Experience comfort in every room with Wyze Room Sensor - 5/3/22

No Problem. I enjoyed it. I had an Ecobee and understood how it worked. Figured it had to be similar, which it was. To be honest, Ecobee even said a similar thing in their marketing material. I think what they were trying to convey is that you will realize a more even temp around the house when you include remote sensors.

But I am hopeful it will happen. :slight_smile:

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I made one, but it’s still pending.

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@csmith1,

I finally received shipment today and installed. I was excited to add these to my Wyze system based on the promotional materials, but now I am not so excited. Based on what I have read here in the forum, experienced from mine, and seen from other brands features, there is more functionality to be desired from these than came in the box.

I am with you on the deceptive language in the promotional materials Wyze has generated for the sensor. Add to that finding more technical and operational information here in the forum than can be found anywhere on their knowledge base or package guide.

One comment on the quote you posted from the Feature Tips Page that I have:

This Wyze statement is both misleading AND completely untrue. In fact, it is physically impossible unless you have a multi-zone variable heat pump installed, in which case I don’t believe the Wyze T-stat is even compatible, or you selectively open\close your dampers\registers yourself.

All rooms will be heated and cooled at the same time so long as the dampers are open. Most common HVAC systems can’t tell one room from another and the Wyze Thermostat and Sensors can’t control where that airflow goes, only On & Off. Most homes have unbalanced airflow room to room to begin with due to distance from the unit and improper duct\register sizing. Unless these Room Sensors come with a troop of magical fairies and elves to open and close dampers, all rooms will be heated and cooled when the system turns on.

From the Wyze Features:

“Works to eliminate hot and cold spots.” “Rid your home of hot and cold spots by placing Wyze Room Sensors in important rooms and letting Wyze Thermostat balance your home’s climate.”

The Room Sensors cannot change temperature differentials from one room to another. Eliminate a hot spot in one room and it will create a cold spot in another… The air blows everywhere. Heat and cool using an average temp and it will raise and lower the temp in all rooms. This is NOT “balanced”, this is just preferential room setpoints. The differential will still remain from room to room. The only way to fix this is to use the sensors to determine which dampers\registers to manually open and which to close. A simple dollar store thermometer in each room serves the same purpose.

The only thing this sensor can do is to selectively decentralize the Temp Sensing that triggers the Temp Setpoints Activation. And, it is quite limited in that regard.

I sure hope they are already thinking about improving this. It didn’t live up to the advertising promotion for me and I won’t be buying more until it’s functionality lives up to it’s price.

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… Waiting for arrival of those fairies and elves …

Your post is spot on. Most folks have a simple HVAC system… turn it on… air comes out of all ducts… and without those fairies and/or elves standing by to open/close ducts… we’re getting air out of all ducts… and these sensors can’t do much to ‘eliminate hot and cold spots’ and/or heat/cool just one room.

I can see how the Wyze Room Sensor could be used to, for example, to Cool my family room that gets direct afternoon sun that makes it hotter than the rest of the house by using ONLY the Wyze Room Sensor in that room to set the temp for the entire house. But, this will also result in the Living room on the other side of the house to be potentially colder as it gets the same cool air flow. AND it’ll be even colder as the living room is CLOSER to the A/C / Furnace unit. But hey, I’ll be at my desired temp in the Family Room :slight_smile:

SJ

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I do agree that they way they market the thermostat and room sensor makes it seem like you can make a room what you want.
They do not mention ever that with out a zoned system you are effecting the whole house or at least the areas affected by the system.
I have seen Smart Vents and that would be a great product for Wyze to look at making reasonably priced that you could get your whole home replaced.

Just a thought.

P.S.
I did a quick search and found this: Best Smart Vent: Room by room climate control…sort of (thesmartcave.com)

I think it sounds cool, thoughts?

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These are a great addition to a “smart” system. However it adds yet another ecosystem to manage. Since there is no Wyze solution on the horizon, could be a possibility though.

My only concern is management and regulation of the duct pressure and net airflow when the system is active. If they don’t have a way of showing this or producing a warning notification, it could be really easy for a user to damage their system by closing off too many registers in unused rooms.

My system is a newer retrofit into an older home (1953) that replaced an oil furnace and added AC. The previous owner did not splurge. It is a cobbled together network of old and new solid ducts and lots of flex-duct. I have been under the house many times shoring up shoddy workmanship and downright ignorant design shortcuts. They used more Foil Tape than they did screws, brackets and hangars! The primary trunk duct they hung actually fell from the joists and was sitting on the ground. They used 1\8" duct screws to attach it to the joists!

If I over pressurize my ducts by closing too many registers, it will blow the ducts off or at least blow the tape out. Worse, I have seen HVAC systems ruined from blocked airflow. Most users don’t consider the importance of proper airflow and duct pressure.

This might be something I consider down the road, but I have too many projects on my full renovation wishlist now to make this a priority. Nice to know it is available though.

I did vote for this Wishlist topic.

