We just built a house and put three Venstar thermostats in. They work great with Home Assistant (local API and no cloud) but I have one zone that requires remote wireless sensors in the bedrooms and to have the thermostat average those temps to get the set temp. The Venstar wireless remote sensors are unreliable GARBAGE. They eat through batteries (about once a month) and they are constantly going offline.
Can anyone recommend a HA friendly thermostat that has remote sensors that can be averaged?
I came here because I’m always interested in finding a better thermostat with local control through HA. Good to know about Venstar, thank you.
As for your question, why can’t you just put any HA-compatible temperature sensor in the remote location, and use an automation in HA to adjust the thermostat when the remote room temperature is some amount different from what the thermostat is seeing?
Using HA to average the Temps and adjust the thermostat setpoint doesn’t meet the WAF test. If my automation fails and is the reason our 8 month Old’s room is cold that will be “my” fault. I need to be able to blame a problem on the thermostat manufacturer :). My general automation concept is to add convenience but not rely on it for critical functionality.
Ecobee has remote sensors that would collect motion and temperature. So that you can set the AC to run only per those rooms where people are actually inside. See “Follow Me”. Smart Home, Smart Away, and Follow Me Features (ecobee.com)
Ecobee is not 100% local, true. But some local control is still possible.
(And you gets to blame ecobee if/when something is not right )
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