With my current thermostat, I can set everything from an iPhone app or the website. My questions are:
would it ever be possible to integrate the wifi thermostat with SmartThings (I like it better than the zwave one and already have it installed)
what advantages are there to switching to the z-wave one (I am still within the return policy window). Is it just that I could control it from the SmartThings app, or would it give me added functionality where I could tell it to do different things based on the outside temperature (i.e. if it isn’t freezing outside, I can keep the temperature a bit lower because I don’ t have to worry about freezing my pipes)
Does anyone know if this z-wave thermostat will work without a z-wave hub? Would I use the same Honeywell app/website?
Thanks.
P.S. is anyone else having issues accessing this forum using Chrome (for Mac and PC) and Safari - I get a big black bar on the right side and the only way to see what everyone is writing or go to the next page is to make the width of the browser smaller.
Hello- I also have a wifi thermostat (Filtrete 3M-50) that I’m hoping will work with SmartThings too! I’m hoping this post will help us find a solution!
The Wi-Fi thermostats are not supported, and may not be for a while. A lot of those manufacturers lock down their hardwar to only work with their system. The added functionality you would get by adding the Z-Wave thermostat would be adding it to the SmartThings ecosystem. Set the temperature based on outside and inside temp, turn it on from work manually or automatically, etc etc. Possibilities are endless!
A Z-Wave device won’t work without a Z-Wave controller, but then again, SmartThings doesn’t have any hubs without Z-Wave.
There was a spacing issue, should be resolved for you.
Thanks for the quick reply and for fixing the forum formatting. I think I have until the beginning of March to return the wifi ones and get z-wave, but not sure if I’ll have my SmartThings hub by then. I may just stick with what I have and hope that somewhere down the road someone figures out how to integrate it.
Or, would we need the Nexia Home Bridge and have to pay the $9 a month Nexia fee for it to be compatible with SmartThings?
Simply put, I would like to install a thermostat that is compatible with SmartThings. However, like Alexander’s comment pointed out, the reviews on the Honeywell listed on the partial compatibility list are not that great.
It will report the temp… when it wants to… and I can see what mode it is in (heat - fan on - etc.) But that’s it right now.
I understand they hope to have it working down the line - but I chose to return it (so I don’t risk waiting too long and not being able to return it should it never work) and instead get the one that is working now - comes today actually. (I know I will be less helpful now in testing to see if that other one will work - but I also want something that works now.)
A large bulk of kickstarter shipments will be out by March. So far we’ve had pretty good success with the Nexia line of products like the door lock and some sensors without the need for a bridge. I’d say with a high degree of certainty that most Z-Wave products will work fine. They are generally the same across the board, which makes integration easier. Eric I have the same thermostat in a box somewhere. I’m going to whip it out and see what I can learn from it.
Feel free to post any other Z-Wave thermostats you find around and I can look into them.
Oh - and a side note for anyone installing that Honeywell Thermostat.
If you do not have a “common” wire in your existing wiring. You take the green wire and connect that in the common spot - not the green location. There is a youtube video posted by Honeywell showing how to install without a common wire.
Andrew, you mentioned you have a thermostat lying around somewhere. Did you mean the Lowe’s Iris thermostat that Eric mentioned? If so, does it work with SmartThings? And, along these lines, does that mean that the Lowe’s Iris line of home automated sensors will work as well?
MattB - it doesn’t fully work yet. They told me they hope to get it working - but they didn’t have a timeline they could give for it. (The Lowe’s one I linked to above.)
I had it installed and it would report temperature to the smart things app - but it was terribly intermittent - it was like 2 days etc in between updates - and it was the wrong temp for at least a day+. As it sits right now - if you are wanting to see the temp in your home - it is not a viable solution.
I installed the Honeywell one last night and once I got through the wiring issue - it was BAM - everything reports to the app and works.
Thanks for the link Eric! I was literally just trying to install it and got super sadface when I saw I didn’t have a common wire. I’m about to take off from the office for 2 weeks, but I’ll have someone else hook it up and give it a try.
MattB - Basically what Eric said. We have pretty good functionality with the Iris Z-Wave devices. Their ZigBee stuff however has a proprietary stack on it which makes them incompatible. For now! They are doing some stuff, but no ETA on it. I have the thermostat at my house. When I get home I will give it a try.
Eric- The issues you are seeing are known. And actually done on purpose. That thermostat likes to report FAR too often. So many times that its actually creating a backup of commands. It’s being worked out.
And yes, you will be able to control things like temp and stuff like you normally would. Otherwise, whats the point?
@Andrew - Yeah - Honeywell must have been getting a LOT of complaints about that common wire to have made a video on it. Why didn’t they just say “Hey! No common wire? Just use the G instead!!!” right in the manual? (although the video was for the wifi version - it applied here very much so.)
Quick question, I watched the Honeywell video and they made the comment that after doing the workaround, you will not be able to manually control the fan. Does that mean that my wife or I would not be able to (if it was oddly hot or cold in the house) choose to turn on the furnace/central air ourselves? What exactly does the workaround prevent us from doing once it’s done? Also, will the Honeywell work well enough with SmartThings that we could turn it on/off remotely, hypothetically set it up to shut off when my wife leaves in the morning (this is determined via presence, not a given time as her schedule fluctuates) and turn on when I walk in the door?
Thanks so much to everyone for all the help and suggestions thus far!
I’m not a big HVAC person, but I think with that workaround you can’t turn on the fan only. It will only turn on if the heat or a/c is on. Sometimes I turn the fan on just to have air circulating, but not be blowing out cold/hot air.
When the thermostat stack is done, you’ll be able to have control of at least, on/off and temperature.
As someone who didn’t finish watching the whole video before I hooked up the green line in the common spot - I didn’t know I would lose control of the fans.
I’m not too concerned by it - I can think of maybe 2 times I turned the fans on in the 6-7 years in my home… and it was to just try and see if it would help with the heat in the basement… (it didn’t…) so no real worries I guess. I will take the ability to remotely control and know the temperature when I’m not at home - over the ability to turn on the fans once every 3 years.
Matt I have that Trane Zwave thermostat that I was originally planning to use with mi casa verde, but I got the sense that platform was kind of drifting. So I never have actually done Zwave with it, but it is supposed to be one of the better Zwave thermostats. I guess we’ll see when the smart things get here.
I have the radio thermostat with wifi and I justed purchased the z-wave module for it. I hear both can work at the same time. I have not tried connecting it to smart things yet, hopefully tonight. This allows me to have both wifi and z-wave control of my thermostat.
Also, the main hold up to getting ST to work with this wifi thermostat is the hub lacks the ability to send local IP commands. The radio thermostat wifi version has an open API that allows local integration if desired while also supporting cloud connection for remote control which is the main reason I purchased it.
@AaronW … how did that Trane thermostat work out? Its been a few months since you posted that, and that’s one of the ones I have had my eyes on. Let us know when you can.
As an update, I have the Filtrete 3M-50 Thermostat. I currently have the Wifi and ZWave modules in and they work just fine together. The only problem that I have is that SmartThings will not turn off the fan when I want. It will turn it on when I hit the tile, but nothing else. Setting the temp and switching between off, ac, and heat works with no problem. Let me know if you have any questions.
