What I like and use are different than my home automation desires for a thermostat.
I have a Honeywell Prestige IAQ thermostat. It is an excellent thermostat, it has tons of inputs and outputs so you can utilize water sensors, indoor/outdoor temp sensors, duct dampers, humidifiers, dehumidifiers, dry contacts, and more. It does heating and cooling run time tracking, as well as delta-T tracking. I got it primarily because I needed a 4 stage heating, 2 stage cooling thermostat, and it is one of the few on the market. Even better is the control relays aren't in the 'stat, they are in the equipment module at the furnace so I don't have to listen to the click of relays all night long. So far so good.
It has remote control through Honeywell Total Comfort Connect app, and that app works fairly reliably, but is very basic. I had to use the Redlink gateway to get remote control. It works, but I wish Honeywell exposed the sensors, diagnostics, and more via the app. Could be better, but still OK.
It isn't all that great integrating with -any- home automation system, Hubitat included. I have used it with Wink, IFTTT, and Stringify and as mentioned above, Hubitat. It just doesn't work consistently with home automation. There isn't enough exposed via the app to do any real cool tricks either.
On the other hand, where are the Z-wave or Zigbee thermostats that can do a fraction of what my thermostat does? None of the ones that are or have ever been available can even work with my system. I don't even have a huge complicated house either, just a 1300 sf ranch with basement. I just wanted a high-end (for a middle class family anyway) HVAC system that controlled all aspects of HVAC without 5 different controls or standalone systems.
Yup, Same as when the Internet to your house is down.
Things have gotten much better since then, especially if you use something other than the native Hubitat integration. Ecobee outages are infrequent and brief these days, much more reliable than a year ago.
Understood. But people should know that the thermostat continues to function even when the cloud is down - scheduled Climate/Program changes continue to change.
And for the Apple users out there, Apple HomeKit has (the only) direct local API support for the Ecobees - you can monitor and change setpoints remotely even if the Apple, Ecobee and/or Hubitat Cloud services are unavailable. And you can enable HomeKit<-->Hubitat integration with a simple (and free) Homebridge setup running on a $40 Raspberry pi...
I totally understand your needs and frustrations @Ryan780; I just wanted to let people know that the experience can be different these days...
I sold my Nest and bought a used GoControl for like $25. Nests and Ecobees on eBay sell like hotcakes for top dollar, so if you need to do it I wouldn't hesitate.
I like the GoControl. Lots of features, lots of functionality. It seems a little rough with the starts and stops compared to the Nest - almost like Nest had finer control over the fan speeds and ramping ups/downs. I don't know if that's possible with a simple W/Y wire, but maybe they figured something out.
It's somewhat nondescript in terms of design, but makes up for it with control. I dislike that I can hear relays clicking inside when it changes states. It doesn't have humidifier control, but I have a separate automatic humidistat for that.
I'm back to using my 2 3rd generation Nest thermostats. I tried the Centralite Pearl for a few days, but just didn't like the overall look, feel and operation of them. Compared to the Nest, they look and feel cheap. I know others say they look good, but they just aren't for me and my family. In addition, I found that I missed being able to easily see my daily usage within the Nest app. Yes, I know I can check logs in Hubitat, but it's much easier to get a visual representation in the Nest app. Lastly, I realized that I wanted to maintain a system separate from Hubitat for my HVAC controls.
