I have 3 2nd gen nests in my place. 3 heating zones with baseboard heating and one ac zone for entire house. Currently I use nests but thinking of getting something else. That something else is I’m not sure what. Looking for recommendations. Main issue is that I don’t have C wire running to the thermostats so it needs to be something that doesn’t need.
Any ideas?
Not sure if they need the C wire or not, but I have heard great things about the EcoBee 3. You may want to look there.
Why are the nests not working for you?
You may solve the C wire issue with this:
don’t think it will work. Needs 4 wires. I have only 2 wires for 2 of my heating zones.
Ecobee needs C wire in my case, I can’t use PEK because I have boiler for heat. Nests are working ok but have few issues. Auto learning schedule is a mess in my case. I ended up turning it off. Away sensors rarely work so I’ve been setting them up manually when i leave for extended period of time. Have to use pollster app in order to poll them every 15 minutes otherwise they don’t update ST oh and I’m bored with them 
Really? Bored? Must be nice (SMILE). I have heard others say that the autolearning mode is hit and miss. Not sure if the EcoBee is any better on that. I have a WaterFurnace Geothermal unit, with Symphony. No API sadly so no way to integrate with ST and automate things as needed.
Do you live in the US? And if so, have you tried life360 for presence sense with ST. I use it and it works pretty well for our family. Occasionally we have lag, which is annoying but by the time exit the car and start to enter the house, it detects us and sets the house up appropriately
yep bored i like to play with new things and annoy my wife
I’m in usa, haven’t tried 360 presense sensor. Auto learning for our household is not working. Friend of mine has nests too and he turned it off as well. My wife and puppy are at home during the day so someone is always in the house. All we do is battle the theromstat, it thinks we want the temp. but we don’t and so on
That Venstar unit claims to be able to work with 2-wire systems also. Basically turns 2 wires into 3. Look at the wiring diagrams on Amazon… it’s the 4th picture. There are also reports in the questions/comments at the bottom saying it works.
I’d get Ecobees if I was replacing my Nests. The remote sensors are much better for folks with inconsistent schedules.
However, I believe the Ecobee integration is also cloud-to-cloud, so you’ll still need Pollster. The only way to get away from Pollster is to get a native z-wave thermostat and handle your scheduling in ST. That has its own plusses and minuses.
yep ecobee support recommended it. have to see if its easy enough to do. I will need 3 of these units so it might get messy
Yep thats what I figured. What are the minuses of zwave thermostat? from what I read - flaky connection? or does it have to also do with scheduling issues in ST platform?
Yeah if you do your scheduling with ST, you’re beholden to the ST scheduler. We know that ST is working on improving the scheduler, but no one really knows how long that will take to get to a truly stable place. Plus, if your internet fails, you lose all scheduling and control.
I prefer having my HVAC on a separate, purpose-built system. I live in Chicago, so if my thermostat fails when I’m out of town for Christmas, we’re looking at burst pipes. With a c-wire, my Nests have been solid. I don’t trust ST quite enough yet. Plus with Nest, my utility pays me money every summer during high demand.
There may be z-wave thermostats with programmable safety temperatures (i.e. always run the heat no matter what if the temperature in the house is below 50°), but you’d have to ask others.
Good points. Thank you. I guess I’ll wait for now.
Id be willing to take one of those off your hands 
I’ve had the Zen thermostat for about a month, no C-wire needed for it. It works pretty well, however, I have it programmed mainly on a timer plus presence right now. It works well, no issues with having it integrated into SmartThings.
that’s good to know. No C wire is ideal for me. I was reading up on it yesterday
I have heard that the Zen is pretty nice as well. I almost kickstarted it, but knowing that I was going Geo, they were unsure if it would work with the unit I went with. However, have heard good things about them.
Not sure that we have a device for it though with ST. I suspect a search of the forums will see if that has been made yet (SMILE)
May i ask what model?
When I hooked mine up SmartThings identified it as Zen thermostat, so I believe that means they do have the device type? Sorry, I am sort of new, so maybe I misunderstood.