I’m not sure the best way to ask or if there is a better community to post…

I’m hoping to use my home server to control my home thermostat but not sure where to start.

Does anyone use Home Assistant for this? Another software?

I’m not sure if I’m allowed to ask about hardware here, but are there things to be aware of in making sure that a wifi thermostat is best suited for the job?

  • JustEnoughDucksEnglish
    4•4 hours ago

    It really really depends on what you have for heating.

    Floor heating + heat pump? You don’t need to mess around with target temp much because the principle behind it is thermal mass buildup and maintaining that. You have to tune thermostatic valves on the room level. Then you can have one central thermostat simply slightly change the target temperature with many hours of delay. That doesn’t seem too useful to me to automate.

    Do you have radiators? Then you can get zwave or ZigBee valves and tie them together with whatever thermostat that you want in home assistant. Then you can set per room/zone heat depending on whatever sensors you have.

    Do you have central forced air heating and air conditioning? Then you have pretty much target temp and on/off control unless you want to put in motorized automatic registers or redesign your entire duct system for per-room duct valves.

    Individual heat pumps/airco units with radiator based heating is the most “per room” customizable and probably the most useful to put automations on in Home Assistant.

    Ventilation can be useful by monitoring CO2 levels and humidity. Then you can use either the fan units themselves or socket switches to actuate those and put whatever sensors you want wherever it is useful.

    I am probably missing some stuff here, but there are only a few HVAC setups that actually benefit from automation, in my opinion. Mainly ventilation, infrared, and non centralized forced air heat pumps. Plus heating and cooling is something you want to work 100% flawlessly even if your router dies, your home assistant falls off a cliff, and your ZigBee/zwave controller dies.

    • @gedaliyahOPEnglish
      1•2 hours ago

      I live in a hot climate, so it’s really the expense of air conditioning.

      Small adjustments to the temperature based on whether or not we’re home, pre-cooling versus cooling during the heat of the day, etc. makes a big difference on the bill potentially.

      I’ve seen some scenarios where people were able to save hundreds of dollars a year just by adjusting the timing of systems. The price of electricity can go up and down during the day.

      Maybe those cases are outliers and it’s actually not worthwhile, but it seems compelling. If I can put a system in place for under $100, that will be at least as good as what I have and possibly a significant improvement, I’m interested in trying it.