WiFi connected thermostats

[Ninety]

Arduino Project?

https://www.google.com/search?q=arduino+thermostat&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=arduino+thermostat+with+timer

[Michael in California]

So, I went with the Ecobee3. I should have it delivered by Friday. We will see if it as a god choice.

[Max Power!]

How is the Ecobee3 working out for you?
I have the Honeywell Vision Pro 8000 but am considering returning it for the Ecobee. The Honeywell also averages with a remote sensor, but I can only see the average and not any individual sensor.

[Michael in California]

So far, good. You can select what sensors are used for each time period. You can also view each sensor. Cool thing is you can get a historical graph of how often your furnace cycles along with set and actual temperature.

I also relocated the t-stat away from the cold garage door and minibar, so an imperfect test, but the house is way more comfortable.

[2DoorImpala]

Nest is sweeeeeeeet, only issue I had was registering using the pin from the account, had to reset it 2 times to get it to work

[Doheny]

I have a Nest, which is really more than we need. I simply want something I can turn on from the comfort of my couch or bed via my phone, or if we're headed home and we want to warm or cool the house. In Southern Cal the temps aren't that extreme that I need all the automatic functions. YMMV

[Cokebottle]

Nest is sweeeeeeeet, only issue I had was registering using the pin from the account, had to reset it 2 times to get it to work

I had no issues at all with the Nest, but the Nest Protect units are a MAJOR pain.
You have to connect your phone to the Protect units and program them individually to look for your WiFi SSID and the connection parameters.
Buy a new router where the base IP changes (in my case, it went from 192.168.1.100 to 192.168.1.1)

The problem is, at least with Android, if it cannot connect to "the internet" (likely tries to ping mail.google.com), it will immediately disconnect.
You have to go into your settings and toggle an option that allows it to remain connected to a "dead" network.

Of course, none of this is in the documentation, and it is BURIED in the support forum.

[Michael in California]

Ecobee follow-up

It has nice history tracking. Here is a daily chart centered on midnight.

What is interesting is how seldom the furnace actually runs.

The white bars are the programmed 10 minutes minimum of fan-only circulation. The orange bars are when heat is called. You can see that if heat is called, the fan runs as long as the heat is on for the most part.

The white line is the actual temperature and the orange line is the set-point.

Just to the left of midnight, you see the set point drop to the overnight temp of 62. The set point rises to 69 in the morning at 5 am, but you see the furnace come on prior to that in anticipation. It runs at 69 for a while and then drops to the weekday away temperature. At 11 am, near the far right, the temp rises as it senses me coming home for lunch, even though the setting is programmed for us to be away. back to the far left, the temp again drops to the away setting and then raises back to our evening home set temp and stays there until bed time.

I thought the furnace was running much more than that. We will see how it goes when the daytime temp remains lower for more of the day.