In keeping with the theme of moving off of cloud connectivity, I am thinking of replacing my. Nest thermostat. The thermostat drives my 5 room fans (on during heating/cooling and when the house is above 74). I also use the thermometer along with my weather station to drive my house fan (I use it like my AC). So, it’s a central part of my automation.
What are the experiences with non-api driven thermostats out there and what would be the best recommendation?
From what I see the Zen is the only one wit ha built in Device Controller so I bet they have been using that in their testing. They sell on Ebay for about 50-70 new
I haven’t paired mine over yet, but I have a GoControl Thermostat. It’s supposed to be standard Z-Wave. The thermostat it’s a solid unit. No issues in about a year-and-a-half. It can be ran off batteries.
I have the Zen Thermostat, which worked/works well with both ST and Hubitat. (Unfortunately, I still have mine paried to ST because Hubitat doesn’t support reporting or changing the temperature and setpoint via Alexa voice control—yet?) That being said, I find the thermostat itself a bit awkard: the display is an LED matrix that, at least on the white version, is a bit hard to read, and you have to train housemates/spouses/etc. on how to adjust it since you need to tap twice to get to that and more to change the (heat/cool/off/fan only) mode. But my goal is to have it mostly automated and limit manual control, so…it’s really not that bad, plus I usually change it from ActionTiles (and hopefully a Hubitat equivalent at some point soon) anyway if I do need to do it manually.
That being said, I suspect any Z-Wave thermostat would work well or could be made to work easily, and many/most ZigBee/ZHA thermostats could probably be made to work as well, most likely very easily if there’s an ST DTH and Hubitat doesn’t support it natively.
I know you’re asking about Z-wave or Zigbee, but I would seriously consider Ecobee and port this DH to Hubitat. I know it’s still cloud but, since the thermostat has HomeKit support too there’s technically not much standing in the way of local control. I have an Ecobee3 and it runs great without me having to teach it anything. Reliable cloud too. Might be more but, I can recall only three times in the two years I’ve owned it that I haven’t been able to access it remotely for a short period.
I ended up getting a Zen Thermostat and a Radio Z-wave one as well. I’m using the Zen and overall it’s pretty nice. I like some of the advanced programing on the unit itself and using SmartTiles to control it remotely doesn’t suck. I have two settings. One is auto which has a 70 heating and 78 cooling for when I’m home and the other auto which is set for 68 heating and 82 cooling when I’m away. I’m using the HSM to switch between the two and it works just like the Nest I had.
I’m also using it as a temperature monitor along with some of the other monitors throughout the house to drive other devices as well.
There were two objectives for the switch to a Z-Wave from my Nest. The first was to get away from the cloud method. I don’t need any API access or a company sending me reports telling how often the HVAC is on/off.
The second was that I wanted to locate and control all of the logic in the automation hub itself. I have all the tools to make the thermostat do exactly what I want, when I want and for a lower price point. I don’t see the value add in using a smart home automation system to tell a smart thermostat what to do.
I think the automated “smart” thermostats are best placed with those who aren’t going down the full home automation road (I repurposed the Nest to a friends house who doesn’t want the full monty). A Zen was $80, so with the price of the Hubitat and my temperature sensors, I’ve got more than I could ever have with an Ecobee or a Nest.
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