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Ecobee has room senors and heats/cools base on the rooms that are occupied, does Aqara have room senors?

I know, I've got them but are they adaptive? I haven't seen how that works in that way (not saying it doesn't). Yes Aqara has them too.

Those sensors are useless without a matching system that can adjust per room. If you've got that you probably don't have to worry about anything.
 
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Much like it takes more energy to spin a conventional hard drive up and down than it takes to keep it in motion, it actually takes more energy to enact a temperature change than to maintain an existing temperature. Keep in mind it's not just the air temperature that has to be acted upon, but the temperature of all the mass (furniture and other belongings) inside a home too (they all act as heat sinks).

If this is a vacation home or just someplace you're at on the weekend I can see this being useful, but for daily-living I've-gone-to-work you're going to waste power moving the temp up and down inside the home to suit your arrival.
That is absolutely not true about hard drives. I have a power meter on my NAS and measure it.

It takes more POWER to spin up the drive but "energy" is power integrated over time. The power spike is very short.

So let's say we leave the temperature the same for 24 hours. We use 24P units of energy
But what if you do not heat the house for 8 hours then run the heater for 30 minutes at 2P to raise the termperture and then at 1P the rest of the day. We then use a total of 17P units of energy. Yes it took runningjte heater at double power but only for 0.5 hours. Again energy is power multiplied by time. We are billed for energy use, not power use.

Another way to analyse this is to think of the AVERAGE interior temperature. The lower the average, the less energy is used. Certainly setting the thermostat to 10 or more degress lower while you are at work ar lowers the daily average temperature.

The question is not binary -- "Should you turn off the heat?" But Analog. The question is "what should I set the thermostat to, knowing I will be gone for X hours and the outside temperature is Y? You have to work this out for every X and Y using cata you collected from your house.
 
I know, I've got them but are they adaptive? I haven't seen how that works in that way (not saying it doesn't). Yes Aqara has them too.
Not sure they are adaptive in the way they are talking in the article, but they take the average of the active senors and then apply that to your schedule.
 
Those sensors are useless without a matching system that can adjust per room. If you've got that you probably don't have to worry about anything.
I don't have a room contolled system, but the house will heat and cool based on those sensors. It works well in my house, I work from home and the office is the warmest room in the house, so in the winter months I would use way more heat if I had a standard system.
 
not sure if anyone in here knows the answer but:

Shouldn't you always leave your air conditioner/heater running at all times (with the temperature being within a range), versus having it shut on/off?

I remember a technician who came over once said its better on my unit to have it always on and try to stay within a range, versus turning it off and then on.

Reason I ask the feature in this new Aqara says "Adaptive Temperature", does that mean it can potentially shut off my unit if its at the targeted temp?
In short you don't turn the system off entirely nor would i expect Aqara's thermostat to do this - adaptive temp is just going to change the temp and or adjust when the system calls for air/cooling/heating based on various factors (clean energy, presence detection, usage patterns). That doesn't function any differently in terms of "off/on" than it being set to auto and a set schedule for temperature ranges would.

The kind of unit or system you have and how its configured makes a big difference, i.e. a central heating & a/c system with let's say a single stage is designed to operate very differently than a multi-stage or variable speed system. Multi zone setups can vary widely in design and effectiveness.

A variable speed system would want to and is designed to run regularly at lower speeds for better sustained temperature control, the single stage just kicks on at 100% or off at 0% intermittently to reach the target temp.

If you have multiple zones configured on a single 1-stage unit, its best to keep the temperature differential between zones to a minimum because the system can't perform efficiently.

It's also optimal to try to minimize the temperature differential between outside and inside though this may be less impactful if your home is extremely well insulated
 
The worst part of swapping from Nest to the Aqara W200 was the different base plate shape. The W200 has a smaller base plate, so there are unpainted edges on the wall that I still haven't fixed.

Their website says the thermostat comes with a trim plate to cover up the the area occupied by the original if you don't want to fix and paint the leftover area.
 
Those sensors are useless without a matching system that can adjust per room. If you've got that you probably don't have to worry about anything.
In that context they are less helpful, but they can help the system know if one room is too cold or hot. For example, I have a room in my house that stays a little cooler than some of the other ones. This also happens to be closer to the main thermostat. With additional sensors, I could run the AC a little longer to cool down the other rooms, even if this one room ends up slightly colder.
 
