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I've recently been wanting to change the three Nest (v3) thermostats in my house to something else. I'm looking for something that has a 1 degree (F not C) hys

I've recently been wanting to change the three Nest (v3) thermostats in my house to something else. I'm looking for something that has a 1 degree (F not C) hysteresis, and can be controlled via WiFi, but not the cloud. (I don't like the idea of the government changing my temperature settings.) So far I haven't found anything, but I did find a few that allow local control when the cloud cannot be reached. It should be easy to put them in a separate guest network with no Internet gateway.

saeranv 4y ago
> I'm looking for something that has a 1 degree (F not C) hysteresis... Maybe not what you're looking for, but if you're just looking for a 1F degree lag in temperature change, you can also try just increasing the heat stored in your house's thermal mass. For example you could add something with high thermal mass (i.e. concrete) to the place you want higher thermal lag, and position it so it soaks up a lot of solar radiation. That'll buffer out your temperatures.
- anonymousiam 4y ago
  Thanks for that. Probably not practical for my needs. The Nest "Smart Learning Thermostat" tries to save energy a little too aggressively for my taste. I think another brand would do better. In addition to the "Lag" being too wide, it also seems to have a low sample rate for the temperature. My master bedroom will often go to five degrees above the setpoint because the Nest will keep the heat on thinking it's still cold. It's really complete garbage. (I've measured the temperature separately to confirm it's a Nest issue.)
  - space_fountain 4y ago
    Often turning on and off heaters (and more especially heat pumps) is harder on them than keeping them running a bit longer? Were you sure it was actually wrong about the temperature and not just intent on not having to cycle on and off a ton?
    - anonymousiam 4y ago
      Well I don't know for sure, but the displayed temperature on the Nest would only update every few minutes. My independent measurement showed that it had reached the setpoint about two minutes before the Nest updated its reading (to show that it had overshot by several degrees). It's possible that the Nest is trying to reduce the cycling, but if that were the case, it shouldn't affect the displayed temperature.
xyzelement 4y ago
I installed an American Radio Thermostat unit when we moved into this house. It has both a cloud and local connectivity.
- anonymousiam 4y ago
  Yes! American Radio is what I'm leaning toward. I wanted a CT-80, but they have discontinued it (confirmed with them). I guess I'll go with the CT-50. The CT-80 had a nice feature in that it could support both Z-wave and WiFi, but apparently they had too many bugs and pulled it.
pandaman 4y ago
I think you'd need more than a thermostat to keep the temperature stable. This is the main selling point of variable speed systems and I'd imagine cheaper brands would have been selling "Stability of a variable speed for the price of a single stage!" packages with such a thermostat if it existed.
jabroni_salad 4y ago
the HVAC people call this Swing but Ecobee calls it 'threshold' and you can have as little as 0.5F of it. It's gonna cause more wear on the equipment though, and you gotta keep in mind that furnaces will ignore the thermo until a cooloff period has elapsed anyways.
Mister_Snuggles 4y ago
For local WiFi, anything that's HomeKit compatible should work, but you'll likely lose out on something by restricting its access to the internet. For example, my Ecobee can be controlled locally via Home Assistant (using Home Assistant's HomeKit Controller), but it gets outside weather (used to figure out how early to turn the heat up to meet the schedule requirements) via some cloud service. Plus the HomeKit interface, at least when used in Home Assistant, is not as full-featured as the native (cloud-based) one. If you desire 100% local control, it's worth looking at Zigbee and Z-Wave thermostats. Using Home Assistant can give you full local control without requiring a vendor's hub and app.
esaym 4y ago
You might try something from Honeywell, which is the brand that most HVAC contractors use. The stock Trane and American Standard thermostats are also white labled Honeywell I believe. Nonetheless, they use a concept of "CPH" or cycles per hour tied in with some PID circuitry. I go for longer run times and use a CPH of 2, so the thermostat tries to run for 15 minutes followed by 15 minutes off. In mild weather, it is more like 8 minutes on and 20 minutes off. I was skeptical about replacing my Nest with it, but I think it holds the temp more comfortably. Plus you can add wired and/or wireless sensors to various rooms in you house so everything stays more balanced.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  I used a Honeywell smart thermostat and a Nest and the UX for the Nest is definitely better. The functionality is similar though.

