So I have a Honeywell 9000 that I found a custom driver for, but I couldn’t get it to work properly. I’m wondering what thermostat will fit my needs best, so I’m referring to the experts. I want custom set points to trigger on presence of two phones. So heat goes down when we leave and turns up when we come back. I want the thermostat to turn off after a certain interval when a door or window is open. And I want it to be a fairly easy setup. I’m wondering if hubitat control will work I hear it’s not exactly great at presence detection. I have also looked at ecobee and had one person offer to sell me theirs since they went to a different controller that is proprietary to there hvac system. I’m wondering if I have better luck running the thermostat off of HomeKit but that doesn’t solve arm disarm from presence Should I run homebridge off a pie and then an ecobee. Does HomeKit update hubitat on presence or is it a one way communication?
I have found that the hubitat mobile app is not very good for presence. However, I have found that the iPhone WiFi Presence Sensor from joelwetzel is reliable. There is a delay when we leave before it notices, but I don't consider that to be the same as reliability. Two of the residents of my household also use Life360 and combined presence, which improves reliability and response time when leaving. The other members of my household consider Life360 to be too invasive to privacy.
That should be easy to do in rule machine if you have good door and window sensors in hubitat.
People's idea of what counts as easy to set up varies. If you are the type of person that would even consider running homebridge on a pie and integrating via that, then I suspect you will find hubitat rule machine pretty straight forward.
My preference if hubitat integration is important is to stay away from cloud based products like ecobee. My favorite is the Zen thermostat. I have also heard good things about the Honeywell T6.
You need to break it down into two pieces to make it easier.
First try solving your presence options. Look at using a combined presence app (in the forums) and combining more than one method. I personally use a network based presence option and life360 together and its flawless. Some done like life360 due to their privacy but I think they released a bubbles feature to help address that. Do some testing by setting up some notifications to notify you when people arrive and leave to ensure things are working as you like.
Then figure out your thermostat options. If you want to avoid the cloud avoid the ecobee and go with something zwave. There are a few options mentioned here and in the forums. As long as the commands to set the setpoints are available you can then program what you want via RM in regards to doors/windows and presence. If I had to do it again I would have avoided the ecobee and looked for something zwave based. Maybe next time.
Its not easy as no one solution works for everybody and it will take some testing and research but in the end it will be worth it.
