I’m new to the forum and even newer to HA – in fact I haven’t even installed it yet.
But I am currently outfitting my new (to me) house with lots of smart devices and since I will definitely be a HA user once I get my house in order. In the meanwhile I’m trying to make sure any device I buy can be integrated into HA someday.
Thermostats were a challenge. I have baseboard heaters so I need line voltage themostats which really limits the options a lot. I evaluated Mysa and Sinope themostats and ended up buying a few Wifi-based units. Like them a lot, however I’m worried about HA integration potential and, even more so, wondering if I’d be left in the cold if Sinope goes away down the road (or if they decide to change/monetize their cloud service “Neviweb”).
My current dilemma is whether to continue to buy Wifi units or if Zigbee themostats would provide more future-proof options.
I have a bunch of Z-Wave stuff (from years ago) where I used a Micasaverde Vera so I’m familiar with how that setup works.
Can anyone help me out with the merits of going Zigbee over their Wifi units, especially in the scenario where Neviweb goes away?
For starters, I can’t wrap my head around how the themostats would get an IP without Neviweb app. Currently the app discovers the newly powered-up device and I enter the SSID/password in the app. Without Neviweb, I’d have no way to come back from a factory reset.
With Zigbee themostats and the Sinope gateway I’d perhaps be in the same boat. The Sinope gateway has no RJ45, so I assume it gets its IP via pairing through the Neviweb app. But would it be a reasonable assumption that, down the road if Neviweb goes away, I could buy an alternate Zigbee gateway and pair to the Sinope themostats and then bring into HA?
Thanks for any guidance you can provide. I’ve tried researching my concerns but between my ignorance of Zigbee and Home Assistant I’m not able to get the kind of confirmation I need to spend $1500. I’ve had chats with Sinope who have really responsive customer service, but I didn’t get the warm fuzzys I wanted. In particular he said (and I don’t understand why) that HomeKit would be my only option to get my WiFi units talking without Neviweb; I told him I’d rather live in a tent with no home automation than bring Apple stuff into my house.
I have Wifi and Zigbee Sinope Thermostat. With the Wifi one, you must go with Neviweb, because right now, it’s look like that it’s impossible to poll our push information locally. For the Zigbee one, you can paired them with a Zigbee controller like Conbee II, so you don’t need the GT130 gateway and Neviweb, all can be done locally with the ZHA or Z2Mqtt integration.
I had exactly the same concern regarding future proofing the automation. That is why, for the last year I was looking for zigbee thermostat.
I have recently bought a zibgee thermostat and integrated directly to HA using ZHA.
However, since I also had a need for a second thermostat to control my main system (the zigbee thermostat controls a seconday heater) and my current thermostat is using a pair of wires to control my heating unit, I was looking for a zigbee thermostat that would support this and failed to find one. But recently, Sinope released a WiFi thermostat that was suitable for my need, except for the fact that it is WiFi… The thermostat I bought is the TH6500WF. The installation of this thermostat is really brilliant since it reuses the same 2 wires as my old thermostat. It does so by having an I/O module installed next to the heating unit which is IMHO a very clever design.
Before I bought it though, I asked Sinope sales if the thermostat setpoint could be controlled by my HA instance and they confirmed that it would work since the TH6500WF is homekit device (and HA has an integration for that).
After a little bit of tinkering, it works fine and is now fully controlled by HA.
The only remaining little thing that still bugs me is that in order to configure WiFi of the TH6500WF, I absolutely needed to use Neviweb, and this is what I dislike of WiFi devices. At least, you only have to do it once. I am still looking for an alternative way of directly configuring WiFi of the TH6500WF.
My guess is that a solution will eventually exist since I also have a kasa smart plug and successfully configured it without the kasa app (using python-kasa project).
Lastly, I forgot to mention that my setup did not require the GT130, just in case someone was wondering. As additional info, I have bought the Sinope secondary zigbee water valve and also integrated directly in ZHA.