Preface: please don't tell us why we shouldn't use a smart thermostat.
I'll probably need to go on a video rant about this, but smart thermostats are rapidly getting dumber.
My folks got a new heat pump system in the spring. It needed a new two-stage thermostat and the company offered an Ecobee.
"Great!" I thought. People kept telling me Ecobee is better than Nest, and I've had major frustrations with the new Nest thermostat.
Folks. It's just bad in different but equally maddening ways.
The ONE THING Ecobee did better was holding. Y'know, the feature every programmable thermostat has had forever.
Well, in November I went on a trip with them and needed to figure out how to get the thermostat to be dumb for their house/dogsitter.
Where did the hold feature go? It appeared to be gone.
Oh? Now you have to go into the settings and tell it *how long* you want it to hold a temporary change, and one of the options is "indefinitely"
WHO THOUGHT THAT MADE ANY SENSE
Meanwhile, Nest no longer (at least with the basic ones) lets you set different schedules for heating and cooling modes.
Call me crazy, but I actually like my HVAC system to run different schedules in the heating vs. cooling season (and I NEVER let it run on "auto" mode).
You used to be able to do this! The old Nest app supported it and it made perfect sense. The Google Home app doesn't, and the new cheap Nests don't talk to the old app and IT'S ALL SO STUPID
Literally all anybody is asking for is a thermostat which can do scheduling, can be remotely controlled/monitored, and change setpoints based on occupancy.
It needs to be an easier-to-program thermostat with a few smarts on top and THAT'S IT.
Right now, they're all sliding backwards in the name of "comfort presets" or some BS and the experience of using them is much worse than a simple programmable unit.
I cannot fathom who is making these design decisions and why. It's just awful.
@TechConnectify My refusal to move off the old Nest app continues to pay dividends.
@TechConnectify prepare to be bombarded with: "you should try Home Assistant". They might not be wrong, though. In my case, I'm content with my German Fritz! internet modem which is a basic smart home hub on DECT, with simple scheduling of target temperatures.
@Joris You're too late, but I was composing my extra disclaimer as you were composing this toot.
Yet people can't figure out why the experience here isn't always great...
@TechConnectify the silliness of the Nest support in Home is something I fought uphill *while working at Google* and couldn't get a PM to see the need to support the features that were specific to the European model (hot water settings)
I don't think I want to use Nest personally after that, but it's still probably one of the most user friendly options.
@flameeyes yeah, after the change ecobee made and the general experience of using their app and setting things up, it is better than ecobee and I do not understand how anyone thought the opposite.
But the things you can't do in nest that you can do with any other freaking thermostat are maddening. Thanks for letting me know you were fighting the good fight.
I think a main channel video on this is in order
@TechConnectify a bit controversial opinion, but other people (like me) would love to know what to do about this very situation, so advices are helpful
@kantor This is fair, but consider that every piece of advice given to the broader audience is also ending up in my notifications. And also because people don't necessarily even look for replies before they comment, and even if they do, they might not be visible because of fedi stuff, it's very irritating.
This is yet another thing that needs to be improved on this platform and not just brushed away as a non-problem.
@TechConnectify @kantor I enjoy your channel and glad you are here, but I do think this can came off the wrong way of you just not wanting people to reply at all, which is your preference and that's fine, but I do think overall people are just wanting to be helpful. Heck, this is mostly tech literate folks on here, who else knows how to set up a Mastodon account? lol
@monorailtimes @kantor look, I'm sorry if it's harsh. But this is the reality of using this platform right now.
Through some combination of technical features as well as the general demographic of the people that are using this platform, it's just... a lot to deal with. Especially because of the general bent people have here to be against anything non-open source, and this (me being annoyed by big tech thing) is a wonderful opportunity to proselytize about that.
Okay, ya got me: my last post was kind of harsh.
