New to Temperature Monitoring both Indoor and Out

Other Devices & Integrations Climate Control & Temperature Sensors
#1

I am looking to add a Zwave thermostat and outdoor sensor to my Veralite.

I currently have a thermostat that I can control remotely via wifi. It has a 7 day schedule with 4 time slots. I really need 5 which is why I am thinking it would be best to use Vera to handle the scheduling. Is that correct? My needs for the thermostat are simply for heat, I have no central air. I do have window AC’s so I thought to add a few Zwave wall plugs to trigger the AC’s on once the inside temp reaches a certain point. Is that doable?

In regards to outdoor temp sensors, do they all need to be hardwired back to the thermostat or are there wireless ones that just need to be powered? Would it be prudent to upgrade to the VeraEdge as I understand the range on some of the newer ZWave devices can be long range?

Any suggestions on thermostats and sensors would be very helpful

Thanks!

#2

I can tell you what I am using and it might help you decide what you want to do.
As to thermostat, I am using the Honeywell YTH8320ZW1007. It has 7 day programmable built in, but I am not using that feature, I have set all the programming thru my Vera. It was real easy to set up, but just a note, 3 out of the 4 that I bought did not have the communications board seated right in them. You will want to check that before you install it.

As for sensors, I am using the Aeon Labs Aeotec Z-Wave Multi-Sensor. It is a 4 in 1 sensor for light, humidity, temperature and motion. These are battery powered (4 AAA), so no cabling is required. They are pretty neat and using some LuuP code for scene controls, they are pretty snappy.

As for controllers, I have two locations, one has a Vera 3 UI5, the other has a Vera Edge UI7. I have noticed that the Vera Edge has much better distance that my Vera 3, but I don’t like the Dashboard and interface of UI7 over the UI5. It would have been real great if they would have left a legacy skin and user gui but it is what it is. Since you can’t find any Vera 3 units any more, I would just jump to the Edge. I bought all of my components on Amazon and found the best pricing there.

#3

Thanks for the reply.

Could you expand on how exactly the sensors are utilized in your setup please?

#4

Netatmo has some nice products you might want to take a look at. 25% off today. Very good plugin for it exista as well. I find my outdoor temperature to be very accurate.

#5

Thanks for the tip on Netatmo. I was looking at it, at 25% off, I my just pull the trigger.

I really like the look of the Nest, on the fence between that and a Honeywell YTH8320ZW1007

Cost no object, which would you pick and why?

#6

[quote=“fmzip, post:3, topic:189870”]Thanks for the reply.

Could you expand on how exactly the sensors are utilized in your setup please?[/quote]

I am just using the sensors for motion right now, I really have no need to control my thermostats with the temp sensor. But you could very easily by setting a trigger when temp reaches either a high value or low value, then execute a mode or state change in the thermostat.

#7

I have the Honeywell YTH8320ZW1007 but I have it hooked up to Alarm.com’s z-wave controller not my vera. I do like it, but it is nothing fancy. It does not have extra temperature sensors you can hook up directly.

What I have learned about my thermostat and home automation…
I tried the suggestion of setting the heat a little lower in extreme cold outside temps, and setting the AC a little higher in very hot outside temps to save on energy bills. My family really didn’t appreciate this very much, so while it may have saved some of dollars, we ended up turning off those rules. Maybe I could get away with a 1 degree difference and not get gripes, but the alarm.com rule was a little buggy so I just turned it off.

I have temperature sensors in the house (there is a sensor on the thermostat itself, plus I have some fibaro motion sensors and EZMultiPli sensors that report temp). I did not end up using them to adjust the thermostat, instead I ended up using them to change what registers I have open, and helped identify where I needed some booster fans upstairs, so that temperature is more consistent in the house now which is awesome, I do this little tweak exercise in the fall and in the spring as we are switching from heating to AC.

Really the only HA I ended up using with the thermostat was setting the thermostat when we put the alarm in Away mode. It will set the temp low in winter or high in the summer when no-one is home, then sets it back to its regular schedule when the alarm is disarmed which works well.

The other rule I liked (but ended up abandoning because of a bug in Alarm.com where it won’t always restore the schedule after the door was closed) was setting the temp lower or higher slightly if a window or door had been left open for a long period of time. Like when we are having a party on the outside deck, don’t make the AC work so hard to cool the outside :slight_smile: