Rant: Dropped $250 on a "smart" thermostat that fought me all winter

Bought a Nest knockoff from some startup last October, and it kept turning off the heat whenever I was home. Turns out the motion sensor thought my cat was me, so it set the temp to 62 while I was sleeping. Called customer support 6 times before they ghosted me. Anyone else get burned by smart home gear that just makes things worse?

3 comments

3 Comments

amy_craig283d ago

Oh I feel your pain on this one. I had a similar experience with a Honeywell smart thermostat that kept switching to Eco mode because it thought my 60 pound lab was the only person home. The worst part is I paid a local HVAC guy $150 to install it and then had to pay him another $100 to rip it out and put my old basic one back. Those motion sensors are way too sensitive for anyone with pets. My fix was just getting a simple programmable thermostat that runs on a timer instead of trying to guess if I'm in the room. Honestly the whole smart home hype is overrated for things that just need to WORK.

mianelson3d ago

Here's the thing though, @amy_craig28 , my Nest has had my two cats triggering it for three years straight and it's never once flipped to Eco mode while I'm home. You had a bad unit or a bad install, not a bad smart thermostat. Motion sensors on these things aren't all the same, and Honeywell isn't exactly known for making the best ones. I set my Eco mode to only kick in after I've been gone for an hour, and it hasn't messed up once. A simple programmable timer is fine for basic heating and cooling, but it can't learn your schedule or adjust when you come home early. The real problem is people buying the cheapest smart thermostat and expecting it to work perfectly, then blaming the whole category.

smith.parker3d ago

Has anyone tried just disabling the motion sensor entirely and relying on the geofencing feature for Eco mode? @mianelson I had the same cat problem until I turned off the motion detection on my Ecobee, now it only switches based on my phone's location. It took me forever to figure out that setting was even there, lol.