My wife and I were forced to travel for work for some years and it was absolutely worth it to have a remote programmable thermostat. The number of times we were able to fix the temperature setting after it turned out we were both gone and the heat or AC was left on by accident saved us, in all likelihood, thousands of dollars.
Similarly once we got in the groove with that we started renting the place when we’d both be gone for long stretches of time and we were able to remote control prevent things like a guest turning the AC on in the late fall and letting the compressor freeze or just leaving the heat on after they checked out.
I know piling on an unpopular opinion by claiming it is a solution to other unpopular lifestyle choices isn’t what Lemmy is usually looking for, but yeah they serve a really valuable purpose to some of us.
I’m sure when our kids are teenagers and fucking with the thermostat all the time I’ll appreciate it all over again.
There’s a difference between something having an optional internet connection, and something requiring one. I can control my smart home through the internet, but when the internet connection breaks and I’m at home, I can still control it.
It’s not a hard requirement, but it’s sure nice to leave the house at a low but non-freezing temp in winter while you’re away for a few days, then use a web app to bring the temperature back up right before you come back in.
Being on the home LAN, though, is a requirement for me. That is extremely convenient.
I got an Emersonl “homekit” thermostat for my in-law and managed to get it on wifi without “cloud”. Unfortunately you have to be careful because the follow on model requires their cloud service for online control.
It’s a real shame that most every house is well equipped to do standalone hosting for remote access, but most of the investment has gone toward cloud connected to force the recurring revenue opportunity.
Yep, all my smart thermostats are zugbee. No phoning home by design, so I don’t have to worry about missing functionality by not giving them internet connection.
And that goes for almost all my smart home. I only have wifi things when I couldn’t find a realistic zigbee option.
Yeah, the zwave/zigbee options tend to be more barebones on the local display, so I very carfeully looked at the wifi options to find the best of both worlds.
Of course my opengarage is wifi based too, but that’s fine.
Nothing against wifi, just it’s so difficult to tell a ‘local wifi’ from a ‘cloud wifi’ device.
I for sure also want to access it on my Home Assistant, and it really can save alot of power to automate it. Even going down to 20C in the night, and make it going to 22C before anyone wakes up saves alot in a year.
Imagine a thermostat needing an internet connection.
My wife and I were forced to travel for work for some years and it was absolutely worth it to have a remote programmable thermostat. The number of times we were able to fix the temperature setting after it turned out we were both gone and the heat or AC was left on by accident saved us, in all likelihood, thousands of dollars.
Similarly once we got in the groove with that we started renting the place when we’d both be gone for long stretches of time and we were able to remote control prevent things like a guest turning the AC on in the late fall and letting the compressor freeze or just leaving the heat on after they checked out.
I know piling on an unpopular opinion by claiming it is a solution to other unpopular lifestyle choices isn’t what Lemmy is usually looking for, but yeah they serve a really valuable purpose to some of us.
I’m sure when our kids are teenagers and fucking with the thermostat all the time I’ll appreciate it all over again.
There’s a difference between something having an optional internet connection, and something requiring one. I can control my smart home through the internet, but when the internet connection breaks and I’m at home, I can still control it.
It’s not a hard requirement, but it’s sure nice to leave the house at a low but non-freezing temp in winter while you’re away for a few days, then use a web app to bring the temperature back up right before you come back in.
Being on the home LAN, though, is a requirement for me. That is extremely convenient.
I do NOT want my thermostats to phone home. I don’t see any value of that.
But they are connected to MY smart home system (Hone Assistant), and THAT is accessible from the internet.
I get the remote monitoring and control that I want, and they don’t get any of my data. Perfect!
Yeah, I got some z wave thermostats for home.
I got an Emersonl “homekit” thermostat for my in-law and managed to get it on wifi without “cloud”. Unfortunately you have to be careful because the follow on model requires their cloud service for online control.
It’s a real shame that most every house is well equipped to do standalone hosting for remote access, but most of the investment has gone toward cloud connected to force the recurring revenue opportunity.
Yep, all my smart thermostats are zugbee. No phoning home by design, so I don’t have to worry about missing functionality by not giving them internet connection.
And that goes for almost all my smart home. I only have wifi things when I couldn’t find a realistic zigbee option.
Yeah, the zwave/zigbee options tend to be more barebones on the local display, so I very carfeully looked at the wifi options to find the best of both worlds.
Of course my opengarage is wifi based too, but that’s fine.
Nothing against wifi, just it’s so difficult to tell a ‘local wifi’ from a ‘cloud wifi’ device.
This is the way.
I for sure also want to access it on my Home Assistant, and it really can save alot of power to automate it. Even going down to 20C in the night, and make it going to 22C before anyone wakes up saves alot in a year.
Actually…