I mean fan speed alone. The original thermostat has G1/2/3 terminals. Depending on which wire you put 24V on, the motor activates a different fan speed. The thermostat also showed low/mid/hi fan speeds in its menu.
Just out of curiosity, does anyone know how to display the humidity of the T6 on the built-in Home Assistant Thermostat card? Also, is there a way to change the order of the buttons?
I have two of the Nest Learning thermostats. They replaced my Honeywell thermostats that couldn’t stay online (WiFi).
I am more than pleased with them. And because my local gas utility was offering them for $80 each, I had to try them.
BTW, they were controlling the furnace temperature before I even got the WiFi set up, so they obviously work without the Internet.
Let me also put a plug in for Venstar thermostats. I was looking to replace my three-wire Honeywell dumb thermostats that control my in-floor heating system. While researching, I found this thread and this post in particular. The T7850 was overkill for my application so I went with the T2000. The installation and setup process was a breeze, taking no more than 10 mins per thermostat start to finish. Venstar FTW!
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You should know is that Ecobee disabled remote access by Home Assistant in Spring 2024. Existing Home Assistant users can continue to use their existing Ecobee integration, but Ecobee does not allow new users to add their thermostats to Home Assistant. The Home Assistant Ecobee integration documentation has more info.
You can access Ecobee thermostats using their web portal and their “smart app”. Both of those have the typical annoyances and shortcomings.
Ecobee thermostats access a cloud server which chronically behaves as though it’s overloaded. Thus the thermostats will sometimes lose their cloud connection and fail to update for a while. Maybe this is why Ecobee forbids new Home Assistant users from connecting.
The Ecobee thermostat has an occupancy sensor which works adequately well, but its built-in air quality sensor is a joke. It’s completely untrustworthy.
Source: I have 5 Ecobee thermostats in my home.
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FredTheFrog I do not have any of the connectivity issues you describe. I have two Ecobee 3 's installed since 2015. In that span, I’ve had to reconnect WIFI maybe twice. I’ve always used Asus routers but I changed the 2.4GHz network bandwidth from 20MHz/40MHz to 20MHz only in 2018 when I added some LIFX products. They were flaky on 20MHz/40MHz setting. Here’s another thread that discusses the same issue with Ecobee. Ecobee connectivity issue
I like this devices but its look IS a bit vintage.
Agreed. But, it’s important to note that the z-wave version of the Honeywell T6 with Z-Wave is extremely reliable; at least for me. It hasn’t failed a single time since I added it to Home Assistant. It makes sense for someone who already has z-wave at their home.
I just came across this thread, as I have a Home Assistant system and am planning to upgrade my heating system.
I currently have electric baseboard heaters and have this thermostat, which has integrated seamlessly via zigbee and looks/works great: Zigbee Thermostat for Electric Baseboard Heaters - Sinopé – Sinopé Technologies
I’m planning to change to a heating system with low-voltage control. I was thinking of getting the ecobee, but based on what everybody is saying above about the connectivity problems, I realized that Sinope also makes a low-voltage zigbee version, so maybe i’ll go for that for my upgrade: Zigbee Low Voltage Thermostat - Sinopé – Sinopé Technologies
Was just about to go ahead and purchase 2 of the T6 Pro Z-Wave but read an Amazon review that it is not suitable for the Z-wave frequency band in Europe as it is intended for use in US/Canada.
I am based in the UK, can anyone suggest an alternative?
I’ve had a pretty good experience with Meross and the community-driven HASS LAN integration. Mostly local, if you wish there’s also a way to set it up without the cloud meaning that when it’ll be discontinued, there’ll be a way to use the product still probably.
Well, i’m a bit confused why a lot of ppl here chose for a thermostat that’s over 100 bucks/euro’s?
Must say i’m only 2 weeks into home assistant. But so far i got like a very cheap zigbee temperature/humidity sensor (with simple screen that shows the 2 value’s) for around 10 euro’s hooked up to HA. Been working great. My next goal is to use a ESP32 board to swich my heater + my circualtion pump on and off, depending on the temperature/trend of the thermostat.
Or am i missing something?
I think you sort of answered your own question. Most people don’t want to build their own thermostat by combining a temperature sensor and a relay. If the only choice for managing my HVAC was between a dumb thermostat and building my own using multiple devices and HA, I’d take the dumb thermostat all day. Fortunately, there’s a middle ground where I can have a device on the wall and also have its features exposed to HA. Unfortunately, as you’ve noted, most of these “smart” thermostats are > $100.
