OT: Looking for info on internet thermostats

[bborr01]

I installed the new internet thermostat a couple of days ago. Still need to finish connecting it to the net but am using it as a regular programmable thermostat for now and it works fine. One thing worth mentioning is that it takes a 5 wire feed to connect it to the furnace/central air unit.

Fortunately when I installed central air twenty some years ago I only had a 2 wire setup so I ran the 5 conductor wire. There is a blue wire that is used for a common when you use a internet thermostat so it can use the 24 volts that also runs the furnace.

The thermostat that I bought is a Honeywell and was a little under $100 on Amazon.

Brian

[AntonLargiader]

I installed the Honeywell Prestige IAQ, which uses Honeywell's Redlink communication. Redlink is a proprietary WiFi-like system that lets the Honeywell devices talk to each other. The stat talks to the outdoor temp/humidity sensor, the EIM (where all of the hardware interface is) and the Redlink internet gateway which is in turn plugged into my router. I think the communication between my phone and the stat goes over the network via Honeywell whether I am in my house or not. The gateway is not needed for the system to work, but it is needed for external access because nothing else speaks Redlink.

All of that just to describe the system architecture, specifically that the stat is not itself on WiFi. In fact, I suppose none of it is except for my phone, when it talks to the router to reach Honeywell to reach my Redlink router to reach the stat. Any hacking would be hacking into my Honeywell Connect account or possibly into the Redlink gateway.

Anyway, it all works properly. I can monitor and control the system from my phone, which mostly consists of turning the HVAC back on when we're an hour away after a long enough absence that we turned it off (or down) to begin with. There are also a few dry contacts on the EIM that can be used for anything, so you could use the same system to turn on a ventilation fan or something entirely unrelated to HVAC.

Honeywell does issue some firmware updates for this stuff. My biggest gripe is that Honeywell is not making this HomeKit enabled, despite all of the hoopla about being an Homekit partner. Their simpler systems are Homekit enabled but not their premium ones, go figure. We are stuck with Honeywell's relatively clunky app.