Honeywell Debuts New HomeKit-Enabled Lyric T5 Smart Thermostat

[MacRumors]

Honeywell has introduced the Lyric T5, its latest Wi-Fi-enabled thermostat with support for Apple's HomeKit platform.

The Lyric T5 has a square, glossy black design with built-in touchscreen controls for adjusting the temperature and other settings, or the smart thermostat can be controlled at or away from home with an iPhone or iPad using the accompanying Honeywell Lyric app [Direct Link] from the App Store.

Meanwhile, like Honeywell's more expensive Lyric Round smart thermostat, HomeKit support enables the Lyric T5 to be controlled with Siri voice commands or through Apple's new Home app on iOS 10. The Lyric T5 is also compatible with Amazon Alexa-enabled devices, Stringify, and Yonomi, with other partners to follow.

The Lyric T5 can help homeowners save money by entering energy saving mode when someone leaves the home, based on the location of their iPhone or iPad via geofencing technology. Likewise, it can detect when the first person returns to start making the home comfortable ahead of time.

Like the Nest, ecobee3, and many other smart thermostats, the Lyric T5 is able to learn a home's heating and cooling cycles, enabling it to bring the home to the optimized temperature at the requested time. There is also the option to set up the thermostat on a more traditional seven-day schedule.

The thermostat's other features include auto changeover between heating and cooling mode, filter change reminders, and extreme temperature warnings.

Lyric T5 will be available in October for $149 online and at select retail stores. Honeywell products are typically available at, among other places, The Home Depot, Lowe's, Ace Hardware, Best Buy, Target, and Walmart.

Article Link: Honeywell Debuts New HomeKit-Enabled Lyric T5 Smart Thermostat

 

[zorinlynx]

The question is, does this operate over the local LAN or insist on using a remote server for eveything?

Nest loses all its smart features if it can't reach its internet server.

One thing I love about the philips Hue lighting system is that it doesn't depend on an external server to operate.

 

[Zorn]

Basically seems like a low-cost version of their regular Lyric if I am reading this correctly. Nice to see a Homekit thermostat come out at the $149 price but sort of disappointing that this brings no new innovations to the table.

 

[adamjackson]

What's the better buy? The T5, the Lyric Round or the Ecobee? I'm about to buy 2 of these.

 

[zacheryjensen]

Bummer, requires a "C" wire. Nest is still the only "smart" thermostat that doesn't require it so I'm stuck with that. Nest is a pretty disappointing product offering much less utility than I'd had hoped. I actually don't expect to get any more utility from any other smart thermostat, but, would at least like it to integrate properly with HomeKit since all my other "smart home" devices do. Resolving the "C" wire issue in my house isn't really practical.
[doublepost=1474985358][/doublepost]

Basically seems like a low-cost version of their regular Lyric if I am reading this correctly. Nice to see a Homekit thermostat come out at the $149 price but sort of disappointing that this brings no new innovations to the table.

A low price point is an innovation. Adding a new aspect to an existing thing is literally what an innovation is.

 

[Zorn]

A low price point is an innovation. Adding a new aspect to an existing thing is literally what an innovation is.

Can't say I agree on that. Prices on consumer electronics almost always decrease over time, it's to be expected and not really something new.

 

[rotax]

These thermostats are nice, but to me are seriously lacking in true innovation. Ecobee is nice in that it has multi room sensors from which to read temperature and determine when to use each to call for cooling or heating. But here is what is missing. The industry needs to add devices that can control the flow of air to rooms and the flow of air on the return side. This could be done with replacing the existing air registers with these new devices, or devices that sit inside the registers. With this capability, the thermostats could maximize the flow of air into the rooms calling for cooling or heating which would be more efficient. They could also for multi level homes pull return air from the upper floors where the heat rises when cooling, and visa versa with return air from the lower floors when heating. The system could dynamically prioritize which rooms to cool or heat based on where you are in the house at any time. This is what is needed next. Some may say you cannot just cutoff air to one room, and not deal with back pressures etc. I agree, but there are safe variations and certainly air can go out in secondary spaces, but perhaps with such capabilities, duct systems would be designed in the future to handle more peak capacity per room for these types of automatic balancing systems. This would reduce energy consumption, auto balance air distribution with seasonal changes, and reduce time to achieve comfort levels where you are in your house. Bring on the integration.

 

[aristobrat]

These thermostats are nice, but to me are seriously lacking in true innovation. Ecobee is nice in that it has multi room sensors from which to read temperature and determine when to use each to call for cooling or heating. But here is what is missing. The industry needs to add devices that can control the flow of air to rooms and the flow of air on the return side. This could be done with replacing the existing air registers with these new devices, or devices that sit inside the registers. With this capability, the thermostats could maximize the flow of air into the rooms calling for cooling or heating which would be more efficient. They could also for multi level homes pull return air from the upper floors where the heat rises when cooling, and visa versa with return air from the lower floors when heating. The system could dynamically prioritize which rooms to cool or heat based on where you are in the house at any time. This is what is needed next. Some may say you cannot just cutoff air to one room, and not deal with back pressures etc. I agree, but there are safe variations and certainly air can go out in secondary spaces, but perhaps with such capabilities, duct systems would be designed in the future to handle more peak capacity per room for these types of automatic balancing systems.

