I’m looking to replace a “dumb” thermostat in my house.
My biggest problem is, the Family (well MIL) will be the primary user of said thermostat. Were it up to me, i’d just duplicate the setup I have in my detached garage (ESP32 and 4channel relay board, with remote temp sensors).
My second biggest problem is many of the smart thermostats requiring internet access and control only being available through their External API. Ideally I’d like something that is 100% local control, with opt in for any remote data.
What setups do you have? do you like it? is it “normal” person friendly?
if you’re not the primary user, why even upgrade it?
I’m happy with my ecobees.
I’ve had an ecobee for five years and it’s been great… EXCEPT for that when they were doing a server migration or something a few years back. I swear for several months it was completely unreliable with Google Assistant and the Android App not being able to reach it half the time.
Like the OP said, it uses an external call to cloud servers and you have to trust that those servers will stay online and be reliable. It’s been rock solid for the last few years so I think I was just part of some growing pains, but my god I was pissed during that time and about to buy a Z-wave thermostat.
Ecobees work local-only if you use the HomeKit integration in HA (no Apple devices or cloud connection required).
Highly recommend the Honeywell ZWave thermostat. Local only, still allows schedules and such from the touch screen, with control in HA.
This is what i went with. I haven’t setup Home Assistant yet but i like the thermostat so far. I dont believe mine comes with schedules but there are different models.
This is the one i went with: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07HFL7R44?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title
I really jist wanted the ability to use Home assistant with it so it will work for me.
+1 for the T6, I have one that was a perfect drop-in replacement for my previous Honeywell thermostat. The only bit of fiddling I had to do was enabling Auto Heat/Cool mode in the ZwaveJS2MQTT dashboard.
I’d also recommend the SimpleThermostat Lovelace card, it’s much more customizable than the default card.
An ecobee should work as long as you have a C wire. I haven’t tried the ecobee integration, but instead I use it with the built in Homekit integration. The only downside to HomeKit is I can’t put the thermostat on a separate VLAN from Home Assistant.
This is my solve for this stuff too. I do all of my automation through HomeKit because it will work on a local wireless without an internet connection.
Biggest problem with staying in the HomeKit ecosystem is that Android phones are kind of fucked if you lock things down to pure HomeKit.
Also, Siri can be a frustrating POS sometimes.
I’m using the Drayton Wiser smart thermostat, it has a good HACS integration that runs fully locally.
I’ve also seen some generic Zigbee thermostats available which might be an option.
