS. I would prefer a z-wave unit that could be natively supported by HS ZWave and bypassing any company's API requirement or the dependence on a plug-in that may or may not be supported in the future. Any ideas? Thank you!

One thought is Honeywell-TH6320ZW2003

[RoChess]

I've got three of the Remotec Z-Wave+ thermostats, and super happy with them. Still forced to run them on battery due to inability to run new wires to units through walls, but switching to Energizer Lithium batteries they last over a year and I'm still fine with it.

The price, now that stock is available again, is a lot higher then what I paid for them -- https://www.zwaveproducts.com/produc...mostat-zts-500 -- but still an option.

[BobSpen]

I've got three of the Remotec Z-Wave+ thermostats, and super happy with them. Still forced to run them on battery due to inability to run new wires to units through walls, but switching to Energizer Lithium batteries they last over a year and I'm still fine with it.

The price, now that stock is available again, is a lot higher then what I paid for them -- https://www.zwaveproducts.com/produc...mostat-zts-500 -- but still an option.

RoChess,
Question on the Remotec unit: With what precision does the thermostat report "temperature" to HS ?( is it 75 F or 75.3 F--how many decimal places?) Similarly can you adjust off-set(calibration) in tenths of Fahrenheits.

[RoChess]

Question on the Remotec unit: With what precision does the thermostat report "temperature" to HS ?( is it 75 F or 75.3 F--how many decimal places?) Similarly can you adjust off-set(calibration) in tenths of Fahrenheits.

They are whole degrees, but I did once do a rescan and it added sensors with added single-decimal precision, but then it started acting weird with multiple device entries, so I removed entire node, re-added it and was back to single digit. Think it got confused into Celsius mode, which does support decimals.

However, it has full control over swing, differential, and dead-band, because clearly setting a temperature at 74F in a room that got chilly at 60F, doesn't mean you'll get 74F immediately when a 250,000 BTU forced-air heater starts blasting heat into that room, but it's also not going to stay perfect at 74.0F when the heat source is killed and the cold outside causes the temperature to drop. I'm using them on a very old water-baseboard heater unit.

Normal behavior is that room set to 74F first heats up to towards 75F, thermostat kills heat source, and room cools down towards 73F and heater kicks back in. That's on the 2-degree default swing.

The unit is not fancy on the output, and just simple LED-dot based, but the units fit well within the room decor, and I rarely control the temperature on it. When I return home, and walk past it, it is nice to tap it anywhere and see the "current" temp immediately, versus trying to fetch my phone.

Also was an easier choice to make when I bought them at $64.99 a piece as they are now almost $20 more and that opens up comparison to other brands/models.

Aside from switching out the included batteries after a short time (from massive amount of testing) for DollarTree batteries ($1 for 8-pack) and then realizing that the battery levels dropped very quick, I'm at almost a full year now on Energizer Lithium batteries, and here are the SDJ-Health results on primary thermostat:

Remotec Thermostat (Main)
Last Good Check: 12/10/2020 6:26 PM
Battery Level: 95% (20)
Battery Rate: 0.0% per day
>100% to 95% in 331 days
>0.02% per day [6% per year]
Battery Life: 331 days
Status: Healthy

Danger with Lithium is that the 95% could indicate they are almost dead and will all of a sudden just die on me (though in my experience they last well into the 50-60%), but they have a shelf-life of 20-years and I buy 24-packs to keep ready for those events on my sensors/locks/etc. For now the batteries beat the alternative of breaking open walls/floors/ceilings to run three wires through the house.

PS: They have been rock-solid to keep the house warm during finicky Ohio weather since I bought them 16 months ago.

[BobSpen]

Does anyone on the Forum know of a z-wave thermostat that reports ambient temperature to HS with .1 degree accuracy? And does not require a plugin...

[RoChess]

Does anyone on the Forum know of a z-wave thermostat that reports ambient temperature to HS with .1 degree accuracy? And does not require a plugin...

All my temperature sensors (Aeotec/Fibaro/Remotec/Enerwave) report temperatures with .1 degree accuracy (some slightly more accurate than others), which is an additional feature to their motion/UV/humidity/etc capabilities. Each room that has a thermostat has at least one of those to do basic room occupancy detection (and turn on lights/appliances). Thermostats are often not located at the best place to measure temperature if you wish to save energy by focusing on occupation zones.

That is the major thing I miss from my old Nest is that it took into account sun-rise, outside temperature estimates, and lower BTU usage ahead of time. I got some of that automation working, but it's just not as smooth as the way Google figured it out.

Curious why you need .1 degree accuracy in the thermostats themselves, as you can control it with any other sensor value if HomeSeer is able to do so.

Of course obvious reason is that you can expand your .1 degree temperature sensor array without buying separate sensors, but perhaps you have other reasons.

[TC1]

That is the major thing I miss from my old Nest is that it took into account sun-rise, outside temperature estimates, and lower BTU usage ahead of time. I got some of that automation working, but it's just not as smooth as the way Google figured it out.