There are smart vents out there and Ecobee is working on an integration with one of those companies.

 

[rotax]

There are smart vents out there and Ecobee is working on an integration with one of those companies.

Happy to hear that. Name of companies ? and the one Ecobee is working with?

 

[srharris22]

http://shop.keenhome.io/blogs/community/nest-and-future-smart-vent-integrations

Doesn't say Ecobee works with it but I assume this is the company, they were on sharktank a season or two ago. I've considered getting it for the bedrooms in our house to start with.

 

[coolfactor]

The question is, does this operate over the local LAN or insist on using a remote server for eveything?

Nest loses all its smart features if it can't reach its internet server.

One thing I love about the philips Hue lighting system is that it doesn't depend on an external server to operate.

I personally wouldn't consider anything for the home that relied on an external server to operate internal systems. That's just crazy.

 

[doelcm82]

I'm designing my dream house, which I hope to build in a couple of years, I want it to be a smart home, so I'm glad to see the price of these coming down to something more reasonable.

Right now as it exists in my head (and in UnrealEngine), my house has five stories (counting the basement and the rooftop solarium) with an elevator and a lazy river that runs through it. Once I talk to an architect and a builder, I may have to scale it back to a single room with a window unit and a plastic tub in the yard for swimming.

 

[aristobrat]

Happy to hear that. Name of companies ? and the one Ecobee is working with?

Keen is the company Ecobee appears to be working with:
https://twitter.com/ecobee/status/769229895331381248

Flair is another one.

If you google for reviews on Keen, you'll usually see other companies mentioned.

 

[thisisnotmyname]

Bummer, requires a "C" wire. Nest is still the only "smart" thermostat that doesn't require it so I'm stuck with that. Nest is a pretty disappointing product offering much less utility than I'd had hoped. I actually don't expect to get any more utility from any other smart thermostat, but, would at least like it to integrate properly with HomeKit since all my other "smart home" devices do. Resolving the "C" wire issue in my house isn't really practical.

Ecobee comes with an adapter that will create a virtual C-wire. My install didn't need it but it was in the box.

What's the better buy? The T5, the Lyric Round or the Ecobee? I'm about to buy 2 of these.

I haven't had direct experience with the others but I've been very happy with Ecobee.

 

[adamjackson]

I haven't had direct experience with the others but I've been very happy with Ecobee.

Seems like the room-sensor is kind of a joke though. the house I'm remodeling has central heating (very rare in New Hampshire) on an LP Gas furnace. I'll add central AC next year (even more rare in NH). Most houses up here use Pellet stove, wall-coils, 2-3 propane furnaces or just fireplaces to heat their house.

The Ducts coming off the hot air furnace don't have any controls. There's on or off. Seems like the room sensor won't allow my bedroom to get more heat than the living room..that technology is still a way off.

 

[thisisnotmyname]

http://shop.keenhome.io/blogs/community/nest-and-future-smart-vent-integrations

Doesn't say Ecobee works with it but I assume this is the company, they were on sharktank a season or two ago. I've considered getting it for the bedrooms in our house to start with.

I like that a lot. Only in preorders though, I hope this doesn't become a kickstarter-esque vaporware product. I'd put these everywhere in my home.
[doublepost=1474990640][/doublepost]

Seems like the room-sensor is kind of a joke though. the house I'm remodeling has central heating (very rare in New Hampshire) on an LP Gas furnace. I'll add central AC next year (even more rare in NH). Most houses up here use Pellet stove, wall-coils, 2-3 propane furnaces or just fireplaces to heat their house.

The Ducts coming off the hot air furnace don't have any controls. There's on or off. Seems like the room sensor won't allow my bedroom to get more heat than the living room..that technology is still a way off.

I've been happy with the room sensors. They can sense which room is occupied and then change the temp that drives the thermostat. This way if I'm in my office with lots of electronics (typically a few degrees warmer than the remainder of the house) it will adjust accordingly.

I really like the smart vents that someone else linked above. If Ecobee integrates those with the sensors to control flow to various rooms based upon different temps and occupancy I'll be very happy. I've also been looking at window controls although I haven't found anything with home kit support yet. Living on the beach we can rely mainly on natural temperature rather than AC, my ideal would be that the house opens windows to regulate temperature as much as possible but then closes when it cools off at night or if there is rain (rarely) or on those handful of days when it gets into AC territory. HomeKit controlling all of that and raising/lowering the Lutron shades would be perfect.

 

[Corrode]

Looks like Ecobee has some competition, especially at this price point ($149 vs. $249 for Ecobee).

I'm super happy with my Ecobee. They're always updating the firmware and software, have an Apple Watch app, and decent support. Will be interesting to see where the market goes.

 

[CynanX]

Aesthetically the Nest still wins in my opinion by a country mile.

