No C wire? No service, if you seek homekit support
on January 29, 2021
Posted by: Johan
from Cupertino, CA
Gender:Male
Verified Purchase:Yes
First things first: if you have a C wire, you're probably good to go. Homekit will work, but weirdly, they chose not to expose the fan of the system to Siri, so you can't voice control when that goes on and off, which seems a major misfeature. I presume they will still run it a couple of times per hour (there are really hard to access settings for how many cycles per hour it engages, and NO documentation about it).
My thermostat is a 4-wire (Y+R+W+G) system, and after noting that it didn't have homekit support with that, and needed the extra wire to power its wifi, the research I did suggested I could get a thermostat-side 24V transformer to plug in as an R+Rc power source. This does indeed work: now the thermostat can talk to Siri.
What however doesn't work (even their tech support couldn't crack it) is the basic turning on and off the fan, that basic operation of closing the R and G wire circuit. It just won't do it, under any conditions. I even got a second unit to verify that the first wasn't faulty. Things work perfectly with a Nest, but this device could never engage my HVAC fan, meaning it could never actually deliver heat or cold anywhere throughout my apartment, as the blower is the bit that makes it all come together.
There is not off switch for the fan....you have to keep it on at least one setting which randomly makes it turn on once an hour. My house is perfect temp without it, but then becomes freezing while it turns on.
This thermostat is great! I have set my timers on and if I make any changes I do it from my phone when I don't feel like getting up. The geo fencing takes some time to catch up whenever you get home though.So I turned this function off. I guess it also depends on your settings and the distance you set in the app. I manually turn it down to about 65 (heat) when I'm leaving in the winter. Definitely will stick with this thermostat for my new house.
The thermostat was a bit tricky to get hooked into wi fi, but after that it has been easy to use so far, easy to bump up or down a few degrees when needed.