I recently purchased a small studio flat and thought that it is the perfect place to make a smart home since I will only need to control a few things.

I have already ordered my light switches and am still contemplating my blinds.

But my biggest concern is my airconditioning as I stay in the desert and it becomes quite unbearable during summer I normally left the AC on the whole day in my rental apartment.

But since this AC works on electricity only I figured I wanted to make it smart and only want it to cool a 15 minutes before I normally arrive back home.

My thermostat though is a communicating one and so far the only one I am seeing is the Lennox iComfort S30, but I don’t know if it is compatible with what I currently have. The videos I looked at said the companies should be sister companies for compatibility but I couldn’t find out how to check that.

This is my current thermostat

thermostat

wiring

Has anyone else tried to do something similar?

Edit: This is what is on top of the roof of the apartments and each has 1 or more of these

fan

rooftop unit

  • fishos@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    9 months ago

    Consider turning down the temp before you arrive, but don’t have it completely turn on from being off. If it’s off all day, then the power required to bring it back to desired temps will often be higher than if you ran it continuously at a lower setting while you were gone. I have a window unit that I have set to run at an “ok” temp on low during the day and then when I get home it goes down a few more degrees. Otherwise it takes hours to cool back down and it’s running on its highest setting the whole time to accomplish that.

    • FerNZA@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      9 months ago

      I did do this when I just moved in, but my current unit still made the apartment much too cold even when I set it to be 26 degrees C/ 80ish degrees Fahrenheit. It sets the cooling to the lowest setting, but it doesn’t switch it off even if it is way lower than the setting.

      But if my new controller can keep the temperature steady, I will do as you suggest. Thank you

      It is one of the reasons I wanted to change the controller

      • fishos@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        9 months ago

        If you find something that works, please update this. I’ve been on the lookout for a smarter thermostat as well and coming up short in what I wanted