Thermostat and Sensors

[rec9140]

Is there something that outlines how all this works with the Thermostat and the Room Sensors to achieve the desired temperature.

I have the “Motion Sensing” for the sensors off. Thats just not going to work with a known issue to start…

So based on:

I hate the Wyze Thermostat - ONE TEMPERATURE PLEASE!

Thank you for the tag @Rulwiz! Sorry for the delay. Had a long day. @Earl.Automation and @spamoni4 have already covered so much ground, so I will just share what I have going on with mine… I don’t use any schedules. I also made sure to delete all schedules from the list. All Home\Away\Sleep state changes in my thermostat are rule driven by mode changes in my Wyze HMS security system. There are other ways of automating this as well or you can do it manually. Once a schedule is set, the set…

My understanding is this is to “average” things out… ok… Just to make sure this is a TRUE AVERAGE… ie: Sensor 1 Temp + Thermostat + Sensor x = Y Temp / # of Sensors + 1 for Thermostat … and not some weighted average where the stat or sensors take a greater weight…

Are there other settings to tweak to get this working a la my “fan control” thread the defaults were really not set for controlling the fan manually, plus there is a good bit of delay in the fan coming on or off

See:

Thermostat - NO manual fan - Any ideas?

What do you have the Fan Activation Delay set to? After the change in the one setting triggered a manual fan… I’ve been playing with this from the default ( I think, I don’t remember setting this) 15s to by furnace… and now… Appears if I NOW HIT Controls, FAN, ON… It comes on!! Seems to be a very large delay to get this to happen… I could post the wiring, but I don’t think its an issue now with these results… AC gets cold air & fan, heat in the heat test gets hot air and fan… So I think a…

So what I tam rying to do is get the math set, any other tweaks I might need to do to adjust this to get things to where I want…

I am guessing that I may have to do some of the math and adjust the stat temp to work out where I want things… This has been an issue for YEARS before using wyze… You could be frozen out of a room, and boil in another, or maybe more warmer… The goal of this setup is even this out…

So I am curious:

1. Is my “math” correct on the average? I am using bog standard “average” not New Math, not…well you get the idea. Real math average.

2. What others may have done to get the “desired” temp out of the “average temp” I am guessing this is not going to be what I’ve got the tstat set to now, as I’ve had to take the sensors out of the “Comfort Control Group” to get the temp back to temp… What I am saying is:

Tstat Temp Setting = (Sensor X… + Tstat Temps/Y Sensors + 1 (tstat) ) + x fudge factor to get the setting to get this math all to work out… to the desired comfort temp…

The issue is the WILD VARIANCES between tstat and 1 sensor in another room, and sensor in the same room as the tstat but a different location… I’ve played with what is and is not in the comfort zone group for the average ( That does trigger the in Home v. in Thermostat message to indicate its averaging, and doing so does trigger an reaction ie: AC on… )

Like I said this has been an issue with old mechanical to more modern “digital” tstats…

Before I go on a dead end I am looking to see what settings I need to tweak this and determine what I need to really set the Tstat at to get the “desired temp.” Which is not where its at right now…

[SlabSlayer]

@rec9140

Is my “math” correct on the average? I am using bog standard “average” not New Math, not…well you get the idea. Real math average.

Your math is correct. All sensors + Thermostat\total # sensors +1. However, this may not be 100% accurate. See below about Sensor Hot/Cold spot settings and sensors “dropping out” of Comfort Control.

@rec9140

You could be frozen out of a room, and boil in another, or maybe more warmer… The goal of this setup is even this out…

@rec9140

Before I go on a dead end I am looking to see what settings I need to tweak this and determine what I need to really set the Tstat at to get the “desired temp.” Which is not where its at right now…

In my experience with mine, if you are looking to get the same temp in all rooms, the Thermostat with the Remote sensors will NOT do that. That goal is a dead end. The Thermostat / Sensor combo cannot fix Air Delivery variances.

