6 ms·

> In my house, our nursery both cooled faster and heated faster than any other room in the house. The thermostat (a Nest) controlled the boiler from the living

> In my house, our nursery both cooled faster and heated faster than any other room in the house. The thermostat (a Nest) controlled the boiler from the living area, and would often turn off the boiler while the nursery was still chilly. This Home Assistant project is great fun, and I highly recommend playing with HASS to anyone who likes to play around with and maintain these things. But for anyone looking for an easier solution: Ditch the Nest and get an ecobee with remote sensors. Nest has remote sensors as well, but you can only pick one. ecobee will average across the sensors you choose. It also has a mode that can follow occupancy detection and prioritize rooms with movement, but that's not useful for a nursery with a sleeping baby like this.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
Ecobee also gives you access to your own data, Nest does not. It enables projects like beestat (no relation besides being a user). https://beestat.io/ https://beestat.io/
- j45 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing this tidbit.
- colordrops 4y ago
  Looks nice. Tried out the demo. What does it do that home assistant can't?
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    I don’t use home assistant, so I can’t speak to that.
chime 4y ago
> get an ecobee with remote sensors. That's exactly what I thought of when I read the issue because I did that myself and it works great. My Ecobees have multiple sensors and I have zero complaint about them. Fantastic integration with HA too. I love tracking the indoors humidity graph and have alerts on when I should use more moisturizer.
- Bedon292 4y ago
  I have considered switching a bunch of times. Its just been hard to justify spending money on new thermostats and sensors, since I already have the Nest. If I could go back and change what I originally bought I definitely would though.
alsodumb 4y ago
In reality I noticed that while it helps in maintaining the set temperature in a given room, it ends up over heating or cooling some of the other rooms. Unless you have controllable vents like this https://flair.co/pages/flair-google-nest-thermostat https://flair.co/pages/flair-google-nest-thermostat it probably won’t help much (as one of the comment says, this product isn’t well reviewed. I was just giving an example).
- Someone1234 4y ago
  Unfortunately those Flair Smart Vents review poorly. I'd point you to Amazon or anywhere else they're sold. Cool idea, but I haven't seen someone deliver one I'd want to buy yet.
  - Bedon292 4y ago
    I have been looking for a while too. It seems to be a product that a handful of companies have tried, but no one has really succeeded yet.
asveikau 4y ago
I don't really trust Google to not break Nest integrations. I wasn't following it then, but Google phased out earlier "works with nest". Last year, the oauth for HA's nest addon broke. Supposedly they did work with Google folks to ensure a smooth transition. It works now. But ultimately we use Nest with HA at Google's discretion. Part of the strength of HA is its ability to use cloud-free, local-only infrastructure, meaning it won't break on the whim of a megacorp.
- deadmutex 4y ago
  FWIW, a lot of other startups have gone belly up, and taken their infrastructure offline, and that is worse IMO. E.g. I purchased my light switches from Lutron just because I knew they were going to be around (I have seen a few startups go offline). Before you say, "Oh, if they made it all local then stuff will still work". Yes, that's true to some extent, but then it is still possible that there could be security issues that need to be patched down the line. And one can say "Then you should quarantine the hub and have it connect to HA instance only"... but most people are not going to be able to do that, or may be too much work to maintain over time. Hopefully with Matter, we'll see more products that can work securely + locally. But IMHO, the tech just wasn't there before (at a price point that was cheap).
  - asveikau 4y ago
    Zwave and ZigBee are also somewhat promising in those terms, and exist today. I too have lutron lights, but most of my other stuff is zwave.
    - deadmutex 4y ago
      Sadly, ZigBee is a failure in practice. If you buy a Zigbee hub from one vendor, it is unlikely it will reliably work with Zigbee products from another vendor. Zwave doesn't have this issue, but it lacks market adoption. Likely due to cost, but I am not sure.
      - asveikau 4y ago
sigmonsays 4y ago
i'd recommend against ecobee due to API stability and bad UI/UX. Long story short, i've been a home assistant user for many years. When google shutdown the nest API long ago, i purchased an ecobee and set it up. I will provide more details if asked, but the mobile app was awful due to the ecobee server API constantly failing to work properly and the UI not being in sync with reality. There has been times at 3am when I tried to turn a fan off, I simply could not due to API errors. I'm back to nest and have written ecobee off as a suck cost.
- metadat 4y ago
  More details pretty please.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ThatPlayer 4y ago
  The suggestion I've seen recently is to use Home Assistant as a HomeKit controller which allows local control of the Ecobee, rather than online servers.
nonane 4y ago
Honeywell T9 is also quite good - supports remote sensors and lets you decide which sensors to average out depending on your schedule.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nsteel 4y ago
I'd never heard of ecobee and turns out that's because it's only sold in North America.

