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Honeywell Announces 'Lyric Round' Smart Thermostat With HomeKit Integration
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I have the Lyric, which replaced a smart but not networked Honeywell Chronotherm. The Lyric saved no money and the design is riddled with bugs. Support is poor as well. Honeywell is a giant in the HVAC industry and should be ashamed of themselves for releasing this.
Take a look at the user review at Amazon.com.
Take a look at the user review at Amazon.com.
These prices, across the competition, for a Smart Thermostat are pathetic. I guess they really don't want to drive adoption of a smart home.
I've had the 3rd-gen Nest thermostat for a few weeks now, and it's really fantastic. The Nest web and iPhone/iPad apps work great. Only difference between this and Nest is lack of HomeKit, which is a minor shame. Who knows, they might do something in the future, but right now, it does everything it needs to do. And does it very well, I might add.
If a "smart thermostat" is something you want, definitely give the Nest a look.
I don't know... Lack of HomeKit is a pretty big deal... No Siri and potential security issues. It's not like you can just upgrade the firmware or software to gain compatibility. I think Nest, as nice as it is, should not be a consideration for folks invested in the Apple ecosystem until Nest comes out with a HomeKit compatible version.
[doublepost=1451970999,1451969695][/doublepost]I needed a thermostat recently and looked at this. The cost is still way to high and it does not solve the #1 problem that the thermostat is in ONE fixed location while people move around. What I want is sensors in every room and then my heating system only reads the temperature of the occupied room(s). Also I don't need a digital display. In fact I don't even want the thermostat is be visible.
Honeywell today announced its first HomeKit-enabled product, introducing a second-generation Lyric Round Wi-Fi-enabled thermostat with HomeKit support. Designed to compete with existing HomeKit-compatible thermostats like the ecobee3 and the iDevices thermostat, the Honeywell Lyric connects to a home's Wi-Fi network to allow the thermostat to be controlled via Siri or by using an iOS device and the accompanying app.
The new HomeKit-enabled Lyric thermostat is identical in design to the original Lyric thermostat, featuring a round body and a 3-inch polished glass face that clearly displays the current temperature and the target temperature. It includes a touch screen interface for changing the temperature directly from the device, and it offers motion-sensing illumination.
With the accompanying app, the Lyric can be controlled with an iPhone either at home or remotely, and with HomeKit integration, it will respond to Siri voice commands and interface with other HomeKit products. App-based features include location-based temperature control for automatic adjustment when a user is away from home, smart alerts for filter changes and extreme indoor temperatures, and intelligent comfort control that takes into account both humidity and temperature.
Honeywell's new Lyric Round Thermostat is priced at $249.99 and is available for pre-order from the Honeywell website starting today. Orders are expected to ship out at the end of January.
Article Link: Honeywell Announces 'Lyric Round' Smart Thermostat With HomeKit Integration
I do see why they make them like this. This device, Nest and the others have to be able to be easy retrofitted into existing systems with just a screw drive, If not they don't have a mass market. This is a stop-gap until each room gets a sensor.
I'm buying $50 z-wave sensors for this. I can buy five of them for $250.
Email them. They'll offer to send you one of the new HomeKit-compatible ones.
They have gone out of their way to make it clear that they never "promised" HomeKit support for the existing Lyric units. (Yes, they implied it heavily, and it's a bit slimy of them to require a new bit of hardware - and to not publicly give an upgrade path... But if you email them, they will upgrade you.)
There could not be a more perfect comment on an Apple forum.
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A remote sensor is a band aid for a poorly designed HVAC system. If you have a zoned system, you already have multiple thermostats. If you don't, you're just moving the discomfort around.
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Agree completely. Geofence is nice but it does nothing else useful or even as well as a simple manual program thermostat.
I'll give you credit for admitting that you were ranting, so I will try not to respond in kind, but it is easy to save $250 on your electricity bills in one year alone, if you happen to live in a state that is primarily in need of air conditioning (cooling), and you might be able to achieve similar results on your gas bill in a state that is primarily in need of furnaces (heating). If you live in a state where your bills cycle strongly from winter to summer from heating to cooling, you can still do quite well at reducing your costs with an intelligent (read, thoughtful) upgrade to your thermostats.
It's also far from pointless: being environmentally sensitive with energy is an important direction we all need to take. Being sensitive with energy is also a very good way to save money as an individual. The challenge is usually the upfront cost to change and improve. Turns out, "It is expensive to be poor". Look it up, verbatim.
Honeywell, as an example, has been in home temperature control for over 100 years. I think it's quite nice to seem them come out and put a polite stomp on Nest.
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Honeywell is very much involved in developing products that will work with iOS.
Honeywell CEO [Dave Cote]: "I want to become the Apple of the industrial sector"
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That's a fairly audacious project: what you really need to have fully separate zones is vents and louvers within the heated or cool air delivery pipes (pipes, hoses, call them what you will). That would likely require a fairly significant overhaul on your HVAC system, but it can be done. I know one of my co-workers has a system like that, but I haven't yet gotten the real details.
The ecobee has remote sensors. It even includes one in the box. Have not used them yet since I was just looking for new thermostat and ordered it last night.
Yes, they sent a time machine back and said to their 1950s designers, hey lets do a round design like that round Nest thingy... Oh, you were doing that already... OK, move along then.
That would be an inane use of a time machine ;-).
I believe you will still need two thermostats. There is no feature in the Ecobee 3 that allows it to control a zone board. For instance, you cannot tell the E3 that when your upstairs bedroom sensor reaches a certain temp, it should throw the upstairs zone on. Therefore, it should still require two thermostats as the zone board responds to which thermostat kicks on. That is how I understand it to operate.
Yep, stick with the company that tried to lock down the use of windows (small 'w') on computers.