With a single, conventional non-variable HVAC system, the Thermostat and Sensor control system has no way whatsoever to deliver more heat or cool air to any single room without also delivering the same to every other room in the house. The air delivery ducts and registers control air volume to each individual room. The temperature of that delivered air is highly affected by the physical topology of that duct system and how it was calculated, engineered, and installed. The Thermostat and Remote Sensors cannot overcome construction limitations.

During heating for example, when one room is cold, it brings the average down, calls for heat from the calculated average, and heats all rooms, not just that room. It will bring the heat up in all rooms to raise the average until the thermostat is satisfied and turns the heat off. However, if your duct work and registers are delivering more air to one of the warmer rooms, that sensor will rise more than the cold room, thereby offsetting any heat gain in the cold room. The Thermostat will end at an average temp wherein the cold room is still not up to the desired temp and the hot room will be well over the desired temp. If it does successfully eliminate the cold spot room, it creates a hot spot room in the process.

The only way to get an equal temp in all rooms is by installing a variable zone Smart HVAC unit capable of delivering more or less air to each individual room based on need, installing smart registers capable of restricting air delivered to specific rooms based on need, or run around the house each season change adjusting the registers to balance air delivery.

My old house has a retrofit unit at one end of the house with registers that have been cut into several rooms while other rooms use original construction registers, some with original ducting. The system was installed by the previous owner and the company hired to install was the lowest bidder. The installer was obviously clueless about air delivery dynamics over distance. They used the same size flexiduct on all new registers regardless of the distance and it is wildly undersized compared to the original duct used. To make it even more inefficient, the longer runs are tied into the main trunk duct further from the unit than the shorter runs. The result: rooms closer to the unit that are connected to the main delivery duct closer to the unit with original, larger ducts get nearly twice the air delivery of rooms farthest from the unit. I have to manage room-to-room temp manually by adjusting registers to restrict airflow.

@rec9140

Are there other settings to tweak to get this working a la my “fan control” thread the defaults were really not set for controlling the fan manually, plus there is a good bit of delay in the fan coming on or off

I set my Fan Activation Delay to “By Furnace”. But, I have a NG Furnace which operates on a completely different pre-heat principle before the fan activates and a cool down pre-set before shutting off. For Cooling, I also use the Coast To Cool setting that maintains the fan at a higher speed after shutting off to get every ounce of cooling out if the coil. I have my Fan Cycle set to 0m/hr. How these settings are managed and if they are even available to set depends on the type of HVAC system employed.

@rec9140

I’ve had to take the sensors out of the “Comfort Control Group”

There have been many discussions since the Sensors were released about what causes them to spontaneously drop from being included in the average for the Comfort Control group. Some have mentioned that if a sensor falls outside of its preset Temperature Threshold, that it is excluded from the average. I have been successful in locking mine into included status permanently. I tested this by dropping the temp on a Remote Sensor drastically beyond the Temp Threshold and could not get it to drop out of Comfort Control. I also have my Motion Sensing turned off.

The Thermostat Firmware also “appears” to have some logic in it to somehow weight each remote sensor individually, though no one yet has specifically identified what that logic is or how it changes the calculation. Each sensor has its own Hot/Cold Spot setting for Prioritize Savings, Balanced, and Prioritize Comfort. In theory, this setting would place a weighting per sensor to raise the priority when set to Comfort and lower the priority when set to Savings. But, no one has yet identified what that weighting or priority math is or if it really exists. I would assume then that the Thermostat, with a similar behavior setting, is also prioritized when working in concert with the Comfort Control Group, but I have no way to confirm this.

[rec9140]

@SlabSlayer

Your math is correct. All sensors + Thermostat\total # sensors +1. However, this may not be 100% accurate.

Wait… we can’t have that! Me correct… that could alter the time continuum or something !

@SlabSlayer

See below about Sensor Hot/Cold spot settings and sensors “dropping out” of Comfort Control.

Always that but… sighh…

@SlabSlayer

In my experience with mine, if you are looking to get the same temp in all rooms, the Thermostat with the Remote sensors will NOT do that. That goal is a dead end. The Thermostat / Sensor combo cannot fix Air Delivery variances.