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Wishlist post for the ability to ignore the main thermostat temperature sensor is up!

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It seems like that wish list item needs cleaned up, it started as just a we need a room sensor and the title doesn’t really do the problem justice…how will people/or devs really know what the ask is without reading the whole thread?

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Ya you’re right, maybe a mod can edit the title to something more clear.

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All ya hafta do is send up the mod bat signal :bat: to get their attention: @Mods

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I modified the title to better reflect the issue/request (using your example).

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Thanks! That was fast! I think that will work!

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Bait and switch. I purchased 6 climate sensors based on the promise that it would interface with the Wyze Thermostat. I would be happy to just use 1 of the sensors because I don’t have zoned air conditioning.

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Wyze mentioned that linking climate sensors to the TStat is in the works to come eventually but that it is complicated:

As far as I know some form of this is still eventually intended to be supported with the HMS climate sensors, but it’s common for “future features” not to get released for a while. When I hear something is coming in the future, I usually expect it to be more than a year away. When he said there were lots of hurdles, I was guessing 1-2 years. I would love to hear an update on this though.

This is also why I never buy a product (Wyze or otherwyze) for what it may eventually be able to do, only for what it is currently at the moment of purchase. If it doesn’t currently do what we want/expect/need, then we will always have a chance to buy it again when it has been upgraded to meet those needs. And while the price may be a little different, considering Wyze operates on single digit profit margins, price differences are fairly minimal.

Who am I kidding? I buy everything from Wyze either way, and just enjoy it for how it currently is and hope future updates come eventually without necessarily expecting them. But it is a valid point that it is still showing up in the FAQ’s that it is planned for the future, so it would be nice to hear how that is coming. We’ll have to ask someone in the next AMA event they do. I’ll ask about it if someone reminds me.

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Oh Wyze,

I bought the 3 pack primarily so I could remotely see temps and understand what dampeners and closing of vents will do for my upstairs in this wonderful heat. For that, it’s done alright.
Secondly bought it because where the thermostat is located it hides behind my t.v. / entertainment center. So when I’m gaming with my computer or weekend binge watching it gets hotter near the thermostat than the rest of the room. So I have a sensor about 4 ft away set to comfort mode.

After a little messing around, I believe the modes work like this.

Prioritize Comfort is where the thermostat will try and get the temperature within range to that sensor. Thermostat set to 69 sensor will hit 69. I don’t think averages have anything to do with this one.

Balanced, when no one is in the room it tries to average that room out, so thermostat at 69 next sensor shows 70 the balanced room will probably be 74 or 75. May have something to do with the threshold temp??

Prioritize saving, room is completely ignored until you are sensed. And then it’ll kick on attempting to cool that room, regardless of what the other temps are. Walked into my bedroom with it set to this. It was 88 in that room. My thermostat was sitting at 72. 3 hours later of the AC running my thermostat was at 64, and that room was at 76. AC was still on, I manually turned it off. Gaming computers make it hot. Lol.

I have noticed rooms getting removed from the sensing comfort while on balanced and savings. This is where I’m getting my assumptions for the sensors.

So this system isn’t so much for cooling the individual room. More so being able to see what temps you have in other parts of your house, and raising your electric bill to try and keep those hot rooms cold while freezing the rest of your house.

I say this because even if you didn’t have these sensors, that room would still be THAT hot. These sensors give you the opportunity to have a thermostat in that room and keep your system on until it gets closer to what you want.

So if you do buy this system. Do your due diligence and close a vent or two I’m the basement/ lower levels. Open the ones on the top floors. This will do more than this system. However this system will help you see the end result. I used it more like a tool than a end all solution.

For me, closing 1 vent downstairs helped lower my upstairs by 2*. Closing any other vent did nothing at all. That tells me my system is perfectly setup for the house I have. But closing that 1 vent added just enough pressure to push a tad more to the upstairs. House was built in the 90s for reference. Newer houses probably won’t need this. (Hopefully).

Older houses this could help you find what closing certain vents can do. Those old systems are usually make shift AC units on smaller heating units. This can cause pressure issues. I would recommend this for anyone 80s house and before. Close your lower vents and use these to measure your before and after temps!

My current issues.
Wyze thermostat was already glitchy in app, Doesn’t always update, or pull correct temperatures. (Just the app, thermostat shows 68 right now my app says 73. Mix that with sensors that update once every maybe 10-15 minutes. And who knows if the thermostat is doing what it needs too. That can lead to 10-15 minutes of extra AC or heat. Definitely not cost savings. Closing 1 or 2 vents lower levels usually helps with upstairs cooling. These sensors help you see the real change. Definitely good for actual measurements… If we ever got the log data we wanted…

Overall I’m done with Wyze :frowning: . If we had more of the open concept, like ability to use home assistant then I wouldn’t need to wait around for even more lackluster functionality updates… let alone security updates.

Been a backer for quite a few of your products and your software never delivers. I can look past reusing cheap Chinese knockoff hardware and polishing the plastic for the American market. Your empty promises have killed it though.