Please feel free to be helpful here, but also:
Check your holier-than-thou attitudes at the door. Read your post and wonder if someone else might view it as judgmental - I sense a lot of thinly veiled criticisms towards people who dare to use commercial smart thermostats.
@TechConnectify so you’re not soldering your open hardware thermostat by your own!!! :D
@TechConnectify Not to mention that they don’t often work with stages>2 heat pumps! We got a 5-stage heat pump recently and the only option was the thermostat from the manufacturer. There’s been a huge stagnation in this field.
@parkr eh... in this case, I think having a heat pump accept five stages of input is rather ridiculous.
I think a smarter way to go about it would be for the heat pump to have an outdoor temperature sensor (which it probably does already) and do some sort of prediction of the load.
It will vary on its own with a W1 call and use W2 to mean full blast. More granularity on the thermostat itself feels silly to me
Huh, I wonder if this might be a version thing?
I have an Ecobee 3 (which is helpfully not made anymore), and I can set the hold duration to 2 hours, 4 hours, until next scheduled activity, until I change it, or decide at time of change. (It's hidden under "Main Menu" > "Device Settings" > "Hold Duration")
Guessing later versions felt this was too helpful and needed to be removed?
@jrconlin no, honestly it's funny to me that you think this is good?
Hold should be a single thing that works a single way. You turn on hold and now it is a dumb thermostat until you turn hold off.
This scheme is needlessly complicated and opaque.
Honestly, nest had it right in that a temporary override would always stay until the next schedule point. The way ecobee is doing it is maddening. I'd like to see a combination of nest's temporary override and permanent hold. That seems obvious.
@TechConnectify it’s literally two taps? Chose the temp and then “until I change it” ? I’m not sure what the gripe is.
@TechConnectify I guess technically one swipe & one tap:
Swipe to spin the “dial” to the temp you want - and one tap to pick the duration option of “until I change it”.
@valkraider that is not how it works on their version. And I dug into the documentation to figure out what had changed with their specific thermostat.
Now, when you change the temperature you don't get any sort of pop-up asking if you want this to change permanently. It just changes.
You have to decide previously, deep in the settings, how long that change will stay. That is how you use the whole function now on their version. It is ridiculous.
@TechConnectify well that explains my recent frustration with my own ecobee. For as long as I’ve had it I turned off all its own automations in favor of what I wanted (a dumb thermostat I can control anywhere) then out of nowhere I noticed I’d set the temperature at one level only for it to randomly at its own choosing change the target temperature without my own input. It’s been so frustrating seeing these apps think they know better than I do about how I want my home temperature set
@TechConnectify yeah... Maker-adjacent and Linux-adjacent communities have a lot of this unfortunately.
I get that (they think that) it's better over there. I largely agree. But that's mostly because they've forgotten (or blocked out) the MOUNTAINS of nonsense they have already suffered through, much of which they are still putting up with.
@groxx and it's easy to forget that the skills that you have learned are not common at all.
I do this myself, but as a communicator primarily I need to recognize when I'm doing this. I'm usually pretty good, but there have been failures.
Heh, no, not saying it's good, nor the fact that they squirrel away any way to make a change because "clearly they know better".
Just commenting that my older version kinda/sorta does what you want, but clearly yours doesn't because, improvements? Reasons?
Someone made it their OKR?
(FWIW, I have home assistant override the hold at midnight because I'd often forget it was in place and my house would be freezing cold in the morning, but that's not really a fix either.)
@jrconlin gotcha (and for clarity my boost isn't to make fun of you but to put out there how I think hold should work)
@asbestos @jrconlin you shouldn't have had to deal with a bunch of screens. The models I've used you either swipe up and down on the side or spin the whole face of it and it should just change the temperature. If you wanted to set the system to off, that's more difficult. But personally, I don't really do that - I just set the temperature way low to make sure the heat doesn't come on
@TechConnectify That’s weird. On ours the “hold duration” was added in the updated UI they rolled out this past year, and we have the option in settings “decide at time of change” set so that we can choose each time. I agree with you - if you can’t have it be more dynamic it’s a bad choice but I have to wonder why their ecobee is not updated?
