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  • >Do NOT use this firmware on any thermostat that is critical for your heating or cooling needs.

    Also, carefully consider its use with propane or natural gas HVAC units. Many can reach dangerous temperatures very quickly. Many years ago we had a thermostat failure that caused our HVAC to not shut off. While it had an over-heat cut-out, it was for temps above 200F. Because the unit had an oversized blower, it caused our home to reach dangerous temps as we slept, including our kids room which was a good 20F hotter than our bedroom. Luckily we woke up and the kids were okay.

    by atm3ga
  • That's just a disclaimer. The same could be said of the original ;-)

    No "smart" thermostats for me --- I have a round Honeywell that's been working perfectly for several decades.

    by userbinator
  • Are they good options for cloud-freeish thermostats? I have two units (one for upstairs and one for downstairs). We have two nests but they’re so frustrating. I’ve lobotomized the “smart behavior” as much as a I can. I want a thermostat that connects to the home assistant I already have
    by matthewfcarlson
  • ecobee is still cloud connected, but they work nicely with homekit. AFAICT, that enables local control. I can confirm that they work nicely with homeassistant via the homekit integration.
    by _ea1k
  • > Are they good options for cloud-freeish thermostats?

    There are connected thermostats that do not feature a WiFi radio. I don't like zwave (I would really prefer WiFi with a HTTP or MQTT interface) but there is no thermostat that a) has a modern/working WiFi radio and b) a documented API.

    Venstar is the only company that makes WiFi with an API but they seem to use the cheapest possible WiFi radios and I could never get mine to stay connected to my network for more than an hour or two. They also had a _really unusual_ firmware architecture: it was linux with a stripped down web browser; the UI was a SPA and it used some lua or js (don't recall, sorry) to communicate to the hardware driving GPIOs. They did expect firmware updates to be signed and that's where I stopped looking and moved on to a zwave thermostat.

    by baby_souffle
  • Cool to see the recently launched FULU bounty program[0] working as intended[1].

    [0] https://bounties.fulu.org/bounties/nest-learning-thermostat-...

    [1] https://nolongerevil.com/about#:~:text=What,in.

    by johnz
  • It is pretty outrageous that a company who purports to care about the environment turned this into a pile of garbage for the average user to save on some cloud hosting or devops. Or even worse, to sell the next generation.
    by danimal88
  • It's not e-waste unless for some reason you want to throw out a working thermostat just because it doesn't have network access.
    by skybrian
  • Have this be an add-on supported by HomeAssistant and I'm in
    by daredoes
  • wish this could have been released prior to the google shutoff. But I am happy with the ecobee and its HA integration.
    by nickthegreek
  • It's reliant on a bounty iirc for the server and device side code to be open-sourced. Will be about an hour after that I reckon and I cannot wait to contribute.
    by buggeryorkshire
  • "We are committed to transparency and the right-to-repair movement. The firmware images and backend API server code will be open sourced soon, allowing the community to audit, improve, and self-host their own infrastructure."

    I look forward to it!

    by Tepix
  • If you're interested, I went a different route to design new PCBs for the hardware to have 100% firmware control, see for example https://sett.homes/blogs/updates/the-lcd-display-reverse-eng...

    I am hopeful that Cody's exploit lets us write whole new firmware without the extra step of needing the new PCBs, but they are my next best option

    by z3ugma
  • I really hope this project succeeds. In some small ways I was involved with Gen 1 and Gen 2 and the teams that built those products really cared. I doubt they would have said turn them off.
    by ddingus
  • There's none of us left at Google anymore... and they didn't listen to us when we were there.
    by dare944
  • Right now it's just a blob that you flash to your device to make it talk to a proprietary service. It is not yet "giving me complete control over my device data and settings." I can't change where it comnects to etc.

    In fact - I don't even see a privacy policy on nolongerevil.com!

    Hey, I can login at nolongerevil.com using my Microsoft-owned github login! And there's yet another company involved: clerk.com - yay?

    "We are committed to transparency and the right-to-repair movement. The firmware images and backend API server code will be open sourced soon, allowing the community to audit, improve, and self-host their own infrastructure."

    I look forward to it.

