Battery Powered Wifi Thermostat

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so I'm assuming the C wire has lost functionality?

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no, its probably not connected at the other end if it wasn't in use before.

open your outdoor compressor (or furnace in the attic if you have a separate unit) and you'll just need to unscrew the wire nut and attach it. its generally pretty easy to spot; you'll need to locate the circuitboard.

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It's an apartment so I'm not sure I'll have access to any of this.

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oh well dang. yeah you may not. try taking a peek in the closet anyway if your unit is in there. its literally takes about 5 seconds to attach it..assuming the circuitboard is behind the main panel you remove which it typically is.

the ciricuitboard should even have 'C' printed on it so you know where to connect it.

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Slip a$29to the maintenance dude to have him take care of it

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Only problem is they won't do their job. Contacted the property manager about installing this new thermostat 10 months ago. Repeatedly.

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ISTR generally apartments have the units in a closet that you have access to. that's your break point.

even if you didn't have a c-wire at all, adding a venstar or some 'add-a-wire' kit requires access to both the thermostat wiring and the actual main unit so that's not an option.

i think there are a few battery-operated smart stats out there and to be honest, they're all about the same anyway so you don't need a fancy nest or ecobee to do 99% of what you want.

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I believe there's a cabinet or something in my kitchen above the cabinets. I'll fish around there tonight to see if it has the components you mentioned. I live in an old house in New Orleans so dealing with wiring, vents, all the guts of the house is always a crap shoot for what means and methods they used to build it. I can't use my smart switches from when I moved because the house is so old that the existing switches don't have a neutral wire. I know they make 2 wire smart switches but I haven't quite gotten around to getting some of those yet. The worst part about the current setup tho is the lights and fan are on the same switch and can only be differentiated other than on/off by the pull chord which obviously defeats the purpose of home automation.

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if you have hue you can buy some cheap candelabra bulbs from ikea $7/each and at least turn the lights on/off/dim independent of the fan. of course if you turn the power to the fan off at the switch, there go the lights too.

in your situation; i'd want to stick with smart bulbs as much as possible so can take them with you when you move.

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Yup. Came to that realization pretty quickly after I was looking into smart bulbs. I think my next investment will be those. Unfortunately my existing ceiling fans all use 4 bulbs a piece!. My old one I'm pretty sure used just two or possibly even one (it had a difuser over it and I never had to change bulbs so I never looked). So if I wanted to keep it looking even and symmetrical I'd have to buy 4 smart bulbs per room which kind've sucks. I put in a lamp that's on a smart switch so that provides the light to my living room now. I may add a two wire smart switch just to control the fan and leave the lighting to be solely controlled by the lamp.

ETA: Could you link some of those bulbs?

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ETA: Could you link some of those bulbs?

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LINK

eta i bought 12 and they are rock solid so far.

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through my lightify hub with no issues.

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interesting. i bought one from mctiger but only used it to pair my lightify bulbs in hopes it would trigger a firmware update.

so far nothing. didn't realize you could hook these bulbs to that hub.

Prior to switching to ecobees, I had a bunch of z-wave thermostats installed that could run on battery or via a C wire. I forget the name of them, but got them through Vivint, my alarm company. Because they are z-wave, at least when battery powered, they only communicate via the zwave mesh on command, so it can take a moment to connect. And you need something like wink or another smarthub for it.

How often do you have to switch out batteries on the wifi thermos?

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How often do you have to switch out batteries on the wifi thermos?

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It seemed to vary based on how far the thermostat was from the hub, although that didn’t quite make sense to me since it communicated through the zwave mesh. However, one that I had the furthest from the hub, partially behind a bookcase, would die quickly. I switched the radio unit on it to the other side, closer to the hub and less obstructed by the bookcase and that actually made a difference in battery life. In general, though, if I am remembering correctly, I would get a good 6 or more months out of 3 AA batteries per unit. I think they were these, although I thought that it was the CT 100 or 101 but they don’t look the same. Old technology, though. Newer ones are better