Wyze Thermostat - Smart home heating & cooling

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I believe the other piece of the puzzle that may not be considered in this discussion is the return on investment versus market size. I am absolutely guessing, but I would say that 95% of homes in North America have some sort of traditional HVAC heating or cooling versus a limited amount that have baseboard heating.

If you were to consider the amount of capital required for r&d, patents, production, testing and marketing, with a small target audience that already has several players in it, what does your ROI end up looking like after it goes to market?

This very well may strictly be a business decision not to pursue this market due to the limited ROI plus some of the other thoughts mentioned here such as product liability, the plethora of different types/electrical wiring of heaters etc etc. A lot of risk for little return.

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Don’t think so, Dave, and that’s why I think there’s a big blindspot.
Modern homes generally are simple, well designed, with one HVAC system. Anything a bit older is a patchwork.
I recently visited an old house that had been retrofitted with 5 floor heating areas and 4 heat pumps in addition to the preexisting boiler and one forced air furnace…
Clearly that house was the other extreme, but most houses that are more than 25 year old (and that’s way more than 5%) are likely to have had some sort of retrofit or add-on.

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I bought the Wyze thermostat but did not install it. I was hoping to use it with Wyze Sense to change temperature depending on open windows and doors and if people were in the house. But Wyze stopped selling the sensors and now they only sell them with a home monitoring service. Looks like the Wyze thermostat is staying in the box.

PS: I got a Google Nest for my folks and it is HORRIBLE. They set the temp to 72 degrees when they go to sleep and wake up 4 hours later to 79 degrees. It’s supposed to “learn” their tastes but after months of setting it back to 72 the Nest figures on its own that 79 degrees is the best temperature?

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I’m not sure what they’re doing or if that Nest is bad, but that’s not how it should function. We have a Nest Thermostat and it works absolutely flawlessly and has definitely learned our preferences and set the heat/cool schedules accordingly.

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I’m not sure I understand reference to the older home for this scenario. My point was, that the control of electric baseboard heating is a much smaller market than traditional HVAC, smart plugs, headphones, light bulbs, or even robot vacuums and would require significant investment on wyze’s behalf with a little return.

I use a lot of car analogies because it seems that most folks can relate to them. Let’s pretend wyze was an aftermarket manufacturer of car parts. Would you focus your efforts on modern day vehicles where there are still a ton of them running around (large market), or would you do some r&d to manufacture the best radiator ever for a 1972 Ford pinto when there’s already several companies manufacturing regular ol’ Pinto radiators? Yes there’s still some 1972 Ford pintos running around but they’re pretty few and far between. Small market, small ROI for finite resources that could be focused on something more profitable.

Perhaps I’m completely wrong and Wyze will jump into the baseboard heater control market and manufacture a smart 1972 Pinto radiator as well. Who knows?

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Hi @mike.s . Can you tell me when the Wyze remote temperature sensor is coming out and will the Wyze thermostat be taking readings from them?

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A faulty IoT device either works or doesn’t work. So it’s a software problem. The app takes too long to load so I’m thinking it’s diving into the gmail account it’s tied to. Maybe the account is dictating what temperature my folks want? I guess I can create a new gmail account just to use the Nest.

Connecting a smart home to a person’s search history and shopping habits is dumb.

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@hobodave67 - It’s pretty easy to validate your mis-assumption that “electric baseboard heating is a much smaller market than traditional HVAC” Hmm, let’s investigate…oh my…“37 percent of US homes are electrified, mostly in the South, mostly using inefficient baseboard heating rather than efficient heat pumps.” See article here Most American homes are still heated with fossil fuels. It’s time to electrify. - Vox and source date here: The Fuel You Use For Heating Depends on Where You Live | Climate Central Reality is that the existing market for replacement of dumb HVAC thermostats is crowed with better solutions such as Ecobee and Nest. Wyze missed the huge opportunity to go after an underserved market with no dominant intrenched players. Not to mention the push to go electric and get off of fossil fuels will continue to expand the market for this type of thermostat. Not to mention increasing installation of radiant heat flooring which uses the same type of thermostat as an electric base board. Not to mention that houses with electric baseboard heat typically need 6 to 10 thermostats vs. 2 to 3 in regular HVAC houses. I guess there is a pretty big market for '72 Pinto radiators. I like hockey analogies. My recommendation is that Wyze should be skating to where the puck is heading, rather than to where it has been. Prof Pete

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@hobodave67 I understand your point. It’s mistaken, and repeating it without going through the effort of substantiating it or factoring in objections you receive is not helping it become right.