This the exact reason i gave up trying to do these types of calculations/automation on my own and switched from a Z-wave thermostat to EcoBees. Their algorithms learned the temperature coefficient of my house relative to the outside weather conditions, which means if I want the house at 70F at 6am it knows *exactly* when to turn on the heat overnight so that it's precisely that temp at that time, without wasting any extra energy. Plus their room temperature sensors measure temp and occupancy and adjust home/away status automatically, and help average out the climate across only the occupied rooms.

[RoChess]

Here are 60 certified Z-Wave thermostats, and none that I can see that support .1 degree accuracy. Some show .5F on display, but you wanted .1 accuracy.

https://products.z-wavealliance.org/...es/10/products

Maybe expand to WiFi or Zigbee?

[Guest]

This the exact reason i gave up trying to do these types of calculations/automation on my own and switched from a Z-wave thermostat to EcoBees. Their algorithms learned the temperature coefficient of my house relative to the outside weather conditions, which means if I want the house at 70F at 6am it knows *exactly* when to turn on the heat overnight so that it's precisely that temp at that time, without wasting any extra energy. Plus their room temperature sensors measure temp and occupancy and adjust home/away status automatically, and help average out the climate across only the occupied rooms.

May I ask what is the model you have? I might just buy that for my dad’s house for Christmas

[RoChess]

This the exact reason i gave up trying to do these types of calculations/automation on my own and switched from a Z-wave thermostat to EcoBees.

Was high on my list to buy as a replacement to Nest, but with the items in my Amazon cart, I did one round of final research and came across all the horror stories of API failures, delays, risk of cloud infrastructure dissappearing (don't see company going bankrupt like some Kickstarter/Indigogo startups, but they could pull the same stunt Google did), and it puts everything on ISP to never go down (deal with quite the amount of power outages and internet issues).

The benefit I have is that Google was never able to learn my erratic schedule in the 14-day learning period (sometimes I work at night, sometimes during the day), or anytime after, so I was well prepared with handling the scripting side to that (in Luna on a Vera3 controller). Just that Google still kicked in the weather knowledge when I would script or manually tell "start heat now, because I want 70F in this 50F room in 2 hours from now when I wake up" that it would shut the heat off an hour into it, because it was aware the sun was expected to rise and heat the room up for me slowly in that hour wasting as little energy as possible. Whereas with pure scripting the room would be at 70F well ahead of time and then waste those extra BTUs that the sun would have provided.

I'm no "prepper" by any means, but I just don't like full-reliance on the cloud. I'm fine with it complimenting, but everything has to still fully work when internet is gone.

That is why HomeSeer itself was such an easy choice for me.

[TC1]

I'm no "prepper" by any means, but I just don't like full-reliance on the cloud. I'm fine with it complimenting, but everything has to still fully work when internet is gone.

That is why HomeSeer itself was such an easy choice for me.

But that's just it, the EcoBees (and maybe the Nests?) don't rely fully on the cloud, in that if your Internet connectivity is down they still work.

I totally agree with your sentiment in terms of keeping as much automation/control local so that if Internet is down everything still works. But the cost and time savings (I don't want to spend time coding) from the cloud data storage and analysis is tremendous. I'm positive that my Ecobees have already paid for themselves in heating cost savings, and more importantly, high WAF payback.

[avpman]

Was high on my list to buy as a replacement to Nest, but with the items in my Amazon cart, I did one round of final research and came across all the horror stories of API failures, delays, risk of cloud infrastructure dissappearing (don't see company going bankrupt like some Kickstarter/Indigogo startups, but they could pull the same stunt Google did), and it puts everything on ISP to never go down (deal with quite the amount of power outages and internet issues).

The benefit I have is that Google was never able to learn my erratic schedule in the 14-day learning period (sometimes I work at night, sometimes during the day), or anytime after, so I was well prepared with handling the scripting side to that (in Luna on a Vera3 controller). Just that Google still kicked in the weather knowledge when I would script or manually tell "start heat now, because I want 70F in this 50F room in 2 hours from now when I wake up" that it would shut the heat off an hour into it, because it was aware the sun was expected to rise and heat the room up for me slowly in that hour wasting as little energy as possible. Whereas with pure scripting the room would be at 70F well ahead of time and then waste those extra BTUs that the sun would have provided.

I'm no "prepper" by any means, but I just don't like full-reliance on the cloud. I'm fine with it complimenting, but everything has to still fully work when internet is gone.

That is why HomeSeer itself was such an easy choice for me.

Agreed, I'm looking at the Trane XL624 Z-Wave thermostat. They also have a dual Z-Wave and Wi-Fi version, the XL824. My assumption is that model allows control over the cloud via wi-Fi (presumably by a phone app or browser) in addition to local ZWave control. I have the tech support numbers for Trane to follow-up with.

[RoChess]

Twitter is full of comments by users relying on Google Home that were left in the dark and unable to control their equipment during Google service outage. Granted it was only for a short period of 30-minutes or so, but I'm sure quite a few of them are rethinking their expansion plans. So with thermostats being critical during winter to avoid pipes freezing, or stepping out of bed on a cold floor, whatever solution you pick, make sure you run a test with internet cut-off to verify that basic functionality still operates, or that safety thresholds exists.