The HVAC or more AC has been a problem child as long as I can remember… Honestly I don’t know that there is a true fix short of starting over… I think there are multitude of issues that compound on each other… crap placement of thermostat, vents blowing into each other and more…

MY GOAL … is not that each room read say 77 but that using the “math” that the house on average is 77 and …

As for the air delivery… I’ve considered various controls of the vents but this can be as problematic as wyze… and the cost can go from $ to $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ quite quickly… Or changes to having multiple systems… and that is not going to happen either, least of which is $$$… There are other factors which take that off the table before we even get there…

@SlabSlayer

set my Fan Activation Delay to “By Furnace”. But, I have a NG Furnace which operates on a completely different pre-heat principle before the fan activates and a cool down pre-set before shutting off. For Cooling, I also use the Coast To Cool setting that maintains the fan at a higher speed after shutting off to get every ounce of cooling out if the coil. I have my Fan Cycle set to 0m/hr. How these settings are managed and if they are even available to set depends on the type of HVAC system employed.

I think that might have been the true catalyst “By Furance…” as my heat when I need it like 2 weeks out of the year… is NG too… And does the same thing… you can hear it ignite up something…ignition sequence complete… launch… oh sorry… wooops… and then the fan and heat come on… same with it going off and the fan blowing cool/warm air out then the fan goes off… There just also is a HUGE HONKING DELAY in hitting FAN ON and it coming on… don’t matter where phone/tablet or local… I couldn’t pin point exactly what may have been the true trigger point…as I got it working and I didn’t want to resent settings to see what the trigger is 100%… the other thread on this resolved it… I know it works… and can “edumacate” users on my end… maybe…

As for the sensors for:

I’ve not seen them drop out… but being bluetooth is likely going to be source of that… They should either ride the 2.4GHz WyzeNet or 915MHz like the other Sense stuff does… but I am guessing since the tstat is the receiver thats a done deal… And the integration of the Sense line to the tstat seems to be stalled… or likely asystole.

@SlabSlayer

The Thermostat Firmware also “appears” to have some logic in it to somehow weight each remote sensor individually, though no one yet has specifically identified what that logic is or how it changes the calculation. Each sensor has its own Hot/Cold Spot setting for Prioritize Savings, Balanced, and Prioritize Comfort. In theory, this setting would place a weighting per sensor to raise the priority when set to Comfort and lower the priority when set to Savings. But, no one has yet identified what that weighting or priority math is or if it really exists. I would assume then that the Thermostat, with a similar behavior setting, is also prioritized when working in concert with the Comfort Control Group, but I have no way to confirm this.

I think there may be something to this! ! ! That would seem to make sense, and this is an area where I think that Wyze would be well… Wyze (Here all week!.. ) maybe divulge this ( yeah we all know the standard 1A1 non answer we are going to get on that one… ) I think if ALL THE LOGIC behind the tstat settings and the sensors too needs to be outlined… and THE DEFAULTS I don’t think are correct for “defaults.”

I am starting to think that

1. ALL the sensors need to be on the same “hot/cold” setting I kinda suspected this and they are all there now in “Balanced” but in my setup I think that needs to be comfort…

2. The Tstat needs to report that decimal point! As it MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE whether the tstat triggers or not even with out the sensors… Alexa gave that one up! She will report the decimal and it explained why the software and screen show 79 and it SHOULD BE ON, but it is not… its 78.4 or something… OR then the math needs to be temp = floor (tempSensor) which in essence rounds down, period. If the firmware is going to use a decimal then the hoooomans need to see the decimal too! OR ROUND it one way or the other 100% of the time…and I would err to down IOW floor(var) … AND TELL US which it is.

