OT: Looking for info on internet thermostats

[bborr01]

Hello,

I would like to change my thermostat over to a internet accessible one. Has anyone out there got any exposure to them? I have looked at several of them on Amazon and quite a few of them appear to work with some other home control system and I don't know if they will work without having the complete system. The system name is Sensi.

There is a Honeywell that looks like it might work but I thought before I order anything I would check here first.

Thanks,
Brian

[MichaelP]

I use three Honeywell RTH9580WR1005 units between my residencies and the work place. All of them work flawlessly for about 2-3 years (although I did need to exchange one of them in the beginning because it didn't show correct temperature).

I do not use any home automation devices in conjunction with those thermostats, so I cannot provide any feedback on this aspect.

[CCWKen]

I just installed the Honeywell RTH6500WF a few months ago. It's Wi-Fi enabled and I can view or change temperatures from anywhere (But usually just from my desk). I don't have a smart phone so I access the thermostat through the Honeywell website. If you have a smart phone, you can download and install the Honeywell App and control the T-Stat from that too. You can also set it up to send you warnings should temperatures fall outside of a range you set.

The only problem I had was the old T-Stat was 4-wire and the Honeywell was 5-wire. It needs a 24vac Common that the old T-Stat didn't use. I don't recall if this is for the Wi-Fi or the auto-switching from cool to heat and back. (Another nice feature.) Fortunately, the wiring in the house had the extra lead. I just had to figure out where to tap in on the furnace end. This shouldn't be a problem for newer HVAC systems--I think they're all 5-wire now.

And...You will need a wireless router (Wi-Fi).

[boslab]

I can see it now, Russian hackers hack Honeywell site, leaving half the world uncomfortably warm, the Internet of things is accelerating,
Mark

[Doozer]

Being the oldest young person that I know...
I gotta ask why one would ever need an
internet connected thermostat for their house?
Is it about vanity or extreme laziness?

-D

[bborr01]

Being the oldest young person that I know...
I gotta ask why one would ever need an
internet connected thermostat for their house?
Is it about vanity or extreme laziness?

-D

It's about being 2,000 miles away and wanting to be able to monitor the homestead in the winter. Ever heard of frozen pipes? I live in Michigan.

Brian

[Evan]

Not a good plan to get any sort of net connected appliance these days. Just a week ago some shadowy group of hackers took down the entire East Coast internet for around half an hour one time and for shorter periods of time as well. What they have discovered so far is that the hackers have figured out some way to take over these types of net connected gadgets and reprogrammed them to send out, on command, streams of ping data. They were able to cause a full "denial of service attack" by overloading mainly the DNS system with a multi terabit per second data flood from the biggest botnet ever seen.

Apparently those devices have no form of security and it won't be engineered in any time soon. That would require new chips in every one of those devices. Not going to happen for anything on the market at this time and I guarantee "they" aren't going to do a recall on millions of such gadgets.

Of course this also means it will interfere with your own internet connection upon their command.

[CCWKen]

People that sit on their duff all day probably don't need it. But if you're active and away from the house often or on vacation, it's handy to keep tabs on the house temperature. It could save a burst pipe. There's all manner of "connected" devices in a home now. I needed a new thermostat anyway so I sprung for an update.

If you don't like it, don't buy it. Your car probably has more computers than your house. You must be a sad man sitting at your PC or watching TV all day based on your frequent and derisive posts.

[bborr01]

People that sit on their duff all day probably don't need it. But if you're active and away from the house often or on vacation, it's handy to keep tabs on the house temperature. It could save a burst pipe. There's all manner of "connected" devices in a home now. I needed a new thermostat anyway so I sprung for an update.

If you don't like it, don't buy it. Your car probably has more computers than your house. You must be a sad man sitting at your PC or watching TV all day based on your frequent and derisive posts.

I would guess you are talking about Doozer. My thoughts exactly.

Brian

[CCWKen]

Yeah, sorry. I should have quoted him. A few posts slipped in while I was typing.

[softtail]

We bought a home a while back that came with a Nest thermostat. I had no idea such gizmos existed and thought is was an over complicated contrivance. I kept it off line at all times unless we were traveling in the winter, as we had no neighbors or anyone else to check on the house.. even if we did, nothing beats being able to look at the temp hourly if you like.

Other than that it was an expensive over engineered contrivance imo. I keep it pretty simple.. a temp during the day, a temp during the night. For leaving the house in the winter, it is handy... I wished I could just have an alert sent if it fell below a certain temp.

[Evan]

My advice is to wait a few months at least before buying any such device. Give them time to build in just a little bit of security programming to prevent a takeover of your thermostat. This DOS attack will get them on the ball in a hurry. Just try to make sure that what you buy is very recently built. Maybe waiting six months is better...

[bborr01]

My advice is to wait a few months at least before buying any such device. Give them time to build in just a little bit of security programming to prevent a takeover of your thermostat. This DOS attack will get them on the ball in a hurry. Just try to make sure that what you buy is very recently built. Maybe waiting six months is better...

I don't have a couple of months before I need one. I just ordered a Honeywell RTH6580wf off from Amazon. It gets almost 5 stars in the reviews. We have people who can check on the house if something is going wrong but I don't want to have to pester friends and family just to keep my mind at ease.

We have also added a amcrest security camera and plan to add a couple more of them. They cost about $100 each and have pan and tilt as well as 2 way sound and 1080P resolution. Last time we left for an extended period of time our basement flooded about knee deep with ground water. If I had a camera in the basement it would have been an easy thing to have someone come in and repair or replace the sump pump and save a lot of grief.

Brian

[bborr01]

Thank You MichaelP and CCWKen for your input on the Honeywell thermostats. That helped me make up my mind on what one to buy.

Brian

[danlb]

We have also added a amcrest security camera and plan to add a couple more of them. They cost about $100 each and have pan and tilt as well as 2 way sound and 1080P resolution. Last time we left for an extended period of time our basement flooded about knee deep with ground water. If I had a camera in the basement it would have been an easy thing to have someone come in and repair or replace the sump pump and save a lot of grief.

Brian

Some of the Amcrest (formerly Foscam) cameras can be triggered by an external switch, such as a moisture detector. When the switch closes it sends you a picture in an email.

Unfortunately, Evan is correct that these internet connected cameras have been hacked in the past simply because people don't change the password. That's the first thing you should do if you have one.

Dan