Tag: Honeywell Evohome

Articles

The Honeywell Lyric: This Is the Thermostat the Jetsons Would Own | Gizmodo

Honeywell’s Lyric thermostat has the looks and smarts to take on Nest | Engadget

Honeywell Finally Has a Thermostat That Can Compete With Nest | Mashable

From the horse’s mouth

Honeywell

Press Release

Product Page

Lyric microsite

My Comments

The success of the Nest Wi-Fi-connected home thermostat which has the “learning” abilities and the distinctive round shape was bound to bring on an imitator.

Honeywell came up with the Lyric Wi-Fi thermostat which works in a similar manner to the Nest but also capitalises on their round-shaped room thermostat that was popular during the 1950s suburban housing boom.

This unit can work with most central heating and cooling systems offered in most countries where the furnace, heat pump or other equipment is managed via a low-voltage thermostat. It can link to most Wi-Fi-based small networks with a single passphrase for Wi-Fi segment security.

The network connectivity is to allow your iOS or Android smartphone to become a remote control for your heating or air-conditioning as with the Nest.

There is the ability to support GPS-driven “geo-fencing” to have the heating go to the “AWAY” temperature when you are away from your home or start “coming to” your comfort temperature as you get nearer to home, and can also work with multiple smartphone apps to allow all of the hosuehold to benefit from the “geo-fence” functionality. This may also have a limitation with households where there is that risk of one leaving their phone behind as they rush out quickly and could throw the “geo-fencing” functionality a bit. 

It works with the AccuWeather weather-forecast service to optimise the HVAC system to assure consistent humidity no matter which part of the US you are in

The Lyric system supports the ability to set up preset comfort settings for particular situations such as to have stronger heat or cooling and a high fan speed when you host a party for example. There is even a reminder function with the app where you are let known when to change the system filter or to book a service call to keep that furnace behaving properly and safely.

But most of these devices work on their own “app-cessory” island where they only work with a smartphone app developed by the manufacturer. As well, not many of these smart thermostats are optimised to permit advanced control of the more sophisticiated HVAC setups which implement energy-saving behaviours like modulating burners or variable-speed heat pumps.

This will be the way these devices will work until there are application-level “device classes” that permit other member of the smart home ecosystem or “Internet Of Things” to exchange status data with each other.

Article

Honeywell’s evohome puts a smart heating system in every room, is now available in the UK | Engadget

From the horse’s mouth

Honeywell Evohome

Product Page

My Comments

Honeywell are pitching to the UK market a zoned central-heating control system that works with the kind of central-heating setups that exist there. Here, these typically have a gas boiler which heats up water which is passed on to radiators installed in each of the rooms, with this heat source also being for the household’s domestic hot water needs.

This system, known as the Evohome, implements wireless control using a proprietary 800MHz radio system. The main control surface is a temperature controller that is equipped with a colour LCD touchscreen but a householder can also purchase a “remote network gateway” that links to the home network to allow control from their smartphone or tablet. It doesn’t matter whether that are at home or away with this control.

There are various “wireless relay boxes” and “wireless controllers” that pass the control signals from the controller on to each other to manage the heating system for comfort and efficiency. Honeywell also even supply special thermostatic radiator valves that are part of this system to provide for room-based zoning so that this system can cater for local comfort needs in an efficient manner. The zoning ability also allows for management of the domestic-hot-water temperature to suit safe efficient provision of this service.

It is also able to work in a “learning” manner that adapts the central heating system’ behaviour to follow the household’s daily routine and lifestyle rather than the household revolving around the system’s requirements. As well, there is support for OpenTherm functionality for compatible boilers so as to support simplified installation and monitoring of that appliance from the controller.

But there are questions that can be easily raised about this system such as whether this system implements Zigbee or Z-Wave for inter-device communication especially if other devices do the job better than the Evohome devices. Similarly, the use of other common standards for network-based HVAC control could open paths for hardware, software and service providers to allow for a heterogenous approach for building-automation applications.

What I see of this is an attempt to provide “per-room / per-radiator” heating control for a UK-style hydronic central-heating system at an affordable cost with the ability to know what’s going on in each room and providing the ability to manage it from your home network.