I'm looking for one of these... but as a jilted first adopter of the U400 smart lock.... I'll wait this one out.
Interesting. I love my U400! I've had the original August, updated August, Level lock, Schlage with Homekey (very good), and now the U400 (best one so far). What soured you on it?

The one thing my Schlage had better is that it plowed through door jam situations. The thing just blasted the lock mode in regardless... Aqua doesn't like to do that, it seems. Just have to make sure I close the door fully/correctly.
 
My first impression of the “presence’ sensor on the thermostat (presumably when not using HomeKit) is that it seems like an unreliable way to determine if anyone is home. From what I’ve seen, thermostats in homes with a single HVAC/thermostat combo aren’t always installed in a high traffic area. In my own home the thermostat is more likely to sense someone when we are on our way to the inside garage door to leave the house.

On HomeKit, the Adaptive Temperature doesn’t look much different than scheduling capabilities and geofencing that have been available for years on “smart” thermostats, and don’t require everyone in the home to be in Apple’s ecosystem.

The Clean Energy Guidance feature seems next to useless for a thermostat, IMHO, although that probably depends on where you live. Mid-August where I live, when it’s sunny, 36c/97f, 98% humidity, wind speed 0 outside for hours, I need my home to be comfortable and shifting operation based on grid load, generation fuel cost, or anything else is not going to cut it anyway. It makes sense for other things, like EV charging, just not home thermostats.
 
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Does Aqara have a sensor that tracks presence and temperature ? Thats what makes Ecobee system so nice.
 
I love my nest and using multiple sensors in the house to target ideal them. What I really like is I can set the temperature to change at multiple temperature targets depending on the time and day. Not just a "comfort temperature" but 1 degree cooler to 2 degrees cooler. Plus its nice to look at.
 
My first impression of the “presence’ sensor on the thermostat (presumably when not using HomeKit) is that it seems like an unreliable way to determine if anyone is home. From what I’ve seen, thermostats in homes with a single HVAC/thermostat combo aren’t always installed in a high traffic area. In my own home the thermostat is more likely to sense someone when we are on our way to the inside garage door to leave the house.

On HomeKit, the Adaptive Temperature doesn’t look much different than scheduling capabilities and geofencing that have been available for years on “smart” thermostats, and don’t require everyone in the home to be in Apple’s ecosystem.

The Clean Energy Guidance feature seems next to useless for a thermostat, IMHO, although that probably depends on where you live. Mid-August where I live, when it’s sunny, 36c/97f, 98% humidity, wind speed 0 outside for hours, I need my home to be comfortable and shifting operation based on grid load, generation fuel cost, or anything else is not going to cut it anyway. It makes sense for other things, like EV charging, just not home thermostats.

I think if your thermostat is in a high-traqffic area this feature would work well, for our house it is in the "office" room and we aren't always in there, I would guess I could turn this off for monitoring people (unless it is to view the status screen)

For Adaptive Temperature, it does seem similar to geo-fencing and scheduling BUT I believe if you are out and use "Get Directions Home" it will use that information to determine when it would be best to turn on the HVAC system to a pre-defined temp. If we are 3-4 hours away I would otherwise need to remember to turn on HVAC at a closer point in the trip if the HVAC has been "off" for a while.

as for Clean Energy, it would be nice if the Apple System would know when my energy supplier had off-peak, Peak, and super-off peak times and could adjust the temps to a nearby number during the higher-cost peak times...maybe I could live with a 1-2 degree change but it would adjust back to "normal" when the energy is cheaper (cleaner?)
 
Interesting that some of these manufactures still cannot go without a C-Wire, an issue Nest has simply resolved, and require an adapter wired deep into the furnace. They need to get on this with Nest seemingly on the decline yet still having this stand out feature.
 
Interesting. I love my U400! I've had the original August, updated August, Level lock, Schlage with Homekey (very good), and now the U400 (best one so far). What soured you on it?

The one thing my Schlage had better is that it plowed through door jam situations. The thing just blasted the lock mode in regardless... Aqua doesn't like to do that, it seems. Just have to make sure I close the door fully/correctly.
maybe if you have a very straightforward entrance etc - but the motor is very weak compared to my Schlage and it works only a small portion of the time for my wife.
 
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