Reason we use Ecobee instead of Nest: Google doesn’t need any more data on what we do in our house. ;)
@valkraider it could be this has been fixed. But about a month ago, that was not an option.
@TechConnectify My house has a schedule thermostat (with weekdays, Saturday and Sunday for different settings) and the temporary hold until next schedule point is exactly how that works too. I have no idea why you wouldn't do it that way.
And it's not *that* complex a thermostat.
Since I was in Italy at the beginning of October (and snow was on the horizon) I asked my grandparents to turn the furnace on and they were unsure on what the switch to do that was.
So ecobee sounds nuts
@DasGanon yeah, it's ridiculous. Nest behaves like you would expect any programmable thermostat to behave when you change the temperature: it will stay what you set it to until the next program point. But for some ridiculous reason, you cannot simply have it hold and become a dumb thermostat. Ever.
Ecobee, on the other hand, decided to give you way too much control over what it does with temporary overrides. But at least you can hold.
The best answer is exactly between the two.
@DasGanon like, I honestly cannot fathom why anyone would value "a two-hour hold" or whatever the hell Ecobee lets you do.
Presumably, you want it to follow the program you set up until you don't. So you make a change. But you want it to resume the program once that change has been over. But if you don't, then you put on hold mode.
I do not understand why ecobee has the granularity it does, and I do not understand why nest refuses to let you just turn it into a dumb thermostat when you want.
@TechConnectify yeah. Really I want my current one but with 1. The ability to look at weather and climate and go "hmm looks like it's going to be cold or hot, I'm going to fan or heat" and 2. "You know it looks like you're not in and we can make your house more efficient for heating/cooling"
I guess I can see the point of duration holds, like if I'm home for a bit, or whatever but like really the best option is a way to release when I'm wanting to leave, not set a timer
@DasGanon Right! And it is utterly maddening in my case that nest, on the newer thermostats, does not save separate schedules for heating and cooling.
My heat source is gas. Time of use savings are not a thing, so my program is a simple reduction in temperature overnight.
But when I'm using cooling? I want it to crank down low at night when power is cheap. Then I want it to be practically off during the day.
The old system let me keep two programs. Now I have to change it spring and fall.
@TechConnectify @jrconlin that’s how my ecobee works? Maybe I’m confused. If I set it to a temp that’s not scheduled it will hold until the next schedule starts.
@monorailtimes @jrconlin I think you might be confused, yeah. I'm talking about how to make it behave as a dumb thermostat for an indefinite period of time.
On any other programmable thermostat in the world, you turn on hold. Then it ignores the program and becomes a dumb thermostat until you turn off hold.
Hold, in my objectively correct opinion [/s], is a binary state. It is either on or off.
Nest just doesn't have it, and ecobee makes it a nested behavior of an override.
@TechConnectify @jrconlin in particular given your recent announcement of what you will retoot, it certainly came across as making fun of them initially.
Might be a good idea to edit the toot?
Maybe it's a language thing?
I took the use of "funny" to mean "peculiar" or "odd". I did not see any offense in it's use.
That, and I understand that folk who are frustrated tend to be more curt. That's why I don't argue about their experiences or how they internalize things. Chances are very good that they and I agree, so getting to common ground is the most important thing.
@TechConnectify and the worst part is I could see that as a really simple option. Like say you set it to 60 overnight which uses less gas in winter but then in summer that just gets it frosty with AC.
And all it does is require the unit to look and go "should I heat or cool?" based on the outside temperature. And the schedule shouldn't need to wildly change for most people since they'll want it to be cheap when they're out and comfy when they're in.
@DasGanon I think this is what they were trying to do with the update. Because now you set comfort preferences or something, and you can define a heating and cooling set point. Then the schedule just changes between those presets.