W/r to your car analogy. Old cars get off the road quick. After 25 years you are unlikely to find more than 20% of a given car’s initial production still on the road and that falls to almost 0% after 50 years. Houses generally stay for much, much longer (and very few get a brand new engine to continue with your analogy). In other terms, the analogy is wrong.

Also, it’s not just old houses that have line controls. Many modern houses are built with bathroom or kitchen heated soils from the start. Many cheaper condos are built with electrical baseboard heaters from the start, complemented by a small (window or equivalent) AC unit (depending on climate and where they are located).

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37% of homes use electric heating- TRUE
This would mean any type of electric heat whether it be heat coils in an air handler, a heat pump HVAC system, or base board heaters, etc. We’ll just ignore the fact that even gas and oil furnaces consume electricity to run the blower motors/transformers for this scenario.

Mostly using inefficient baseboard heating- UNSUBSTANTIATED OPINION

I see no where in the article you referenced the data that proves that statement. But of course if we read it on the internet, it must be true.

I absolutely believe you will find pockets of homes that derive their heat from baseboard heaters. However it is not very prevalent in many locations. Having done HVAC in all of Florida for the last 20 years I can tell you of only one house out of the thousands I have been to that actually had baseboard heating (older home in N. Florida). Last time I checked Florida was still considered part of the south. I have seen it in homes in GA, SC, NC, and TN. I acknowledge it’s existence, however “most” of the south? Not so much.

Annnd…a couple more questions, what about those homes that have both? Say a gas furnace and baseboard heaters. 1 home, 2 sources, how does that get tabulated in the data? Annnnnd…of those with electric baseboard heaters I have had personal experiences with, you know what they told me? Yeah, we never use theme because it jacks up our power bill. Electric resistance heating is THE worst way to heat your home. Horribly inefficient. If you really want to save money on you heating bill, don’t wish for a smart controller, ditch the electric heat altogether.

But again, by your own data, let’s say all the homes of that 37% were heated by electric baseboard heaters. If I have limited resources for r&d, manufacturing, and marketing, do I focus my efforts on products for a smaller 37% market or a very large 100% market? A large market for instance being every household in North America that would be a potential customer of not just one, but multiples of smart plugs, headphones, robot vacuum cleaners, car vacuums, light bulbs, webcams, etc.

My only point was that perhaps it was a business decision to pursue products for larger markets rather than smaller markets. I did not intend to get into a debate regarding how many homes in America have baseboard heaters and are unjustly underserved because they do not have Smart controls available to them.

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@hobodave67 you are grasping at straws.

You provided 0 data, then spent a long rant questioning data that was provided that clearly shows you were wrong.

Anyway, just because there is a piece of data on 37% of homes does not mean the remaining 63% are not also to some extent part of the target. My home, for example (and quite a few I know) are hybrid. In my case, a gas furnace and some areas with in floor radiant or baseboard electric.

In my home, in addition to the gas furnace, I currently have 4 thermostats and 3 heaters controlled by timers through relays. That’s 8 total thermostats Wyze could be selling of which 7 require line handling. And that’s in the 63% of homes that you exclude in your mistaken logic.

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Since you feel it necessary to have data to prove out what I already knew as fact, I did some quick googling for you. Here ya go:

Potential Smart plug market:
There are roughly 20,633,225,130 electrical outlets in the US.

Made up of approximately 9,296,200,130 electrical outlets in US homes, and 11,337,025,000 outlets in US commercial space. There are approximately 70-75 outlets in the average home.

Potential Smart thermostat market:
In 2018, more than 14 million units of Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning ( HVAC ) systems were sold in the country. NEW systems SOLD. This is not inclusive of existing systems that were not replaced.

Potential headphones market:

  • Revenue in the Headphones segment amounts to US$2,397m in 2021. The market is expected to grow annually by 0.45% (CAGR 2021-2025).

Potential baseboard heater market:
Percent of total US households that were heated by electric baseboard heaters in 2015 = 0.0039 percent

Percent of total US households that were heated by hydronic baseboard heaters in 2015 = 0.0102 percent

CONCLUSION

These numbers may seem surprising but these small numbers are corroborated by the fact that the share of hyrdronic heaters in American homes has come down 80% from 1973. Rather than using separate heating units like baseboard heaters, homeowners prefer a centralized unit that can provide both heating and cooling.

So there you have it. The market for baseboard heaters in the US is pretty small compared to the other products they’ve already marketed and is actually shrinking exponentially according to the data I found by googling topics just as you did. How correct or incorrect is it? Who knows but I suspect there is a glimmer of truth in it.