    PS: Sorry for being so negative... perhaps the release should have been delayed until all of this is opened up.

    by Tepix
  • > PS: Sorry for being so negative... perhaps the release should have been delayed until all of this is opened up.

    This is one of the major problems with doing anything good online. People like this.

    by xeromal
  • I don't get the hate, it looks like they reverse-engineered the nest thermostat and wrote a firmware for it? That's super cool and the fact that an open source project doesn't have a privacy policy yet doesn't really matter at this point
    by khamidou
  • The "Open Source" page on the dashboard site[0] links to this firmware but nothing about the server side. Firmware for the thermostat itself is a requirement, but without a dashboard it's still not really Free.

    Edit: If I read closely I would have seen:

    > The firmware images and backend API server code will be open sourced soon, allowing the community to audit, improve, and self-host their own infrastructure.

    [0] https://nolongerevil.com/

    by EvanAnderson
  • "soon"

    Trust me bro.

    by Krasnol
  • This comment says he is awaiting Louis Rossman’s acceptance of this code for the bounty he raised, pretty cool if this all works out!

    https://github.com/codykociemba/NoLongerEvil-Thermostat/issu...

    by tehwebguy
  • I'm a little confused, because this looks like you're just swapping one proprietary service (Google) for another (NoLongerEvil).

    Despite their name, we have no idea if NoLongerEvil is evil or not. Why should I trust them? I don't know them at all. Why will they be immune to the regular economic pressures surrounding any connected online service? What will stop them from adding tracking or other anti-features? Even if they are a bunch of saints, what will stop them from selling the service to a company that will not respect my privacy?

    Google is at least the devil we know, here.

    I was expecting a fully open source firmware, with a fully open source backend service that people can host themselves if they so choose.

    (I guess they didn't write their own firmware; they hacked Google's firmware so it redirects traffic from Google's servers to their own. So I guess in this model, I'd want to see an open source, self-hostable backend service, and a "build" process for the hacked firmware to set the API URL to the self-hosted backend.)

    Edit: looks like they plan to open source the backend and enable self-hosting "soon". Hopefully that comes to pass!

    by kelnos
  • I want a little blade server or SBC stack cabinet, that’s sized to fit comfortably near the broadband router, which is set up to run a bunch of home services from nest controller to Minecraft server as a lightweight kubernetes.

    Every so often you swap out the slowest one for a new one and keep adding more stuff to it.

    Add the ability to isolate some of the machines as bastion hosts and we could do an awful lot without having to exfiltrate our own data.

    by hinkley
  • > Google is at least the devil we know, here.

    Google has left these devices essentially completely unusable. You're not trading up Google because Google already abandoned these devices by shutting off the lights. Even if you don't agree with how robust their service is, they're offering you the ability to turn what's effectively e-waste into an operable device.

    by bastawhiz
  • If your boiler supports OpenTherm then get this thermostat controller https://github.com/Alexwijn/SAT

    Weather comp + low load comp + PID which means your room temperature works at the precision range supported by your temperature sensor. In my case, within 0.02 Celsius. Saves energy and makes your house more comfortable. Operated via home assistant.

    See real time data in Grafana

    https://gasboiler.grafana.net/public-dashboards/8d44381aafa9...

    Or Emoncms

    https://emoncms.org/app/view?name=MyBoilerIdealLogicH24Opent...

    by pandora-health
  • Any good multi zone ones for home assistant?
    by fukka42
  • Thanks!

    Which OpenTherm device would you recommend?

    by rikkert
  • There's also ems-esp which I use on an older Worcester Bosch boiler to set flow temperatures based on the outside temperature (managed by home assistant).
    by benoliver999
  • Stuff this project tackles is on my "I'll get to it after I retire" list - super awesome. Looks like this works for forced air HVAC as well?
    by hypercube33
  • We replaced a boiler in our last house a few years back. We got a Vaillant, at least in part because I found that there was a Vaillant add-on board available which could do OpenTherm, and the nest controller could do that in theory too.

    When it came to the install I was told in no uncertain terms that even though they produced the board and it was compatible with my boiler, any attempt at installation by myself or their approved installation engineer would immediately void the warranty.

    So that was the end of my OpenTherm journey. Thanks Vaillant!

    by Nursie