[baby_souffle]

> Are they good options for cloud-freeish thermostats?

There are connected thermostats that do not feature a WiFi radio. I don't like zwave (I would really prefer WiFi with a HTTP or MQTT interface) but there is no thermostat that a) has a modern/working WiFi radio and b) a documented API.

Venstar is the only company that makes WiFi with an API but they seem to use the cheapest possible WiFi radios and I could never get mine to stay connected to my network for more than an hour or two. They also had a _really unusual_ firmware architecture: it was linux with a stripped down web browser; the UI was a SPA and it used some lua or js (don't recall, sorry) to communicate to the hardware driving GPIOs. They did expect firmware updates to be signed and that's where I stopped looking and moved on to a zwave thermostat.

[mr_machine]

I've got two of the Venstar Colortouch thermostats running locally with Home Assistant. They were spendy and their interface feels dated and clunky, but they've been totally reliable for me.

[z3ugma]

I'm working on https://sett.homes which is in this spirit. Instead of an Atmel it's an ESP32.

It uses MQTT with Wifi as you requested :)