saeranv 4y ago

> I'm looking for something that has a 1 degree (F not C) hysteresis... Maybe not what you're looking for, but if you're just looking for a 1F degree lag in temperature change, you can also try just increasing the heat stored in your house's thermal mass. For example you could add something with high thermal mass (i.e. concrete) to the place you want higher thermal lag, and position it so it soaks up a lot of solar radiation. That'll buffer out your temperatures.

anonymousiam 4y ago
Thanks for that. Probably not practical for my needs. The Nest "Smart Learning Thermostat" tries to save energy a little too aggressively for my taste. I think another brand would do better. In addition to the "Lag" being too wide, it also seems to have a low sample rate for the temperature. My master bedroom will often go to five degrees above the setpoint because the Nest will keep the heat on thinking it's still cold. It's really complete garbage. (I've measured the temperature separately to confirm it's a Nest issue.)
- space_fountain 4y ago
  Often turning on and off heaters (and more especially heat pumps) is harder on them than keeping them running a bit longer? Were you sure it was actually wrong about the temperature and not just intent on not having to cycle on and off a ton?
  - anonymousiam 4y ago
    Well I don't know for sure, but the displayed temperature on the Nest would only update every few minutes. My independent measurement showed that it had reached the setpoint about two minutes before the Nest updated its reading (to show that it had overshot by several degrees). It's possible that the Nest is trying to reduce the cycling, but if that were the case, it shouldn't affect the displayed temperature.

xyzelement 4y ago

I installed an American Radio Thermostat unit when we moved into this house. It has both a cloud and local connectivity.

anonymousiam 4y ago
Yes! American Radio is what I'm leaning toward. I wanted a CT-80, but they have discontinued it (confirmed with them). I guess I'll go with the CT-50. The CT-80 had a nice feature in that it could support both Z-wave and WiFi, but apparently they had too many bugs and pulled it.

pandaman 4y ago

I think you'd need more than a thermostat to keep the temperature stable. This is the main selling point of variable speed systems and I'd imagine cheaper brands would have been selling "Stability of a variable speed for the price of a single stage!" packages with such a thermostat if it existed.

jabroni_salad 4y ago

the HVAC people call this Swing but Ecobee calls it 'threshold' and you can have as little as 0.5F of it. It's gonna cause more wear on the equipment though, and you gotta keep in mind that furnaces will ignore the thermo until a cooloff period has elapsed anyways.

Mister_Snuggles 4y ago

For local WiFi, anything that's HomeKit compatible should work, but you'll likely lose out on something by restricting its access to the internet. For example, my Ecobee can be controlled locally via Home Assistant (using Home Assistant's HomeKit Controller), but it gets outside weather (used to figure out how early to turn the heat up to meet the schedule requirements) via some cloud service. Plus the HomeKit interface, at least when used in Home Assistant, is not as full-featured as the native (cloud-based) one. If you desire 100% local control, it's worth looking at Zigbee and Z-Wave thermostats. Using Home Assistant can give you full local control without requiring a vendor's hub and app.

esaym 4y ago

You might try something from Honeywell, which is the brand that most HVAC contractors use. The stock Trane and American Standard thermostats are also white labled Honeywell I believe. Nonetheless, they use a concept of "CPH" or cycles per hour tied in with some PID circuitry. I go for longer run times and use a CPH of 2, so the thermostat tries to run for 15 minutes followed by 15 minutes off. In mild weather, it is more like 8 minutes on and 20 minutes off. I was skeptical about replacing my Nest with it, but I think it holds the temp more comfortably. Plus you can add wired and/or wireless sensors to various rooms in you house so everything stays more balanced.

emodendroket 4y ago
I used a Honeywell smart thermostat and a Nest and the UX for the Nest is definitely better. The functionality is similar though.