I have a question regarding the need to purchase the premium Nest Learning Thermostat vs. the standard Nest Thermostat ( about a $120.00 difference in price).
I have a 2 thermostat home one upstairs and one downstairs. I’ve started with the one downstairs to get a feel for things and try to play with how I can automate things in Home Assistant.
With that said I am now making the decision to either get a regular thermostat upstairs or to get the premium learning thermostat which contains features such as learning heat / cool patterns, automating the temperature based on the weather conditions outside etc.
The challenging decision is whether or not I even need to pay the extra $120 for all of these features if I can create automations and detect temperatures with Home Assistant. I also failed to mention that I’ve purchased 3 nest temperature sensors which will go in primary rooms where the heat/cooling would be determined the most.
Is it necessary to go the extra mile and have one of the thermostats as the primary thermostat or with all of the sensors and capabilities of Home Assistant should I be able to come close to automating comfort and heat/cooling regulation ?
First, if you are sticking with Nest and integrating it into HA, then the standard one is fine as you can write your own automations to work with it and there are TONS of examples here on the forums that show how to do climate management and such.
Second, if you have z-wave or zigbee devices on HA, I’d honestly say sell your existing Nest and go with a Honeywell T6 Pro (Zwave) or even a WiFi version. The reason being is two-fold: Google can and (probably will again) shut down the Nest API anytime they feel like it and Nest devices are known for sending out tons of data (some people are OK with this, while others aren’t). The second reason is that for a fraction of what you would pay for a Nest, the Honeywell devices do nearly all the same features without requiring a cloud connection.
I have an Ecobee that I am planning on replacing before summer simply because I hate the cloud aspect of it. The device itself is fine (I actually haven’t touched it in over a year because HA manages it), but I’m really trying to reduce the number of cloud devices I have.
Thank you,
I greatly appreciate that perspective. To be honest I have always been a brand junkie and as I’m starting out with home assistant I have learned that you can really get the job done with a wide variety of options.
With that said I also care very much about privacy which is part of the reason I elected to start building our smart home using Home Assistant rather than depending purely on Google Home and other automation tools that use the cloud.
I will give this some careful thought and also look into the ZWave products as I have not up until this point done any research on those.
Again thank you for the prompt response and suggestions.