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Alternative System for HVAC controller
I was informed today that Lutron will not be supporting the HVAC Controllers, seeTemp Wall Displays, and Radio Powr Savr wireless temperature sensors in Radio Ra3 citing the company is going to focus more on lighting and not other areas of home automation such as HVAC. This news is rather disappointing as the Lutron HVAC controller with wireless sensors had performed well for a number of our customers that wanted to reduce or eliminate thermostats on walls and get the added functionality of averaging multiple room temps across a HVAC zone.
That said, can anyone recommend some systems that are similar in architecture to what Lutron offered in RA2 (ie a controller based solution with multiple distributed temp sensors)?
Basically looking for a HVAC controller that can be placed at HVAC units and then supports multiple small form factor sensors per controller than can be placed in multiple rooms for the a same single HVAC zone.
Ideally it would use 2.5G or 5G wifi for communication and if it supported Humidity sensing and control as well that would be a huge bonus. Google Home and/or Amazon Alexa would also be a requirement.
Please let me know if anyone has any ideas? My google searches thus far have only found traditional thermostat based solutions (where a small handful might support a remote temp sensor).
Thanks in advance.
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Eco bee will support temp sensors and averaging, but have not found a control solution like that. I would look into iPads on the wall with the app running. Not ideal for sure.
If you find something that works, please post as I would love to use it. It’s a shame Lutron is not keeping this very novel solution around.
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One lesson I've learned over the years is to always keep the critical functions of the house as standalone. To me, Lutron is always a lighting first company and though they may dip their toes in HVAC, it's always a licensed thing from Honeywell or another company so I would just skip the middleman and go to companies who are best at doing HVAC. I've got one customer with Control 4 in their house and the C4 guy convinced them to get C4 thermostats. Great. What happens in 4 years when their AC is on the fritz in 100 degree weather and they call an AC company who says the thermostat doesn't work? Is the AC guy going to have a C4 thermostat in his van? Best case, they can install a temporary one and then have to call the AV guy back. Worst case, it's a proprietary controller that has two parts (like with the old Vantage thermostats) and nobody will want to touch it. So my suggestion would be to just go with Nest, Ecobee, Honeywell or another product that you can just go to the store or Amazon to order.
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I'm running into the same issue as the original poster. I'm curious if they came up with a solution they like.