But in my case, what I'm trying to do between summer and fall are just too different for that scheme to work. Plus, the heating and cooling set points can't overlap which requires changing presets, too.
@TechConnectify Remember when tech was designed to improve things and not the opposite?
Yeah... I barely do
@DasGanon in my heart of hearts, I think they're trying to make it so that you don't have to think as hard.
And I think that would be okay if it weren't for the fact that they removed the granularity that someone who /wants/ to think about it used to have.
Maybe 80 to 90% of people prefer the new way, but it is absolutely infuriating to me and I don't think the old system was difficult to understand at all.
@Triply Wait until you find out that I actually think this is a really good idea so long as we can audit how it works and it is done reasonably.
In a future where energy available on the grid may not be so steady, the ability to reduce energy demand (or indeed preemptively *increase* demand when there is abundant energy in preparation for a predicted shortfall) is a tool we will make our lives a lot harder through rejecting.
@Triply because, although you put greater good in quotation marks, that is a thing we're going to need to deal with.
Yeah yeah yeah, more nuclear or whatever. But when the sun is shining and there's more energy than we need? The ability to store that as thermal energy (either positively or negatively with heating/cooling) offsets the need for it later. It's just a different kind of battery.
Dispatchable *consumers* are just as useful as dispatchable producers on the power grid.
@TechConnectify Ecobee has been pretty great but at least the OG Nest had a few nice tricks like using low voltage “trickle” to charge itself. But they all kinda suck in their own ways as you found out.
@thomasfuchs @TechConnectify the Honeywell that got installed with our heat pump several years ago defaults to holding until next schedule point, which has always been fine.
I had installed my own janky replacement wiring for a previous Honeywell thermostat from Costco that didn't support trickle charging, and the HVAC installers just reused that lol.
@HunterZ @thomasfuchs okay, just to clarify because everybody's using the word "hold" differently...
Hold, to me, means you are asking the thermostat to be a dumb thermostat until you want it to not be a dumb thermostat anymore. It is a way to turn off its brains and make it ignore the schedule.
That's what that word means on non-smart thermostats. And every non-smart thermostat I have ever used does indeed "hold" a manual override until the next program point.
@HunterZ @thomasfuchs and like, that seems obviously the correct thing to do.
That is what Nest does, except there's no way to make it stop being a smart thermostat.
Ecobee, on the other hand, makes it weirdly and needlessly complicated to make it ignore the program. They add granularity to what "holding" does and honestly I don't think anybody is asking for that.
Any unscheduled tweak is obviously going to be a temporary override to your program. Otherwise, you're gonna change the program.
@TechConnectify @jrconlin The Ecobee is literally the first thermostats I’ve ever owned (Grew up in Europe where each radiator has a manual dial you turn to decide how warm it gets) - So I have no bagge or context here, seriously.
To me the “hold for X duration” seems like a helpful feature. Some evenings the preset doesn’t quite hit the mark, and we want to turn it up for a bit. But I don’t want to have to remember to disable that fact as I go to bed.
@TechConnectify @jrconlin I guess what I don’t quite understand is: Are you saying you can’t imagine a scenario where this is useful? Or are you saying there’s a clearer way to communicate the requirement I just suggested?
@philip @jrconlin a little of both, actually. I don't see that as particularly useful because I run a program already, and I would expect it to maintain my temporary override until the next programming point. And that program point happens to change at bedtime.
But, I see its usefulness - the other problem, though, is folding "just stop being smart until I tell you to be smart again" into the same action.
*That* is what should be pulled out as its own function.
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@philip @jrconlin basically, I want a toggleable action to turn its brain off and make it a dumb thermostat. That is what "Hold" does on pretty much every programmable thermostat ever. It is distinctly different from a temporary override because it is a *permanent* override.
I find it needlessly confusing to fold that into a subset of overrides. While I can appreciate having various time spans for the overrides, they are all still temporary and thus, to me, are not what "hold" even does.