toomuchtodo 4y ago

Ecobee also gives you access to your own data, Nest does not. It enables projects like beestat (no relation besides being a user). https://beestat.io/ https://beestat.io/

j45 4y ago
Thanks for sharing this tidbit.
colordrops 4y ago
Looks nice. Tried out the demo. What does it do that home assistant can't?
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  I don’t use home assistant, so I can’t speak to that.

chime 4y ago

> get an ecobee with remote sensors. That's exactly what I thought of when I read the issue because I did that myself and it works great. My Ecobees have multiple sensors and I have zero complaint about them. Fantastic integration with HA too. I love tracking the indoors humidity graph and have alerts on when I should use more moisturizer.

Bedon292 4y ago
I have considered switching a bunch of times. Its just been hard to justify spending money on new thermostats and sensors, since I already have the Nest. If I could go back and change what I originally bought I definitely would though.

alsodumb 4y ago

In reality I noticed that while it helps in maintaining the set temperature in a given room, it ends up over heating or cooling some of the other rooms. Unless you have controllable vents like this https://flair.co/pages/flair-google-nest-thermostat https://flair.co/pages/flair-google-nest-thermostat it probably won’t help much (as one of the comment says, this product isn’t well reviewed. I was just giving an example).

Someone1234 4y ago
Unfortunately those Flair Smart Vents review poorly. I'd point you to Amazon or anywhere else they're sold. Cool idea, but I haven't seen someone deliver one I'd want to buy yet.
- Bedon292 4y ago
  I have been looking for a while too. It seems to be a product that a handful of companies have tried, but no one has really succeeded yet.

asveikau 4y ago

I don't really trust Google to not break Nest integrations. I wasn't following it then, but Google phased out earlier "works with nest". Last year, the oauth for HA's nest addon broke. Supposedly they did work with Google folks to ensure a smooth transition. It works now. But ultimately we use Nest with HA at Google's discretion. Part of the strength of HA is its ability to use cloud-free, local-only infrastructure, meaning it won't break on the whim of a megacorp.

deadmutex 4y ago
FWIW, a lot of other startups have gone belly up, and taken their infrastructure offline, and that is worse IMO. E.g. I purchased my light switches from Lutron just because I knew they were going to be around (I have seen a few startups go offline). Before you say, "Oh, if they made it all local then stuff will still work". Yes, that's true to some extent, but then it is still possible that there could be security issues that need to be patched down the line. And one can say "Then you should quarantine the hub and have it connect to HA instance only"... but most people are not going to be able to do that, or may be too much work to maintain over time. Hopefully with Matter, we'll see more products that can work securely + locally. But IMHO, the tech just wasn't there before (at a price point that was cheap).
- asveikau 4y ago
  Zwave and ZigBee are also somewhat promising in those terms, and exist today. I too have lutron lights, but most of my other stuff is zwave.
  - deadmutex 4y ago
    Sadly, ZigBee is a failure in practice. If you buy a Zigbee hub from one vendor, it is unlikely it will reliably work with Zigbee products from another vendor. Zwave doesn't have this issue, but it lacks market adoption. Likely due to cost, but I am not sure.
    - asveikau 4y ago

sigmonsays 4y ago

i'd recommend against ecobee due to API stability and bad UI/UX. Long story short, i've been a home assistant user for many years. When google shutdown the nest API long ago, i purchased an ecobee and set it up. I will provide more details if asked, but the mobile app was awful due to the ecobee server API constantly failing to work properly and the UI not being in sync with reality. There has been times at 3am when I tried to turn a fan off, I simply could not due to API errors. I'm back to nest and have written ecobee off as a suck cost.

metadat 4y ago
More details pretty please.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ThatPlayer 4y ago
The suggestion I've seen recently is to use Home Assistant as a HomeKit controller which allows local control of the Ecobee, rather than online servers.

nonane 4y ago

Honeywell T9 is also quite good - supports remote sensors and lets you decide which sensors to average out depending on your schedule.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

nsteel 4y ago

I'd never heard of ecobee and turns out that's because it's only sold in North America.