bout time honeywell

[renegade600]

Just received an email from honeywell that their thermostats can now connect directly with the echo...It was supposed to happen by the end of march but better late than never. Just got it setup and gave it a try, IT WORKS!!!  Was afraid it would not since I have their cheapest wifi thermostat. Home automation is making me lazier and lazier...now if only I could get my lawn mowed using automation. too bad the robomower is so expensive.

[Yoda_One]

I must being doing something wrong with the Skill... what name do I use.... Alex set To 76 degrees. Thank you for your assistance.

[renegade600]

in your echo account, go to smart home - get more smart home skills and click on honeywell.  then just follow the on screen instructions because you will have to log into your honeywell account.  When finish, do an echo discover.  It should find it. 

[Yoda_One]

I guess it took a few minutes to sync properly after everything was setup.

It finally worked......Alexa "Set main house temperature to 76 degrees"
Alexa "Set Back house to 76 degrees"

"Grasshopper patience you must"

Now, we are cooking with gas. Since I always preferred Honeywell no need to change to another manufacturer. Another good point this is their business and I will not have to worry about it be discontinued.

[celticfan1888]

at last ! this is better than having to go via smartthings

[Yoda_One]

+1. I have been using and recommending Honeywell thermostats for many years and now I will stay with them.

It was so great I just came in from working in the garage, turned the TV on and said "Alexa turn main house to 76" Now this is automation.
Can you imagine if you wanted this convenience and how much this would have set us back just 5 year ago.

[renegade600]

my only complaint - unless there is a command and I have not found it - is when you set the temperature by voice, you don't know if it is going to be a permanent or temporary hold.   It has done both...

[Yoda_One]

Honeywell Total Connect shows it is temporary since I have a preset schedule.

[sockey13]

I have 2 RTH9580WF thermostats and can control them each, but it always goes to permanent hold overriding the schedule that is set.  How did you get it to go into temporary hold?

[sockey13]

my only complaint - unless there is a command and I have not found it - is when you set the temperature by voice, you don't know if it is going to be a permanent or temporary hold.   It has done both...

mine always goes into permanent hold.

[Yoda_One]

Mine always go to temporarily mode. I believe the reason is my control is through Total Connect and I have set for each day in the schedule scheme.
 I just instructed Alexa to set "main house" to 76 degrees it is program for 78. Started up TC is says hold till 8pm which it changes automatically to 75 degrees. My scheme for the two heat pumps are identical and each has 4 temperature changes a day.

So you should check and make sure it is Permanent since mine is doing exactly what I want to do.

[jwlv]

I believe that's how all thermostats work, whether you control it by the app, Alexa, or manually.

I have a Nest thermostat. When I tell Alexa to change the temperature, it's the same as if I actually walked up to the thermostat and set the new temperature. The preset schedule still takes precedence at its programmed time.

Say at 1:05PM, I tell Alexa to set my house to 75 degrees. My preset schedule is programmed to set the temperature to 78 at 1:30PM. So at exactly 1:30PM, the thermostat will take over and set the temperature to 78.

[Yoda_One]

Good just like I said.

[renegade600]

If it was a perfect world, that is how it should work BUT it does not always work the way it should.  The last couple of times I used voice command it did right so hopefully it fixed itself.  But the first few times, as I said before, it was either permanent or temporary, It seemed to take turns  :-)  I guess that is what I get for getting the cheapest WIFI thermostat a couple of years ago, pre-echo. 

[sockey13]

Thank you for all the comments assuring me that temporary hold was possible.  Before enabling the Honeywell skill, when i ran discovery, it found both of my thermostats.  After enabling the skill, and running discovery it found 4 thermostats.  The 2 are doubled up with 2 saying total connect and 2 just the thermostats.  When I try to use Alexa to set them it says that I have 2 devices named Living Room...  I "forgot" the two duplicates and it worked fine, except it would always put it into a permanent hold.  With your assurances, I went back and rediscovered and "forgot" the other two so I was left with only the two that said total connect.  Now it does go into temporary hold like it should. I really appreciate the feedback.