@TechConnectify @jrconlin I’m not sure what a better word would be, but I will definitely concede that “Temporary hold” probably isn’t the best choice.
As a software developer by trade, it fits fine in my mental model, but I can see how it wouldn’t for other folks.
@philip @jrconlin Right. I guess, maybe some of this has to do with the people in charge of smart thermostats not having much experience with dumb-but-programmable thermostats.
I mean, Nest doesn't even let you make it be dumb. That alone is crazy to me - what do you do when you have a house sitter?
But bottom line, it's too much. My paradigm is "run the program" and "don't run the program" with "deviate from the program until the next set point" being the only necessary mid-point.
@philip @jrconlin and that is how every programmable-but-not-smart thermostat I have used works.
And I think it's very logical. Either you want to be running the program, or you don't want to be running the program. And if for some reason you want to deviate from it right now, you probably want it to resume the program so you don't forget to put it back on.
And if you don't want it to do that? You turn on hold. And now it's a dumb thermostat.
Other options seem contrived, honestly.
@mark @Triply and amazingly, I hold both that "I think this is a good idea" and "it's gonna be tricky to implement without running into problems" in my head at the same time.
But the simplest and easiest thing for me to imagine is that any preemptive decisions that are done remotely can be overridden by the person in the house. Override too much and you lose whatever incentive you were given by joining the program.
@mark @Triply and the other reason why I'm honestly not so dystopian about this, at least not yet, is that all anybody needs to do if things go wrong is yank the thermostat off the wall and short a couple of wires together.
Unless this involves changing the fundamentals of how thermostats work, I'm not gonna get too worked up about this. Especially since, as of now, nobody's forcing anybody to do anything. Let's talk again when that happens.
@TechConnectify I keep looking to replace my dumb thermostat with a smart one, and every time I do I keep thinking to myself, "I think I could do this better with an Arduino."
I've never programmed an Arduino in my life, and I've never worked with a breadboard. I'm sure I'd screw it up so many ways...and yet I still think I'd rather do that than buy a smart thermostat that I see on the market today.
@TechConnectify @thomasfuchs I've never used a Nest / Ecobee, but I always assumed that being smart meant that they would create a program for you based on your manual adjustments.
@HunterZ @thomasfuchs some do, some don't.
I don't know if ecobee has any sort of self-learning mode, but nest originally did. Then again, I would never use it. I always found that idea to be pretty strange - how do you not know what you want your thermostat to do?
@TechConnectify@mas.to @mark@social.cool110.xyz @Triply@yiff.life you have to always assume the company has your worst interest when they're taking your control away.
@Jessica @mark @Triply Yes, but what I just said is not implying that your control is being taking away.
That is what I think is missing and all these conversations. People presume the worst and can't imagine the middle ground where you are given an incentive to let the thermostat (or whatever) make adjustments on its own but which you can always override with the consequence of losing out on the incentives.
I would sign up for something like that right now.
@Jessica @mark @Triply and what's really fascinating to me is that the people here, who I know all have a very hacker mindset, aren't thinking through what they could do in this dystopian future they are imagining where your thermostat is entirely controlled by daddy bezos.
Because even if that were going to happen? I know you all are smart enough to figure out how to take a thermostat off the wall and short wires together. And you can teach other people, too.
@TechConnectify wait isn’t this how the ecobee works when you just adjust the temperature? I thought when just adjust the temperature it says “(new temperature) until 9:00pm” (or whatever the next scheduled change is
@woodne that is one of many ways it *can* work but there are other things you can choose, too.
And the way my parents' model works, if you want it to actually *hold* a temperature, you need to go into the settings and tell it that when you change the temperature manually it should hold onto that forever.
Which, to me, makes very little sense. That needs to be a separate feature with a separate toggle.
@TechConnectify Do a video on the classic Honeywell thermostat. Mercury!