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Sorry I know you posted this back in January!
Thermostats generally have some extra control logic to work safely and efficiently with the mechanical and thermal parts of the HVAC. There’s more to them than temperature threshold hit → activate.
A few things off the hip from memory:
- Continuing to run the fan for a while after deactivating the compressor, to capture the rest of the hot/cool still in the coils.
- Minimum cycle duration lockout, making sure the compressor doesn’t rapidly start and stop, but gets some minimum time between switching.
- Sometimes, a maximum continuous runtime before giving the compressor a break, to fight ice buildup on the evaporator side coils.
Having noticed that stuff makes me a little uncertain that my custom hack job would give me the same number of years out of the HVAC. At least unless I turned it into more-than-$100 worth of research project for myself to make sure I got everything!
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As I understand we can just use the HomeKit integration and all entities/functionality syncs to Home Assistant.
I can confirm. We finally went for an Ecobee ECB501. Here’s how it works.
After connecting it, you can use the device’s screen to connect it to WiFi directly. No app required.
Once connected to WiFi, Home Assistant sees it as a Homekit device.
You do NOT have to connect it to any Ecobee accounts or cloud systems. We didn’t create any Ecobee accounts, it connected directly to Home Assistant using only the device screen.
The Ecobee can only have ONE Homekit connection. If you are connecting it to Home Assistant, it cannot also be connected to any other Homekit-based app or smart home system. (You can’t have both Siri / Alexa / etc. and Home Assistant use the thermostat directly - this is probably a good thing.) However if you can connect those other smart-home systems to Home Assistant, they can probably control the thermostat via what Home Assistant exposes to them that way.
Home Assistant has a good set of features for the thermostat. HA can control A/C mode, fan mode, thermostat setpoint, a toggle to control based on temperature or humidity, and display units (°F or °C). There’s also a “Clear Hold” action you can activate but I don’t know what that does.
Home Assistant gets sensors for current humidity, temperature, motion detection, and occupancy. For whatever reason, my Ecobee always detects occupancy and motion, 24/7. I don’t know if that’s some setting in the thermostat’s interface or a bug.
You have to walk up to the thermostat and use its little panel for all settings configuration. Home Assistant isn’t aware of “Eco Mode”, schedules, cooldown timers, or any of the rest of what you can set in the thermostat, and I believe the Ecobee app uses the cloud account for control.
The thermostat is working great and setup was easy.
In terms of the thermostat itself (not Home Assistant) - It seems to ignore the setting for “cooldown” timeout before reactivating the compressor. I have it set to stay off for 5 minutes before starting back up, but it seems to only wait for 1 minute even if the current temperature is the set point temperature.
It doesn’t seem to have comfort zone or hysteresis settings. I can’t give it a wider comfort zone, e.g. to start cooling 1° above set temp and keep cooling until it’s 2° below set temp. When set to say 76°, it tends to stop cooling after a short time while the current temp reads 76°, and start cooling again relatively quickly while the current temp still reads 76°. If I had the option, I would prefer it cool in longer cycles, less often. But this is really minor.
Even the “fancy” WiFi/Zigbee/Z-wave thermostats generally still work as a “dumb” thermostat if the connectivity fails – at least if it is wired into the HVAC.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter in a mild climate of if you are always home, but otherwise are you willing to take the risk of your pipes freezing and bursting or your plants dying etc. if any one of the following “weak” links goes down when you are away from home: HA server, ESP32 board, your low cost temp sensors, your self-wired relay, your home WiFi etc.
Personally, no matter how elegant and tested my homebrew solution, I would never trust the value of my home on it.
Do you know if the Ecobee ECB501 supports using separate room sensors? I’m trying to find a smart thermostat that can handle all basic HVAC functions + fan control + selectable room sensors and I’m having issues finding one that can do all of them (currently just bought a Honeywell T9 but it doesn’t have fan control which is bonkers to me…).
I have a ecobee 3 lite for maybe a decade at this point, and am pretty sure the ecobee 3 lite can do what you mentioned already.
… unless, well, devil is in the details, maybe you want those features to behave in a certain specific way. So maybe ecobee or Honeywell T9 offer those features, but not the same way you want them to be… ?
For example, it’s indeed hard to believe T9 cannot do fan control. … which begs the question, what kind of “fan control” exactly you want to have? Could you elaborate?
The HomeKit api doesn’t support fan control (auto, on, circulate) with the thermostat.
I created my own fan control with a Shelly relay at the furnace.