I think this is going to have to be some shenanigans on my end on what the Cool temp setting is to achieve my goal to average out the stupidness which is not changeable in my system. I think one of the threads about firmware changes that would set one or a sensors group to be the temp sensor for the tstat was pretty much written off as they "are done with the tstat… it has the features we planned… yadda yadda … go away. I think this was in the 2023 AMA thread…)

We will see once I get all the sensors in hand (stoopid UPS don’t get me started! ) and put in place to where I can get some idea the hot/cold spots… I know they exist already… its been that way before this… this is the “stupidness” of the system I can’t change (vents, etc… )

Some transparency on the settings, math and logic on these things would be helpful… but again, we all know what that answer will be… I can cut and paste that from Bad Business Ethics textbook myself.

If you are paying attention you can see the temp change in the software when you access the tstat it will go from tstat local to what ever this math result is form the sensors + tstat…

So I think some experimenting with things will get me to my goal of it not running and running because the tstat things its still too warm, while the rest of the house shivers… Knowing the math and logic behind things would speed this up…but I think these can be developed on its own…

[SlabSlayer]

@rec9140

MY GOAL … is not that each room read say 77 but that using the “math” that the house on average is 77 and …

So long as you have the Remote Sensors locked into being included in the Comfort Control Group, the App will show the Averaged Temp [when it says Home] of those included Sensors & the Thermostat (plus or minus your Temperature Correction if you have one set) and will use that for the Call for Heat \ Cool. The Thermostat will not show the average but will only show the sensed temp at the Thermostat plus or minus your Temp Correction.

@rec9140

as my heat when I need it like 2 weeks out of the year… is NG too… And does the same thing… you can hear it ignite up something…ignition sequence complete… launch… oh sorry… wooops… and then the fan and heat come on…

Furnace boards are programmed to do this because it takes time for the Heat Exchanger to come up to temp before the blower starts the air current across them to heat. You can try to override this by setting the Fan Delay to 0s in the app, if the Furnace Control Board will even allow a setting lower than its pre-set Fan Delay limit, but you will be blowing colder return air thru the registers for the first several seconds after startup and it will take longer for your Heat Exchanger to come up to temp, thereby using more fuel to satisfy the call for heat.

@rec9140

same with it going off and the fan blowing cool/warm air out then the fan goes off…

Same with the cooldown of the Heat Exchanger as the warm up. The Furnace is programmed to get as much heat out of it as it can after the burners cut out for both efficiency and safety.

@rec9140

There just also is a HUGE HONKING DELAY in hitting FAN ON and it coming on

This is one of the issues with the app. When you pull up the Thermostat Controls in bottom of the Thermostat UI in the App and change the Fan from Auto to On, the command doesn’t get sent to the Thermostat until after the control panel on the App is closed. When you do this, you will hear the Thermostat click within a few seconds registering the Fan On\Off command being executed. Then the Fan Activation Delay you have set starts. If it is By Furnace, this is hard coded into the Furnace Board. If you are using the App to override it, if the Furnace allows it, it will start after that delay, if any. The Fan Off command follows the same cooldown timer set in the furnace logic when the burners quit. The actual latency of the Wyze App and Thermostat is measured between when the Control Panel is closed on the app and when you hear the Thermostat click, no more than a few seconds from command to execution. The wait time from the click before the blower kicks in is being controlled by your Furnace logic.

@rec9140

I’ve not seen them drop out… but being bluetooth is likely going to be source of that…

I believe it was more an issue of the inclusion settings in the app with which mode the Thermostat was in and the Motion Activation when the Sensors were first released. They may have fixed this since in Firmware updates since it hasn’t been a topic here in the forum for a very long time now.

@rec9140

And the integration of the Sense line to the tstat seems to be stalled… or likely asystole.

I don’t believe there ever were any plans for a direct integration for the Climate Sensors to be used as Remote Sensors for Thermostat control since they communicate differently. But, the Sense Climate Sensors are partially integrated with the Thermostat thru limited Triggers and Actions in the Rules Engine so that they can be used in limited capacities for commands on the Thermostat. They cannot be used for a Call for Heat or Cool, but they can trigger State and Mode changes that will affect Thermostat operations:

Triggers from the Sense Climate Sensor:

Actions on the Thermostat:

@rec9140

I think if ALL THE LOGIC behind the tstat settings and the sensors too needs to be outlined…

Users have been asking for that since it was released in December 2020.