@TechConnectify@mas.to @mark@social.cool110.xyz @Triply@yiff.life I mean yea it's like that for now, but there'll be a day when that isn't standard and the thing on your wall directly talks to the unit and isn't replaced. I can see it coming a mile away.
@TechConnectify @Triply Indeed that might be a good idea; although I worry about the grid safety from a screwup leading to ~10M thermostats all simultaneoulsy switching on eg on a software error or hack.
@penguin42 @Triply it's important to look for things to worry about, that's what vigilance is.
I just get so tired of people worrying about things and using that as a cause to not do something.
@TechConnectify I have an Ecobee 3. Hold is a single button and holds indefinitely. Seems like I’m not going to be able to”upgrading” to an Ecobee 4 or later.
@mrfrobozz yeah, I don't remember what their model is but it's something "lite" I think. Maybe even 3 lite.
It's awful whatever it is.
@TechConnectify I actually like this feature. There are days that it’s easier to override because the weather is in a 3 day bender and I’m lazy. But overall, I agree smart thermostats are annoying. I have a simple house. It’s trying to be “too smart”.
@theotherlinh I... don't get it.
What I'd do with ANY OTHER thermostat is turn on HOLD and then let it be dumb until I decided to let it resume the program by turning off HOLD.
That should be a *separate feature* from overrides. Not built into them.
@woodne Yes, that's what I mean,
I appreciate those two and four hour options (I guess... can't say I'd used them) but this is not what HOLD means to me.
That may be my bias from earlier thermostats, but bottom line - what I'm asking for is a feature that says "be dumb until further notice" and that doesn't feel like it belongs in a sub-menu like this.
@TechConnectify @DasGanon For me, the 2-hr hold is useful for when it’s just a little cold / hot. My house is well insulated, though, and can maintain the inside temperature fairly easily.
Coupled with the lack of true winter, I think it is useful the way it’s designed, but will admit it is opaque.
@jdechko @DasGanon I can't help myself from pointing out, though, that if your home is well-insulated, then it's not like it's going to run much after that two-hour duration once it's attained the setpoint you asked. I think just letting it resume the program at the next change is fine, plus - you could also just set it back down later.
Deciding a "default" behavior - or picking which one every time you do an override - feels like, well, too many options to me.
@TechConnectify did you try vacation mode instead? You can also set a hold - just change the temperature and it will ask for the duration
@TechConnectify I agree! The Bryant ones that came with our system were supposed to be smart enough to learn the performance of the house and adjust their (presumably PID loop) to be at the temp you set at the time you set it. In real life they just ran the system way too much so we just use them in manual mode as an on / off switch.
At least holds are easy and they do connect to an app (for now).
@TechConnectify @Jessica @mark @Triply i think there's a level of tech savvyness where you start to appreciate not just what you can do with tech, but how tech can go wrong. That's the point where the IoT stuff that relies on cloud services to run stops being fun, and becomes scary.
Not being able to turn you heating on cos US-East1 has fallen over again is not a good feature...
@quixoticgeek @Jessica @mark @Triply Right, and the gap I'm trying to bridge is between "I have found a scary thing!" and "what do we need to do about the scary thing?"
Because right now, there's a lot of people finding scary stuff and then deciding we better not move forward. And like, I get the reasoning for that. I really do. There are many reasons to be cynical these days.
But to me, that's just avoiding problem solving and throwing your hands up.
@quixoticgeek @Jessica @mark @Triply admittedly, it's hard to parse when people are just being hyperbolic versus sincere, especially online.
Just recently I got a notification about someone who seems to be under the impression that when the internet is down, a smart thermostat will freeze your house. I hope they are just making a joke, but I really can't tell. Perhaps they truly believe they are reliant on an internet connection to function at all.
@TechConnectify That sounds like Vacation Mode on our Bryant ones. But they have an easy Manual mode too.
