Hey Folks, hopefully somebody can point me in the right direction.

I have a Honeywell Touch screen WiFi connected Thermostat about 4 years old. It has performed well giving me remote access via the web app thru my browser or the phone app. Lately and at times in the past the portal online has gone down. Especially the last couple of days in and out. A call to their customer service was useless as they tried to blame my browser. The phone app was behaving the same so that wasn’t it. Last night at 3 AM i tried to kick up the temp a bit and again it was out for over an hour. I’m done with Honeywell at this point. I am going to purchase another but with a remote sensor so that i can set the temps to the remote readings. There are a couple out there but I am now concerned with the online website stability/and ease of use. I don’t want it to be doing its own learning and setting temps by itself so locking that feature out is also key. Can anybody share their own experiences with other companies online scheduling portals?

Chas373

in General Discussion 4 years and 9 months ago

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hkapstein | 4 years and 8 months ago

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Upvoting the ecobee3 with sensors. Great for a brownstone, lots of data and options to help balance the heating.

Chas373 | 4 years and 8 months ago

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Thanks to all for the replies. I have decided I am going for the Nest learning with one sensor. With the Nest Learning I can be sure I’ll be able to place the sensor in the upstairs apt and it will be set to be the trigger for the thermostat one floor below. All the time.There’s no motion/room occupancy sensing within the sensor, just the temp which is what I want. I read something on the Ecobee site yesterday which seems to confirm that the sensor for the Ecobee 4 will always try to alter the temps depending on room occupancy. This defeats the purpose for me. I want to place it in the coldest room and have it always keep the room and consequently the whole house warmed so that room will not be chilly. The other apartments will stay a bit warmer than necessary but that tenants apartment is a priority. I am not looking for the thermostat to learn anything or go off schedule. I have an old steam heat system that takes some time for the heat to come up. It’s not i deal for economical reasons but it’s what i have and all I want is to automate it so its one less thing to constantly monitor. Thanks again to all.

chipito | 4 years and 9 months ago

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@Chas373, what @lurker is saying in regards to ecobee is right. In our house we have seven sensors set up, plus the thermostat itself is a sensor. For each schedule you set up (home, away, sleep, etc) you can say which sensors the system monitors for temperature. For instance, at night we only have it look at two bedrooms. You can turn on or off whether it also tries to see if the room is occupied. The CS person may have meant that you can’t turn off whether the sensors are sensing motion. They are dumb sensors so they always are (sensing motion and temperature). BUT as @Lurker said, you can turn off which sensors to use for setting your thermostat’s temperature and just ignore the motion/occupancy aspect of it. We just do it time-based by room.

greenworks | 4 years and 9 months ago

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FWIW I have found actual users of tech to be more knowledgeable than customer service reps almost every time. For giggles I tried setting up the system as lurker mentioned and have been successful.

Yes I have an older model but am running the latest version of the app/software, so it should be the same. And I’m sure you can still pick up an ecobee3 somewhere if you want to be sure.

Lurker | 4 years and 9 months ago

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I have both Nest and Ecobee–the Nest sensors don’t have motion/presence detection, which is why they don’t trigger based on motion ;). Nest has learning, which you don’t want, and which is why it’s more expensive than Ecobee and I wouldn’t recommend it for your system.
But I assure you, my heating system is a multi-zone hydronic (radiant floor and baseboard and steel radiators) and so I don’t do setbacks of more than a degree or two anyway as it takes a long time for the system to heat back up after dropping (unlike steam or hot air/furnace). You have 3 modes to choose from—home, away, and sleep— and you can select which sensors you want to be considered in each mode. I don’t use the modes, and have them all set to be the same temp more or less on a schedule. So for the upstairs I have them use just the remote sensors, which are in two bedrooms, and not hte hallway. For a second floor that has radiant floor heating, I have a remote sensor and a hallway sensor and I have both used. I simply keep my system in “home” mode all the time and so it never switches. At night I drop a degree or two on each floor and the thermostat knows how long intakes to get it back to the correct heat. The Ecobee can be set to use the motion sensors (Follow Me mode) and also has a learning mode that is an approximation of Nest. That’s all I have to offer. Good luck!

Chas373 | 4 years and 9 months ago

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Thanks Littlepea. It seems that the Nest Learning is the way to go for me.

Guest User | 4 years and 9 months ago

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We have a Nest thermostat with the extra sensors. You can disable the learning and set your own schedule. It allows you to switch between thermostat and remote sensors either manually or via a schedule. Had no issues with connectivity in 5+ years we have had it.

Chas373 | 4 years and 9 months ago

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Lurker, I’m grateful for the reply. I can’t stress enough how the guy I spoke to in CS at Ecobee was adamant at least three times i asked him to make sure, and he said no way to turn off the motion detector in the remote room sensor. It would sense anyone walking in or out and then adjust up or down accordingly. He said that it would then keep the average temp of the sensor and the thermostat. Maybe yours is not the current year and they’ve changed it? I tell you this should be an easy thing yet It seems the major brands all push the learning features. I just need remote capability and for the thing to follow MY set schedule without trying to alter it on its own. And I need that room sensor to ALWAYS be the trigger as you know.. I spoke to Google Nest last night and it seems that the Nest LEARNING thermo with the optional $40 sensor can be set to be a “dumb” thermo just requiring me to make the schedule and they swore up and down the remote sensor can be set to be the trigger. Always. Plus a feature of the Nest Learning vs the cheaper option is the Learning offers Bluet ooth connectivity in addition to WiFi, so if the WiFi should go out, you still can connect to the therm with your phone a bonus feature. Lastly and also really important is the reliability of the web portal/site/account page. Honeywell has given too many problems over the past few years. The thermo itself seems to be good quality its their website/servers that have endless hiccups. I assume Google being Google with their own server farms will provide a reliable connection. Oh and the Nest learning has Alexa so you can play music continuously thru the therm. Serenading the tenants when they come and go. (LOL) Thoughts?

Lurker | 4 years and 9 months ago

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I have an ecobee and you can override this–when you set up a mode (home, away, sleep) you simply pick the sensors you want to control the temp, and that can include deselecting the thermostat itself. So if you have a cold room you want to be the trigger, you simply select it for whatever mode you want. And you have to turn off Follow Me mode, which is a setting that relies on the occupancy detection. I have this set up this way and it relies on an average of the room sensors and not the thermostat’s temperature detection to turn the heat on and off.

Chas373 | 4 years and 9 months ago

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booisgolden Thanks for the reply. I Called Ecobee and spoke to a rep and told them what I wanted and it turns out the remote sensor cannot be made to be the determining temp to turn heat on or off. It has a motion sensor in it and if it senses you are not in the room it turns the heat down. No way to turn that off they said and so it will adjust the temps depending on the avg temp between the thermostat and the remote. Not gonna work for me, no matter how good the web portal is. So my search continues.

greenworks | 4 years and 9 months ago

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We have the ecobee for all the reasons you listed. Ease of use plus it doesn’t “learn” plus has remote sensors. We’ve had it since the ecobee3 first came out a few years agp and it’s very stable and reliable. The new ecobee look very similar. We just upgraded our remote sensors to the new ones and they are awesome.

Glad to hear someone else out there didn’t want their thermostat dictating their temps lol.