So, I am sure there will be some debate and maybe its just a matter of choice.
I currently have 1 nest thermostat and need to purchase another. I am currently unable to get Nest to connect into Hue (user limit reached) and I know that Nest is more of a closed system.
What are people recommending out there in the HE world as the better thermostat. Below is a list of things that are important to me (that I know of) and I am sure there are other things that are important that I haven't realized.
HE Support
Google Home
I like the idea of the thermostat learning though I haven't really noticed any learning going on (but I could be wrong and maybe that is why we don't touch the thermostats much).
Saving money is always a good deal
We have a downstairs (main floor) unit and an upstairs unit.
Because of the Nest closed system I am sure I am not going go with nest cameras and other nest products (as much as I like them and would like to go that route).
What do you guys like about thermostats and why go with this or that?
Now I also would like to get smoke alarms as well I am leaning towards the nest and will open up another topic for that.
I too am very interested in this. I have two 2Gig CT100 thermostats that I would love to use on the Hubitat. (I am on Smartthings right now, and am interested in moving over once I can determine compatibility with some of my devices.) I checked the compatibility lists, but many of my z-wave devices aren't on it yet. That probably won't stop me from getting the HE and seeing what works and what doesn't :).
I have a CT100 and it works fine on Hubitat. The only glitch is that I have a refresh rule running once a minute. It doesn't always reflect the changing operatingState without it.
I now use HE itself as the thermostat. I have several multisensors and I use the average temp app by @Cobra to feed that to a virtual thermostat. I then use a simple rule that switches an Everspring AN179 switch connected to the boiler contacts, on or off dependant on the state of the thermostat . That way I have totally flexibility and control of heating setpoint, timing etc. I have an old Android tablet that uses Sharptools to give a Heating Control screen in lieu of a physical thermostat. I do have a standard Wireless roomstat also connected to the boiler that could take over if HE failed for any reason, but it hasn't been needed so far.
I use an even dumber one.. Honeywell WiFi Thermostat.
The only thing it doesn't do programmatically is switch from Heat to Cool. So that's what I have Hubitat do. When the weather changes, I can have a weather app push the virtual Heat button (or virtual Cool button.) Automation, twice a year. I have a Honeywell TCC driver that responds to the virtual buttons and does the real work.
I believe this is overkill too. I really could just have HomeKit automation detect a Hubitat Weather App switch and do the real work. Certainly that would have saved me all those hours of debugging the driver
Seems, folks have applied a version of my thinking for ceiling fans (high quality dumb fan, with controls added) to thermostats. My first device was an Ecobee3 (Costco price, BGE rebate, no native voice control). I do have day/night schedule, but away was removed and replaced with presence via Life360 and IFTTT. No motion/presence sensors yet, other then the Ecobee3 and one of its remote sensors.
It’s a major improvement over the dumb schedule only unit that proceeded it. Our cooling costs dropped $50.00/month, but I suspect other combinations would achieve similar results.
Pondering a CT100 to replace the office thermostat vs, another Ecobee3 now.
I'm happy with Ecobee 3. Most HE users seem to prefer some flavor of Z-Wave though. My needs are simple. Control the temp and humidity in my house, go into away mode when I'm not there. The Ecobee and its remote sensors do that quite well. Alexa and Google Home control is a nice bonus and no HE integration along with the many other hubs and bridges that support it, make it a good choice.
Of course, you get all that with Nest, except for remote humidity monitoring/control, but now that there's HE integration, that's easily accomplished too. Just at a higher overall cost since most of the really reliable remote humidity sensors are expensive in comparison to Ecobee. Which is a good argument for the lower initial cost of a dumb thermostat and HE as the brains of the operation.
No cloud, also less expensive.
In my case i started with ecobees back in the day and was constantly fighting the built in scheduling.
The bottom line is if you are having your automations control the thermostats operations, then why purchase a device with features that you arent using.
I'm also on Ecobee, been great for what's its worth. Schedule Recovery mode is a key feature for me. But I could otherwise see using a setup as you suggest.
I use a mixture of schedule and presence with Ecobee. I have no schedule for away mode. I try to do that with presence on HE (currently not working well, due to the bug on the Ecobee integration). When I arrive I have it setup to resume the schedule with a custom Command (which as you point out, is admittedly not easy on HE and unsupported in IFTTT).
Just ordered a couple of Centralite pearls - I like the looks of those. I will be selling off my Nest (I like things to match up).
It will be interesting - going to use sensors and really get into the nuts of HE figuring it out. Any pointers on how you guys setup rules and such to control your thermostats?
Figured I'd chime in with the thermostats I've been using.
At home, I've got an Ecobee 3 + Sensors. No complaints there, but I haven't done much with it since I'll be moving, soon.
At work, we use the Vivint CT200 (two of them, actually). They seem to work really well (no C-wire at the office), plus, they look great. They also seem to work well with HE, which is a must.
Mine are pretty simple I have 4 modes, 3 of the 4 have different heating setpoints.
Two of the mode changes are driven by presence or the lack there of.
One is invoked via a virtual switch in Alexa, the other has a time restriction and basically sets the morning temp boost back if people are still in the house past 9am.
In addition to running the stat, these mode changes drive restrictions within other rules (disabling certain motion lighting instances), turn off all the lights, lock all the doors, turn on stuff in the morning ect.
All of this is done via RM, although there's other ways of doing this with our built in apps too...
Confused a bit Doug. I was using IFTTT to resume schedule via Alexa long before there was Ecobee integration with Alexa. Today I do it with Stringify so I can use an Alexa Routine and don't have to say "Alexa, Tell IFTTT to...", but cause I really dislike that phrasing. You could trigger this from Hubitat via IFTTT. Another way to do this would be to use Google Assistant Relay and silently send the command from HE via Assistant Relay (confusingly Google calls that "Custom Command"), which @ogiewon made simple to use with [CC] at the beginning of a TTS phrase. And perhaps this is what you're talking about anyway.
Certainly that would have saved me all those hours of debugging the driver 
