What is your self-hosting setup for home thermostat?

[gedaliyah@lemmy.world]

Thanks for the tip! Others have mentioned that it's very tricky to find one that works offline without the manufacturer's software (website, login, data collection, etc)

[atzanteol@sh.itjust.works]

I'd highly recommend not doing that. A smart thermostat is much easier and going to be a lot more reliable. And it won't stop working if your server goes down.

[atzanteol@sh.itjust.works]

I've got a couple Honeywell T6 z-wave thermostats that work great and didn't cost a lot. I control them through home assistant with some custom code to set them on a schedule, but they can also still be operated manually if needed.

[shimitar@downonthestreet.eu]

Each room has one ZigBee thermometer and thermovalves for the heaters. Home Assistant with an automation open and closes them based on the thermometers.

Also in HA, I have a schedule for the "comfort" temperature so that the boiler can be turned on and off accordingly.

See https://wiki.gardiol.org/doku.php?id=homeautomation%3Aheating for the detailed setup.

[mikelius@lemmy.ml]

Plus 1 to Venstar. Got myself the T7900 and even though it offers internet access, I just blocked it at my router and connected it to the network, controlling it through home assistant. No need for third party access and whatnot with it since it's completely local.

[mikemrm@lemmy.mrm.one]

Same, you can enable local only API. Works great and they have public docs for it's API. I also have an exporter with grafana graphs.

[vinny_93@lemmy.world]

I have the T6 as my main but I cannot do per-room heating because my Sonoff TRV's cannot talk to it in HA. I got the T6 before working with HA though. In my country the T6 is WiFi and you need the Resideo app.

[appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

FritzBox Dect.
Minimal networking footprint utilizing Dect as the transmission protocol.

[thejevans@lemmy.ml]

I have a cheap homekit thermostat that I use with home assistant. Being able to turn it off for movies or during peak energy hours is nice. What was most helpful, however, was putting temperature and humidity sensors in every room, so that I could move around heat generating stuff to balance the temps throughout my apartment. I moved my server and gaming pc tower out of my home office. The temperature spread went from 8 deg F to 2 deg F.

[rivalarrival@lemmy.today]

You can set up a simple, dumb thermostat in parallel, to act as a failsafe. Set it 5 degrees below your lowest heat setpoint, and even if your server crashes, it doesn't let your house freeze.

[a1studmuffin@aussie.zone]

Best place to start would be to look at the thermostat hardware you've currently got, and start searching online if anyone has integrated it into Home Assistant.

I've lived at a few houses now with Home Assistant. In all of them I was able to integrate my HVAC and automate it, but some brands and hardware are definitely easier than others.

I think the most extreme of them required a custom esphome device connected to its PCB to talk to Home Assistant, and another required me to write my own custom component.

Hardware and brands make a huge difference, but sometimes you're stuck with what you've got.

[abeorch@friendica.ginestes.es]

@atzanteol @aubeynarf Clarification here There are ZigBee thermostats that are integrated sensors and switches where you can control the switch, read the sensor and control the set point both on the device and via ZigBee so they are controllable locally in two senses - on the device and with the home. There are proprietary Smart thermostats that may be local on the device but rely on external servers for any off device control. then there are Proprietary thermostats that are totally dependent on an internet connection to do anything - Its important to check

[cyber@feddit.uk]

Feel free to ask over at [email protected] too.

But to echo some other comments here, whatever you do, keep it simple and ensure a botched HA update doesn't freeze / cook you by using standard components as a backup / failsafe

[gedaliyah@lemmy.world]

So which was the easiest?

[tburkhol@lemmy.world]

Does the Honeywell T6 give you separate control of temperature and fan? That is, can you turn air circulation on/off, even when the temperature wouldn't trigger heating/cooling?

I've been watching pm2.5 in my house, and the HVAC filter does a pretty good job of keeping it down if I run the fan, but that fan takes a lot of energy, and I'd like to turn it off when the air is pretty clean.

[atzanteol@sh.itjust.works]

I believe so, my system is baseboard so I didn't use a fan. There is a fan control option on the device. The instructions say it can do auto, on, of, circ.

https://digitalassets.resideo.com/damroot/Original/10011/33-00181EFS.pdf

More details here:

https://www.honeywellhome.com/us/en/products/air/thermostats/programmable-thermostats/t6-pro-programmable-thermostat-up-to-3-heat-2-cool-th6320u2008-u/

[tburkhol@lemmy.world]

TY. Looks like the T6 is pro-only. Googling around, it looks like ventilation control may be one of the things that separate their pro-level T6/T10 from their DIY-level T5/T9. That's disappointing.

[justenoughducks@feddit.nl]

It really really depends on what you have for heating.

Floor heating + heat pump? You don't need to mess around with target temp much because the principle behind it is thermal mass buildup and maintaining that. You have to tune thermostatic valves on the room level. Then you can have one central thermostat simply slightly change the target temperature with many hours of delay. That doesn't seem too useful to me to automate.

Do you have radiators? Then you can get zwave or ZigBee valves and tie them together with whatever thermostat that you want in home assistant. Then you can set per room/zone heat depending on whatever sensors you have.

Do you have central forced air heating and air conditioning? Then you have pretty much target temp and on/off control unless you want to put in motorized automatic registers or redesign your entire duct system for per-room duct valves.

Individual heat pumps/airco units with radiator based heating is the most "per room" customizable and probably the most useful to put automations on in Home Assistant.

Ventilation can be useful by monitoring CO2 levels and humidity. Then you can use either the fan units themselves or socket switches to actuate those and put whatever sensors you want wherever it is useful.

I am probably missing some stuff here, but there are only a few HVAC setups that actually benefit from automation, in my opinion. Mainly ventilation, infrared, and non centralized forced air heat pumps.

[abeorch@friendica.ginestes.es]

@gedaliyah @JustEnoughDucks When I got a notification you had commented - I thought it was about this - friendica.ginestes.es/display/…

[Guest]

Dead link