The Simple Thermostat card worked very well for me. I understand that support for this card had lapsed and today after applying updates the card simply disappeared from the related view. Reinstalling the card did not help as the resulting card when added simply appeared as a place holder for the card. When a second instance was added to the view, the entire view became uneditable. No cards could be edited or added. For now I am using the default thermostat card. I tried the Better Thermostat card but when trying to modify some things that didn't seem possible. Referring to the Better Thermostat information page only led to the betterthermostat.org page which seems completely unrelated to the Better Thermostat card that I have installed.
Update: I see now that there are two different Better Thermostat cards. The one I am using the labeled as Better Thermostat UI and the other just Better Thermostat.