wifi thermostat questions

[bueller]

I've been thinking about getting a wifi thermostat for the furnace up north. I would like to be able to kick the heat up while we are driving to the cabin in the winter so that it is warm when we arrive (young children). But more importantly I would like to be able to monitor the inside temp while we are gone so that I am alerted if the temp starts to drop below my set point. Not much could be worse than arriving to find the furnace went out for some reason and all our pipes, pumps, etc... froze. Does anybody have a setup that works for them?

We currently have no landline phone or internet service up there. We have verizon wireless for our cells and get pretty good coverage. My initial thought was to purchase a "jetpack" mobile hotspot from verizon. Service would cost an additional $20 per month on our plan. The jetpack would grab the verizon signal and convert it to wifi which I could hook the thermostat and other wifi devices to it (cameras, etc...). While researching the jetpacks it seems that some people have had issues when trying to run them 24/7. To get them back online they had to unplug and restart them. That won't do me very good 10 days in to a 45 day absence from the cabin. Another option looks to be a 4G enabled tablet. Leave it plugged in and setup as a mobile hotspot. I don't know what kind of reliability I would get out of this setup.

Tech guys, any thoughts......

 

[foggy]

I'm not a tech guy on electronic stuff. I have some components of a "smart house" tho. We can control our heat, a few lights, drapes and sound/tv's from our smart phones. Even lock doors and monitor the house security. It's a nice feature to have.....when were gone all winter. Has been pretty trouble free.

BUt, we are on cable and have good fibre optic internet connection. I wonder about wireless? I do have a hotspot on my I-Pad.....and could see that working for you. I believe that would be quite trouble free. I've never had an issue with my hot spot not working (that don't sound right :D). Not sure about a "jet pack" or how that would compare.

I wish I was better at this electronic stuff.

 

[bueller]

Looks like a mobile hotspot from Wal-Mart (Straight Talk) could be an option too. And if it doesn't work I can return it and only be out a $15 pre paid data card.

 

[foggy]

Looks like a mobile hotspot from Wal-Mart (Straight Talk) could be an option too. And if it doesn't work I can return it and only be out a $15 pre paid data card.

It seems to me....that when I talked with Verizon.....that we could have up to 3 devices for the same price when going with unlimited time on 4G. So my I-Pad is running a hot spot for "free" (IIRC).

 

[bueller]

I'm up and running. $50 straight talk mobile hotspot from Walmart. Made sure I got the one that runs on Verizon service. $15 prepaid card gives me one month of service and 1GB of data with no contract. $99 Honeywell WiFi thermostat.

Mobile hotspot quickly grabbed the signal and has remained connected since last night. I had to run a new thermostat wire and make some new connections at the furnace since my old setup only had two wires. So far so good. Pretty freaking neat to check and change the temperature in the cabin from my smartphone.

 

[tooln]

Good for you. Today's phones are better than computers 10 years ago.

 

[lionfan79]

Bueller - I was wondering how your WiFi thermostat /cellular mobile hotspot setup was working out? I tried a similar setup using a Verizon Ellipsis Jetpack, but the Verizon unit keeps dropping the connection after about 10 days and requires a manual reset. (I have heard of others having a similar problem with the Verizon units.) Is the Straight Talk unit from Walmart more reliable?

 

[bueller]

Bueller - I was wondering how your WiFi thermostat /cellular mobile hotspot setup was working out? I tried a similar setup using a Verizon Ellipsis Jetpack, but the Verizon unit keeps dropping the connection after about 10 days and requires a manual reset. (I have heard of others having a similar problem with the Verizon units.) Is the Straight Talk unit from Walmart more reliable?

I've had mine up and running for almost a year and a half now and have never had to reset it. This includes it "re-connecting" by itself after a power outage.

 

[John-W-WI]

I have a verizon jetpack at the cabin.... "usually" it stays connected as long as there is traffic of some sort. But not always.

The bummer is, the WIFI thermostat I bought doesn't have notifications. I wanted it to let me know if the temp got too cold.... Nope. This setup is a couple years old. The new one I bought for the shed does notifications (haven't installed it yet though).

-John

 

[JimG]

Bueller - how long does the 1GB data card last you? Just one month or longer?

 

[yoderjac]

I've been thinking about getting a wifi thermostat for the furnace up north. I would like to be able to kick the heat up while we are driving to the cabin in the winter so that it is warm when we arrive (young children). But more importantly I would like to be able to monitor the inside temp while we are gone so that I am alerted if the temp starts to drop below my set point. Not much could be worse than arriving to find the furnace went out for some reason and all our pipes, pumps, etc... froze. Does anybody have a setup that works for them?

We currently have no landline phone or internet service up there. We have verizon wireless for our cells and get pretty good coverage. My initial thought was to purchase a "jetpack" mobile hotspot from verizon. Service would cost an additional $20 per month on our plan. The jetpack would grab the verizon signal and convert it to wifi which I could hook the thermostat and other wifi devices to it (cameras, etc...). While researching the jetpacks it seems that some people have had issues when trying to run them 24/7. To get them back online they had to unplug and restart them. That won't do me very good 10 days in to a 45 day absence from the cabin. Another option looks to be a 4G enabled tablet. Leave it plugged in and setup as a mobile hotspot. I don't know what kind of reliability I would get out of this setup.

Tech guys, any thoughts......

I've got a jetpack and have problem having it run 24/7 if I have it plugged in. That is not to say that it doesn't get kicked off the 4g network from time to time, but that can happen to any cellular device. Another option is satellite internet, but that can be expensive and depending on the thermostat and how it operates, the latency could be a problem. In general, you will get better performance from a wifi specific device like a jetpack than using a phone as a router. This is because it uses HW optimized for packet routing where a cell phone does part of the job in software. I doubt performance will be a big issue for you. One upside of a battery powered device is that short power outages should not be a problem.

If you want to have regular traffic to increase the chances a jetpack will stay up, you might want to consider an acurite type thermometer unit. You can hang sensors inside and outside, connect a device to your wifi, and it will send temps to the acurite web site. You can login and look at graphs of the temps. You can also set alerts and get email or texts.

Thanks,

Jack