Honeywell and the others need to up their game.

 

[SandboxGeneral]

It looks like it requires the C-wire, which my apartment doesn't have. I learned this a few month ago when I bought the Ecobee and tried to install it. Unfortunately the management wouldn't add what was needed for the C-wire either. Too bad too because I wouldn't liked to try one of these smart thermostats.

 

[Le Big Mac]

The Ducts coming off the hot air furnace don't have any controls. There's on or off. Seems like the room sensor won't allow my bedroom to get more heat than the living room..that technology is still a way off.

A thermostat can't do what an HVAC system isn't designed to do. Most HVACs are on/off, although some have zone controls that achieve more precision. Nothing Ecobee or any other thermostat can do to change that basic fact, although the sensors on Ecobee do what PP said (base setting on where you are) and also will base the temperature on where it matters not where the thermostat happens to be located (hallway? entryway? dining room?). In my case, the sensor gets the system going based on where we spend more of our time rather than the hallway it's located in.

 

[aristobrat]

Seems like the room-sensor is kind of a joke though. the house I'm remodeling has central heating (very rare in New Hampshire) on an LP Gas furnace. I'll add central AC next year (even more rare in NH). Most houses up here use Pellet stove, wall-coils, 2-3 propane furnaces or just fireplaces to heat their house.

The Ducts coming off the hot air furnace don't have any controls. There's on or off. Seems like the room sensor won't allow my bedroom to get more heat than the living room..that technology is still a way off.

Correct, Ecobee doesn't redirect HVAC from one room to the other by itself.

If you're having a movie night in your living room, would you rather have the living room heated/cooled based based on:
A) the actual temperature of the living room (that you're sitting in)
B) the temperature of the hallway where your thermostat is mounted

To your point, if you are in your living room and Ecobee runs the HVAC until that room hits your set temperature, this can cause other rooms in your house to be hotter/colder, but nobody's in them at that moment, so ...

And if you have a situation where you're in your living room watching TV, and someone is in another room (or rooms), Ecobee will run the HVAC until the average temperature from the remote sensors in occupied rooms hits whatever temperature you've set.

Having had it for a year, I can't imagine running my HVAC based on the just one "temperature check" .. which is usually a traditional thermostat located in a central hallway (for most houses).

 

[weave]

I want a thermostat that works well with a heat pump that's smart about it. Basically heat pumps work pretty well above about 32-36 degrees outside so if the internal temperature is lets say 62 and I set it to 68 I don't want the damn thing kicking in aux heat. I want it just to use the heat pump. I don't care if it takes 4 hours to raise the temperature. Now if it's below freezing outside, then fine, kick in aux heat strips.

Seems simple enough for a net connected thermostat. It should know your location so it should be able to read the outside temp from weather reports over the net and it should be able hence to make intelligent decisions on how to raise a temperature.

I've found thermostats that use external temp probes but that requires running a wire outside. That's ridiculous when it's net connected. Just read it from the net. :-(

Without that sort of smartness, having a "smart" thermostat that raises and lowers temperature when you come and go and at times of day is not very efficient with a heat pump because to raise the temperature they will kick in expensive electric heating to bring it up -- defeating any savings you get by lowering the temperature. :-(

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Bummer, requires a "C" wire. Nest is still the only "smart" thermostat that doesn't require it so I'm stuck with that.

Ecobee's in-box solution if you don't have a c-wire is a very easy fix -- basically just adding an adapter to your furnace. It's just a little more work since you have to open up the furnace. There is a video on Ecobee's site and also YouTube.

Also if you live in a not-ancient home check to see of there are unused wires behind your current thermostat. My house was wired with an 8-wire but my old thermostat only used 4, no C-wire. Very easy to snip the end off the unused blue wire bundled at the thermostat and then do the same in the furnace.

 

[mr_vinjah]

Ecobee's in-box solution if you don't have a c-wire is a very easy fix -- basically just adding an adapter to your furnace. It's just a little more work since you have to open up the furnace. There is a video on Ecobee's site and also YouTube.

Also if you live in a not-ancient home check to see of there are unused wires behind your current thermostat. My house was wired with an 8-wire but my old thermostat only used 4, no C-wire. Very easy to snip the end off the unused blue wire bundled at the thermostat and then do the same in the furnace.

I have the a Honeywell wifi thermostat, the one with the more "traditional" design. RTH9580WF I believe. I live in an ancient home with a thermopile-ignited gravity furnace with no C-wire in sight. I purchased an adapter that I plug into a wall socket (wall wart) and ran the low voltage wire along the wall up to the new thermostat. Works like a charm and has transformed the use of my 75 year old furnace making it seem much more functional than with the previous lever-thermostat. Plus, all the data on the screen is nice. This new model is definitely more sleek, though I'm not sure it adds much more than HomeKit.

This wall adapter setup will do until I upgrade the furnace and have fresh wires run through the wall from the new furnace.

 

[IJ Reilly]

How can you tell if you have a C-wire? Our house is pretty old but the furnace was replaced about 15 years ago and the thermostat more recently.