Wyze entered the thermostat (and other products) market where there were already major players but did so with the intention of presenting a competitive product and a much lower price point.

Thanks for playing, have a great day!

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When is the Wyze Smart Thermostat coming out? I have the dumb one that won’t let me set a single target temp in Auto mode. I’m now sweating and awake waiting for the temp to cool down because I set a useless 5 degree temp range schedule in Auto. I set the high end too warm and the low end too cool, so I’m always miserable. Since storm fronts have rolled through all week it has been bouncing between the need to use heat and cool. Just wanna set a target temp in auto and be done, not a range that also has a range on top of that says when it will heat or cool back to the end mark of the range.

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Wyze Thermostat is already out. Order it… assuming it’s in stock. I have it on my wall and since the last 2 updates, am very happy with the temperature control. Now I am wishing that Wyze would release remote temperature sensors to work with the Wyze thermostat for more precise room temperature sensing.

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Have had Wyze Thermostat since the first units went out and so far it’s a love/hate relationship to be honest. It looks good and most of the time works as expected, however - my wife absolutely hates it and wants me to switch back to original ‘dumb’ thermostat -or- one with room sensors as the process and interface to change the temp is ridiculously cumbersome. I completely understand the need for a min/max temperature range to avoid short cycling, but for gods sake if I want to adjust the temp up or down then common sense says move the other value accordingly. What I don’t want is to get a notice EVERY SINGLE TIME we want to make a change that you can’t due to the 5 degree range. Instead of just being able to lower the temp by a few degree’s, I first have to go change the upper range far enough out so that it will allow me to make the actual change I need. The ‘work around’ is to have a ridiculously large range instead of that ‘5 degree comfort range’, which means the temperature is never actually comfortable over the course of a day or week without constantly fiddling with it. I shared the device with my wife and showed her how to adjust it herself, which adds to the frustration as she doesn’t want to go through that whole learning curve I did, she just wants to be able to simply turn temp up or down and it works…. Not to have to adjust 2 dials counter-intuitively.

Please give us ONE dial with a shaded temp range showing what the effect is of the change you are making - instead of constantly telling me I can’t adjust the ‘cool to’ or ‘heat to’ temps without first messing with the opposite setting. If I could select an ‘ideal temp’ for wake cycle or sleep cycle and the interface show me a good cool to/heat to range based on that, it would be awesome. Even better get us those room sensors and the ability to say ‘for gods sake keep the temp within ‘x’ range in my wife’s office’ as long as it doesn’t go above/below a comfortable range elsewhere. Ideally, I would love to be able to trigger a vent fan or air duct relay to balance temps better throughout the home, I’m even cool if I have to resort to IFFT or some such integration to add that type of function.

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Please don’t take my above comment badly, I love the company and recommend to all my friends and relatives for the other items I am using. Outside of this my only suggestion would be better integrations with Alexa/Siri so that we could see who’s at the door or adjust the temp via voice command. (I think this is supposed to be available now via Alexa but due to the ‘cool to/heat to’ 5 degree gap it never works and I end up having to use my phone.)

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I just got mine a few days ago, and to be completely honest: I kind of hate it.
And I’d say about 80% of that hate is the ‘must be 5 degrees apart’ limitation. My last thermostat was a Honeywell T5 and it had no such issues.

Living where I am the temperature can vary dramatically throughout the day and day to day. I usually have to make minor adjustments every so often to get it comfortable, which is a massive pain with the Wyze thermostat.

What is the reasoning behind the limitation? I can’t imagine its anything but software or coding seeing as others can do it just fine.

And if it is, why does it exist? It’s my house, my energy bills, and my comfort. I don’t buy smart devices so they can tell me what to do, I buy them to make it do what I want, when I want.

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The reason is because it’s Wyze. Look at all of their products. Every single product feels like it is 90% complete because it’s missing a key functionality. I’ve never heard of a thermostat that makes you have to be 5 degrees apart and don’t know of any other reputable ones on that market that do.

There’s a reason why I’ll never leave critical systems in my home up to a Wyze product (thermostat, security, etc), this is a perfect example.

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Every single product is 90% complete is a very big statement to say.

Strongly and respectfully disagree with your statement.

I use the cbulbs, camera and Cam Pro. I don’t see it is 90% complete. It does everything I need it to do.

You can still stay Negative but not me.

Thanks.

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Hi Jon,
I hear you. We will automatically change the temperature when the user hits the 5-degree range, so you just need to adjust one side. I am also thinking about reducing the range to 3F but I know it could be risky for an old house with bad insulation.

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