Bought one last year. So basically I have to spend another $250 so I can use it with Siri? Why on earth can't they just upgrade the firmware?
What really bums me out about this is you don't have access to your historical data(or any data via API). If you want to use that data to analyze things like if your heating system is losing efficiency, you are SOL.
No, I am not spending $250/year on thermostats.
What really bums me out about this is you don't have access to your historical data(or any data via API). If you want to use that data to analyze things like if your heating system is losing efficiency, you are SOL.
No, I am not spending $250/year on thermostats.
It's a hardware change. At least that's what ecobee said when they released the E3 w/ Homekit.
Spoken like someone who has no clue.
Aside from the fact that you seem to have some anger issues around a technology that you obviously have no desire to use, but for some inexpicable reason don't want anyone else to have either, you are exhibiting so little imagination that it appears that you can't even fathom that there are legitimate uses for this tech.
Here's a simple example. My girlfriend recently had major reconstructive surgery on her knee, and walking is a challenge for her. She basically walks down the stairs from her bedroom once a day, and then back up at night. She can control the lights throughout her house with her voice (no need to open an app, or even pick up her phone).
Another example? I wake up every morning, and with one voice command to Siri while lying in bed (again without even picking up my phone) I can turn on three lights (two in the bedroom and one in the kitchen) and raise the temperature on my thermostat.
I have commands and geofencing rules that will automatically turn off any lights that I left on when I leave my home, and turn them back on when I am arriving back home.
I have a friend who owns a home in the mountains, and he can use his smart thermostat to turn up the temp when he's headed up, so he arrives to a warm, comfortable home. Additionally, he uses the home as a short term rental, and can easily verify whether the renters turned the heat down when they left, and fix it if they didn't, without having to pay someone to do it, or drive 4 plus hours to do it himself.
I went on a last minute trip a few months back, and the person I hired to feed my cat was 1500 miles away from me when I left. I was able to give her access to my house with a simple invitation from my August app, and revoke her access at a time and date of my choosing. All without having to exchange a physical key.
If you don't have a use for smart home technology that's fine. But you will appear much more intelligent to others if you can accept the fact that there are many, many people who have use cases for it. Chastising others for having more imagination than you is kind of boorish...
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We just remodeled our entire house a year back... I woulda gotten this, but got the "old style" green/black Honeywell wifi thermometer.
The older style works extremely well for a lot less. You just control it via a central website they have somewhere. It records all your specifics and manipulates the thing via the base station in your home. No serious complaints.
The older style works extremely well for a lot less. You just control it via a central website they have somewhere. It records all your specifics and manipulates the thing via the base station in your home. No serious complaints.
We also just dumped our Nest 2 for the Ecobee3. Better service, better equipment and it is our thermostat. In addition to the above, we are able to opt out of sending our data the utilities.
In our opinion Nest was created by programmers that had to learn what a thermostat was supposed to do (and really did not pay close attention). Ecobee was designed by HVAC types that had to learn about programming and while not perfect, certainly did pay enough attention that everything works much closer to expectation.
It would be great if it actually worked. The Lyrics have a problem in that they lose their Wifi connection randomly and have to be reset (by unplugging and plugging in again) to resume operation. The problem seems mostly limited with Apple Airport Extreme base stations which are going to be particular popular by people reading MacRumors. I solved the problem by turning on another base station (not Apple) solely for the Lyric.
For all it's presumed fanciness, the Lyric by itself has no more capability than the old "Honeywell Round" that's been available for 50+ years. Your smart phone, necessary for operation, communicates only with Honeywell's central servers, and the Honeywell server changes the temperature settings. If Wifi communication is lost, you can only change the setting manually at the thermostat.
Events, such as night setback and geofencing, are what I'd call, with my EE background, "edge triggered" rather than "level sensitive". This can result in unexpected and seemingly strange behavior. This actually happened to me shortly after installing the Lyric:
- I go off to work. My wife leaves shortly thereafter triggering geofencing as she is the last person out. Temperature falls to unoccupied, as expected.
- Her battery goes dead while out so when she returns home it doesn't detect her going inside the fence. Temperature stays at unoccupied. She wears a coat around the house. Even recharging her iPhone does nothing since the Lyric app only detects crossing the fence, not being inside/outside the fence.
- Work keeps me out late, beyond the night setback time. When night setback time is reached, the house heats up a bit since the setback temperature is higher than unoccupied.
- I finally get home. Geofencing sees me arriving and temperature increases to normal, daytime occupied setting, even though it should be in night setback. We swelter all night.
- When morning arrives, night setback goes away but temperature doesn't change.
- I go off to work. Since the system still thinks my wife is out, geofencing drops temperature to unoccupied.
- The problem isn't resolved until she goes out and returns home.
For over the first six months the Lyric didn't understand Daylight Saving Time unless you had a Android phone. WTF?
After over a year adaptive recovery still doesn't work.
About the Honeywell, I think it is just an ugly copy. The ecobee touch screen is far superior that the twisty thing of the Nest or Honeywell. Its too bad they copied a bad product, because I am sure it works much better at actually controlling things than the Nest they copied from.
"Investing in a smart thermostat is worth about $1,200 over 10 years for the average U.S. household in the average U.S. climate."
http://www.flannelguyroi.com/nest-thermostat-save-money/
One of the reasons I bought it was they said it was going to be supported by HomeKit. This would lead me to believe it would be a firmware update. What they didn't mention was that I would have to buy a new one a year later if I wanted to use a Lyric with HomeKit. Just very irritating.
from 2014:
http://appadvice.com/appnn/2014/06/...stat-uses-apples-homekit-to-compete-with-nest
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EXACTLY. Any lawyers out there want a class action?