@rec9140

I am starting to think that

1. ALL the sensors need to be on the same “hot/cold” setting I kinda suspected this and they are all there now in “Balanced” but in my setup I think that needs to be comfort…

What leads you to suspect that all Room Sensors must be on the same Hot\Cold Spot setting?

@rec9140

The Tstat needs to report that decimal point! As it MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE whether the tstat triggers or not even with out the sensors…

Switch to Centigrade. They get the decimal.

@rec9140

I think one of the threads about firmware changes that would set one or a sensors group to be the temp sensor for the tstat was pretty much written off as they "are done with the tstat… it has the features we planned… yadda yadda … go away. I think this was in the 2023 AMA thread

I don’t foresee any features or functionality development in the Thermostat either, and that is unfortunate and upsetting given that there are currently features that plain don’t work.

@rec9140

Some transparency on the settings, math and logic on these things would be helpful…

You aren’t going to get that from Wyze. All they offer is in the Thermostat Knowledge Articles, the Thermostat User Guide, and the Room Sensor Knowledge Articles. Most of the How To and Tips and Tricks that isn’t explained in the Articles or Manual has come from users here in the forum thru practical application and extensive testing.

[rec9140]

@SlabSlayer

Switch to Centigrade. They get the decimal.

Won’t work… Ich nicht verste.

Some of the theories on the sensors being on the same “Hot…” setting is based the fact that I think there is MORE to the MATH than just a straight average… I can’t back it up yet, yet… Its a hunch… based on putting the sensors I have (UPS glitch) up… Since they take 6, I am going to max out… one won’t be in the HVAC control, as its more for a data point, I can move it later once the Sense Hub is in as I need it to do a task ie: plug controlled via temp…

Basically my theory is to let all the sensors acclimate to the location and then do some math on my end to determine what I need to set the tstat to based on these variances to achieve the “perceived” temperature, ie comfortable, not running on and on and because the tstat thinks its hot etc… (This WAS AN ISSUE TO Wyze… its crap vent and tstat location. neither is fixable… trust me you didn’t want to be around on install days…

I don’t have the Security/Sense base, yet… Thats part of the Xmas Lab time… so good to know on the actions available… Its going to be the subject of some other very intense hacking for things…

In re the HVAC modes… Not an HVAC person so I just know the barest of basics on it… out of depth on most of it… but…

As for manual fan control… IF … when I used the old digital (as in it had an LCD, not programmable etc.) tstat click to fan, it comes ON IMMEDIATELY… Test why the fan don’t come on with the Wyze… JUMP THE WIRES… Fan comes ON IMMEDIATELY… I think setting to By Furnace was more the catalyst for it to work… Why??? I never changed out of the Controls Sub Menu before the fan did finally came on… So there is some delay some where in this loop be it software, tstat firmware, “cloud” traversal??

The documentation … and install stuff, and transparency etc. are well. Clearly stuff which needs some work… and I am going to just leave it there… point being there is stuff here that SHOULD BE THERE. Some other things… too much reliance on ONLINE INSTALL in the software or web site… Yeah I get this is likely some cost reduction move… It was more a comment on what should happen… as unlikely as it is…

Which leads to Alexa… and these:

Wyze Thermostat Alexa Integration and Commands

Thank you for posting this information. I’m sure it took you a lot of time and effort to do that. Just got my Wyze thermometer working after paying OnTech $99 to install it. Their installer did a great job even though he had only installed Google Nest thermometers. My forced air furnace thermometer only had two wires so it would not work with the included Wyze C wire adapter. It was mounted upstairs and the furnace is downstairs which made running a C wire unrealistic. He recommended installi…

And

Command Set for Alexa Thermostat Control

In addition to the commands listed by @vaaish, you can also say “set temperature to (temp)”

I’ve tried this

Alexa What is the Living Room Temperature… “Living room doesn’t support that!” Well then what does it support… pick another sensors… I can’t find a group or device with that name… Getting the THERMOSTAT TEMP works… I didn’t try commands to change temp or modes… So? ???