I have a 3 level townhouse with a single zone of HVAC. I have ST Multipurpose sensors on all floors. The current thermostat is on the middle floor. Is there a thermostat that can use an external sensor to judge temperature? For example, there’s a bedroom on the top floor and I would like to use that for temperature reference during the hot summer months when that is the hottest room (thus cooling that room to the set point is key).
An Ecobee 3 with remote sensors would do what you want. I believe the base package comes with 2 sensors. Without any external hubs, the Ecobee will do what you want.
Use the Ecobee DTH by @storageanarchy plus CoRE and you can accomplish lots of tweaks to your comfort level.
Got it - is Ecobee the only solution? I’m asking sort of for academic completeness, but also because it doesn’t harness my existing sensors (which is kind of a waste, since I have plenty of temperature data available today). It also seems to be on the more expensive side for thermostats, although that’s less of a concern to me personally I’m asking here again for completeness.
On a related note: my existing ST platform can operate just fine if my WAN/Internet is severed. Is that still the case if I implement CoRE? This is particularly important in the case of a thermostat because the #1 time I lose Internet is during inclement weather, when I really want HVAC programs and controls to still function. Obviously I don’t expect to be out of my house and diddling the temperature, but I do want to know if complex CoRE automation (“scenes”) would still work, presuming my LAN wifi is just fine and my power is on.
The marvelous NST manager for Nest can use other temperature sensors to control the thermostat.
I’m very happy with my Ecobee 3. It’s simple in include or exclude various external sensors depending on time of day. Temp averaging across all sensors in use can help to resolve some hot/cold issues especially in single zone situations. At night I’m able only to use the sensor in my bedroom ensuring that the bedroom is always at the set temp at night no matter what the rest of the house is like.
Have you tried to hook your Ecobee to smart vents like https://shop.keenhome.io/ ? I have a manual solution in place now and think moving to the smart version is on the same upgrades list as the thermostat.
I haven’t but there are a number of threads on the forum from people who are using these vents in a number of scenarios. Here is one example below:
If you aren’t planning to replace your thermostat, check out this app which can use existing thermostats and external temperature sensors. You can set it to use remote sensors for specific schedules (e.g. at 7pm use the top floor sensor where as at noon use the basement sensor - say you’re working in the basement and sleeping on the top floor)
The basic version is available on the link above, for the advanced version with the remote sensor you’ll need to get access to the server.