@Triply @quixoticgeek @Jessica @mark Don't get me wrong, I think it's healthy to have some level of suspicion. But it's easy to go too far to the point that it becomes unhealthy.
I also have a whole bunch of issues with stuff getting connected to the internet that shouldn't be connected to the internet. But a thermostat? Actually tied in correctly to a power grid that can dynamically move load around?
That is really powerful and we need to make it work. Not run away from it.
@Triply @quixoticgeek @Jessica @mark because, frankly, I think it's antisocial to not do that.
Yeah, if you absolutely want to you can decide to completely go off grid and throw a bunch of solar panels on your roof and tell the rest of us to shove off.
But the rest of us have to make do with the power grid, and there are a lot of tools to get more out of it that will genuinely rely on internet connectivity and cooperation.
We need to be leery of who controls those tools, yes. But we need them
@TechConnectify @monorailtimes @jrconlin I suppose it’s annoying to have to change a setting, but on my ecobee you can set hold to mean indefinitely or until the next schedule change. Or to have it ask you each time, which may be the default and the behavior that you saw?
@admanC @TechConnectify @monorailtimes
I think part of the problem that @TechConnectify is noting is that unless you know to do those things, you don't know they're possible. There are certain "muscle memory" patterns that can be useful, and circumventing those can often frustrate people more than help them.
It'd be like changing the order or position of the numeric pad because you like round numbers more than angled ones.
@admanC @TechConnectify @monorailtimes
His original example was someone coming to help out his parents. Could they have left a binder that included instructions? Sure. But the fact that they would have had to is kind of the problem.
@jrconlin @admanC @monorailtimes Right, as far as I'm concerned, every thermostat needs a "be dumb now" option which turns it into the same thermostat everyone knows how to use. It's not going to change temperature when people don't expect, it's not going to change operating modes. It's just going to be a thermostat.
That is basically what hold does. And in my opinion, it needs to be a binary toggle. Be dumb, be smart.
Not "be smart, but also if you press these buttons, be dumb for X time"
@TechConnectify @jdechko @DasGanon Isn’t having a sensible* default but providing options for those that want something different a pretty good way to satisfy a broad audience of users?
*I acknowledge that “sensible” is doing a lot of work there.
@admanC @jdechko @DasGanon Yes, but honestly my big concern here is that ecobee conflates overrides with holding.
I agree there should be an option for what you want it to do when you make an override to the program. But there also needs to be an option to **turn the program off** and make it be dumb.
That is technically accomplished with how ecobee has things arranged, but it is very confusing.
@jrconlin @admanC @monorailtimes also important, a toggle for hold is going to allow you to put it back to the state it was in previously in a single action. Have company over? Turn it on hold. Now it's a dumb thermostat and occupancy triggers and the schedule don't matter.
Party's over? Turn off hold. Now it's back exactly the way it was.
That's why I want it to be a binary toggle separate from all other customization. It should not change how the thermostat behaves in other circumstances.
@TechConnectify @woodne perhaps you’ve answered elsewhere, but isn’t setting this to “Decide at time of change” and then choosing “Until I change it” effectively this? And it’s not like you have to dig into this more than once.
@TechConnectify @jrconlin I’m so confused. Sometimes, it seems like you want a manual setting to last until the next schedule, and sometimes indefinitely. Is that right? But you don’t like the Ecobee solution of choosing which at the time of the manual setting and would instead just like a completely separate “Hold” toggle, with the manual change being until the next schedule unless that toggle is enabled? Okay, that seems fine, but just enabling the “choose” seems plenty good.
@TechConnectify
Certainly in the UK wiring regs etc seem to restrict more and more what a householder can legally do to their own house with each new edition. Obviously one can choose to ignore them in a crisis, but less so on a general day to day level.
@Jessica @mark @Triply
@TechConnectify
> I'll probably need to go on a video rant about this
honestly sounds like it'd zoom out to a rant about the Internet of S 
.