Your preferred heating/HVAC controller hardware ?

Time to upgrade the house and specially our Heating/Aircon controller
I would love to hear what is your preferred Indigo controlled controller !
The few features I am looking for
- being able to start heating/cooling down remotely before reaching the house
- being able to adjust the heating/aircon temperatures from my iphone or computer
- future extensions with multiple temperature readings and return fans control
Much appreciated Eric

Personally I've used the Venstar for Insteton and the Nest and can tell you I prefer the Nest. The Venstar had to be re-purchased just about every year almost exactly a month out of warranty because they kept failing and after my 4th one I gave up and went Nest. I really like the aesthetic of the Nest and it functions well with the plugin.

As for remote access and all of that, any system you get that talks to Indigo has that capability. I use geofencing to auto warm/cool/whatever the house myself.

I've used the Insteon thermostats (not the Venstar versions) for 6+ years and they have been absolutely trouble-free. I don't use and Insteon scenes with them, just have Indigo report/set the temp as needed. I like the look and function of the Nest and Ecobee, but have a local-communication whenever possible policy with all my automation stuff so haven't tried them

Terry

[jay (support)]

My experience is that the Insteon thermostats (I went through a variety of the plug in Insteon modules for Venstars and Insteon thermostats) are significantly less reliable than Z-Wave thermostats (I use one from Trane). I have a Honeywell WiFi Thermostat as well because of the esthetics, but I'm with Terry on the desire to have as much local control as possible. The Honeywell drops connections, doesn't like some router configurations, and their website is periodically unreachable. If I had to do it over again, I wouldn't buy it but would just buy another Trane as it's been rock solid since I installed it 16 months ago.

My experience is that the Insteon thermostats (I went through a variety of the plug in Insteon modules for Venstars and Insteon thermostats) are significantly less reliable than Z-Wave thermostats (I use one from Trane)...

Interesting. Have you had hardware failures, unreliable comms, or a mix? I can't recall ever having a single issue with mine, in fact I'd say it's been the most reliable part of my Insteon gear.

Terry

I have two Venstar thermostats, each with the RF adapter, that were purchased in March and July of 2008. Both are still working and I have not had any issues with them.

After living with the poor reliability of the various Insteon thermostats, I’ve come to prefer the Ecobee thermostats. I’m currently using the Ecobee 3lite models on 4 different zones in our house. I like the looks, the local control, the iPad/iPhone App, and the Indigo Plugin. The WiFi connectivity has been very reliable and setup is a snap. Remote access always seems speedy.

They can also make use of multiple remote temp/motion sensors, but I’ve not yet made any use of those.

I kind of like the “belt & suspenders” aspect of using the Nest with the Indigo plugin. If the Indigo server goes down, I ca still control the temperature settings and Indigo can read other sensors and turn on back up heaters with out the Nest.


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[jay (support)]

Interesting. Have you had hardware failures, unreliable comms, or a mix? I can't recall ever having a single issue with mine, in fact I'd say it's been the most reliable part of my Insteon gear.

Both. And I'm still smarting from that horrid bug years ago that caused the setpoints to go wonko. Don't know if that still happens, but when your technology can suffer collisions as easily as Insteon does you absolutely have to make certain that you don't misinterpret messages that badly. I also don't like the broadcast nature of equipment status which is quite prone to collision failures.

[jay (support)]

I kind of like the “belt & suspenders” aspect of using the Nest with the Indigo plugin. If the Indigo server goes down, I ca still control the temperature settings and Indigo can read other sensors and turn on back up heaters with out the Nest.

My fear is the other way around: if the Nest stops talking to their cloud or their cloud becomes unavailable then you can no longer control your thermostat (except doing it manually). This is the issue I have with the Honeywell WiFi thermostat - it'll randomly fail to talk to their cloud for some reason so now Indigo can't make the necessary adjustments. I didn't notice it a while back and it missed a temp change which in turn made me wake up sweating in the middle of the night (I like it cool at night).

My fear is the other way around: if the Nest stops talking to their cloud or their cloud becomes unavailable then you can no longer control your thermostat (except doing it manually).

I used to think the same way but have adopted a much more open idea of the fact that the Internet is now somewhat ubiquitous and the cloud is mostly there so I don't want to design my automation around the 10% rule of maybe they will be down rather than the 90% rule of they are perfectly fine. I don't say this to in any way diminish your way of doing things but rather to say that I was just like that too and have reversed how I look at it. I've always tried to live by the 90% rule and anything Internet dependent was, at one point, in the 50% area but now is more in the 90% (although that 10% can feel like 50% sometimes when it's at the wrong time). So if 10% of the time I might have to change my thermostat by hand I'm OK with that - but if I consider that the Internet must be down (highest likelihood), Googles servers are down (pretty low likelihood) AND I really just MUST change the thermostat because the environment is so much less than ideal at that specific moment that this all causes me pain then it's probably more like a 1% rule .

The cloud may be there most of the time, but the thread-like tether that connects me to it isn’t. My internet (Spectrum) drops several times per week for several minutes to several hours... it’s possible that my next house will be in the sticks which could mean satellite based, high-latency, metered internet which will be even worse.

Terry


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So, see for you then it's not the 90% rule it is probably more like the 75% rule with a 50% rule in the near future and then you are right, you need something local without a doubt. I have a property deep in the Rockies where satellite is the only real Internet and when I move there full time I will be in the same boat: local or bust.

[jay (support)]

My fear is the other way around: if the Nest stops talking to their cloud or their cloud becomes unavailable then you can no longer control your thermostat (except doing it manually).

I used to think the same way but have adopted a much more open idea of the fact that the Internet is now somewhat ubiquitous and the cloud is mostly there so I don't want to design my automation around the 10% rule of maybe they will be down rather than the 90% rule of they are perfectly fine. I don't say this to in any way diminish your way of doing things but rather to say that I was just like that too and have reversed how I look at it. I've always tried to live by the 90% rule and anything Internet dependent was, at one point, in the 50% area but now is more in the 90% (although that 10% can feel like 50% sometimes when it's at the wrong time). So if 10% of the time I might have to change my thermostat by hand I'm OK with that - but if I consider that the Internet must be down (highest likelihood), Googles servers are down (pretty low likelihood) AND I really just MUST change the thermostat because the environment is so much less than ideal at that specific moment that this all causes me pain then it's probably more like a 1% rule .

The problem is when these failures happen you don't necessarily notice immediately - but then it ends up waking you up at night. Or when you're not at home and you're relying on Indigo to manage/maintain the house. IMO, thermostats are one of those things that just have to work well/consistently - 90% isn't good enough.

Both. And I'm still smarting from that horrid bug years ago that caused the setpoints to go wonko. Don't know if that still happens, but when your technology can suffer collisions as easily as Insteon does you absolutely have to make certain that you don't misinterpret messages that badly. I also don't like the broadcast nature of equipment status which is quite prone to collision failures.

Ahh, never used the set points of the stat, I use Indigo for setpoints, everything really.

Terry


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