[vel0city]

You don't need to have it internet connected to have your thermostat on a timer. My home has responded to heat or cool the house based on when I wake up, when I leave, when I come home, and when I go to bed for well over a decade all without needing an internet connection to do so. My thermostat doesn't go dumb just because the internet went down or because it became unsupported and got bricked.

The only thing I wish it would do would have better multi-zone temperature and humidity sensing to know to turn on the circulation fan when the edges of the house get too hot/cold compared to where the thermostat is. Even then that doesn't require the internet, it could be done with cheap 433MHz temp/humidity probes running on button cell batteries for years.

[pydry]

I do need internet if i want to tell my heating to turn on 1hr-30 mins before i come home though.

Or to respond to the weather (e.g. start warming the house earlier coz it's a particularly cold day).

If your life is very strictly regimented maybe it's less useful.

This doesnt mean I want a cloud connected thermostat. I want something that talks to homeassistant.

[vel0city]

I tell my thermostat my schedule once and how I want my house to be, and it makes sure to hit those temperatures when I want it to. I shouldn't have to "tell it" I'm coming home, it should just do it.

Respond to the weather? Its a thermostat. Even a decent bi-metallic strip thermostat will "respond to the weather". Its not like the thermostat needs to do anything different if its an especially cold day outside, it will keep the indoor environment as you programmed it. How do you think thermostats worked before the internet?

The only "respond to the weather" idea I'd like would be to account for especially humid days as sometimes the temperature is fine but its really humid in the house. But once again it doesn't need to reach out to an API to figure out the humidity outside at some airport 20mi away, it just needs a local humidity sensor.

[pydry]

If I am not in the house or I am asleep it is a waste of energy to heat it.

I find it weird that you get indignant at the idea of a little more automation than a timer.

>How do you think thermostats worked before the internet?

Either wasting money heating an empty home when I went out or I came home to a cold house and then turned on the heating. I remember.

I also remember thermostats which didnt understand the concept of weekends, etc.

[vel0city]

> If I am not in the house or I am asleep it is a waste of energy to heat it.

I agree, which is why I use a multi-stage programmable thermostat. Once again, it turns off when I leave, turns back on a bit before I get home, lets it warm/cool a bit while I sleep, and then starts back up around when I wake up.

> I find it weird that you get indignant at the idea of a little more automation than a timer.

If you're manually telling it you're on your way home that sounds like less automation to me. Personally I'd take the tiny bit of efficiency hit having it heat the house maybe an hour or two off from my regular schedule than having to micro-manage turning my thermostat on and off on a more expensive device that will probably be eventually bricked.

I'm just saying, the vast majority of the quality of life improvement from your internet connected thermostat could have been achieved with just a 7-day 4-stage programmable thermostat that has existed for 20 years. Its nice you're happy with your expensive device that's beholden to some cloud server, I hope it stays online for a few more years.

[pydry]

>Its nice you're happy with your expensive device that's beholden to some cloud server

lol I guess you made a bad guess about what homeassistant does or you simply chose not to read what i wrote.

Either way it's nice that you won the argument against the straw man you argued with.

[vel0city]

Ah, I missed where you said it was Home Assistant. My mind was mostly thinking about all the Nests and other cloud thermostats people tend to buy these days what with the original article talking about killing the device. Still, you need to do maintenance on your Home Assistant server while my 7 day thermostat requires no upkeep other than changing a AA battery every few years.

It being beholden to a cloud server is only half of my point which is the vast majority of the key functionality you talked about could have been achieved with a far simpler and cheaper device that has absolutely no network connectivity at all. Sure, you wouldn't be able to datamine exactly when your thermostat kicked on or off, but to me pressing a button to tell it you're coming home is less automation than your home just automatically being at the temp you want when you're there. If your schedule fluctuates by several hours every day for when you wake, when you leave, when you come home, and when you sleep I guess it could be useful to reprogram that on the fly remotely but for the vast majority of people a 7 day 4 stage programmable is fine. Not everything in my house needs to have an IP address.