I'm relatively new to Hubitat and home automation in general. I've got a bunch of lights and sensors working and I'm learning as I go..
My question is, thermostats, do I actually need one?
My central heating and hot water run off an oil powered boiler which used to have a basic timer/thermostat to turn it on/off. A while back I "upgraded" that to a Hive thermostat which is very pretty but ultimately just turns the boiler on/off.
As I've now got a Hubitat (which I'm told won't connect to the Hive unit) is there any reason why I shouldn't just ditch the Hive? All my smartthings motion sensors give temperature info, so I know the temp in every room in the house and I could turn the boiler on/off with a Sonoff basic.
I would recommend keeping a dedicated thermostat. Unless you’re OK with you house freezing or being an oven if something should cause the hub to lock up.
Not me. Thermostat, Alarm and Smoke/CO systems are dedicated devices. If I can make them integrate with disruption of their core functionality and it’s useful, I’m OK with that. Othwise I leave them to do the job they were specifically designed to do.
100% with you on this. Matter of fact, when I lived up north (~20 years ago), I always had a backup mechanical thermostat wired into the furnace to prevent pipe freezes if the battery operated thermostat failed. Now that I live down south (in an area with high humidity), I have a backup mechanical thermostat to ensure the house never gets over 82F to avoid mold issues.
"Unless you’re OK with you house freezing or being an oven if something should cause the hub to lock up."-
That's a great point, but then the Hive still runs on batteries that can go flat and connects wirelessly which could fail and I wouldn't know until the house started getting cold....
Thermostat, Alarm and Smoke/CO systems are dedicated devices.
Same here. And I keep an old Honeywell t/stat and baseplate in the hvac closet just in case. The only environmental system I've considered running off HE and sensors would be humidifiers & dehumidifiers.
What happens if batteries go flat when you're out of town and there's sub-zero temperatures?
"Hope for the best, but plan for the worst ....."
I'd recommend wiring in an old-fashioned mechanical thermostat like this, in parallel with the new fancy WiFi unit. I have something like this directly mounted on the furnace/air-handler.
When I lived up north, I had a mechanical thermostat set at 45, so the house would never get below that even if my battery-powered thermostat failed.
I don't see any indication of Zigbee. Proprietary frequency would be my guess. OK, those can be made to be fairly robust. I would have to assume there's some kind of safety built into the receiver. May not guard against freezing since it's intended for the British market that doesn't see freezing temperatures.
It's different and I'm sure convenient for the type of installation locations it has be located in for the UK market.
ok, so I have an issue... probably a very noob issue...
I managed to install the driver and add a virtual device using it. It shows on the device page but I don't understand how to assign it to my actual Hive thermostat.
I managed to download the Hive (connect) app and install it (including the workaround blanking line 68 or whatever) and successfully saved it. It shows in the "Apps Code" list, but when I go to the Apps page to add it there is no "Add User App" button, only the "Add Built-in App" button.
I've clearly done something wrong (or failed to do something I should've)
