RTH6580WF Wi-Fi 7-Day Programmable Thermostat, White

Really impressed with this thermostat. After easily replacing the first one, and finding how easy it is to remotely monitor and control my HVAC, I bought 4 more! The first one I bought was for a vacation condo that had the heat fail. Fortunately we caught it before the pipes froze, but I wanted a way to be alerted if it happened again. In searching for such a device I came across this thermostat, and not only will it send me an email based on various parameters I can set, but it also lets me view the current temperature, set a schedule, or manually change the temperature. Really convenient to turn the heat up a few hours before arriving in the winter! Anyway, here are some helpful hints as far as installation: 1) Be certain your unit comes with the right manual! Of the 5 I bought, 4 had the correct manual, and 1 had a manual that looked identical on the cover, had the correct part number, but had different instructions for the initial programming. If you receive a manual that has system set up starting on page 54 using four digit codes, IT IS INCORRECT. The correct manual uses 1 or 2 digit codes and starts on page 50. If I had only bought one unit, and received the wrong manual, I would have had no idea how to proceed. 2) Yes, you need a "C" wire. This provides the common side of the 24 volts AC required to power the thermostat. Previous Honeywell programmable thermostats used batteries to power the thermostats, and conventional thermostats do not require power. Of the 5 units I installed, 2 had no "C" wires but did have a spare I was able to connect at the transformer in the main unit (1 HVAC, 1 oil burner / heat only), 2 had a "C" wire (both heat pumps) , and one system that used one conventional thermostat to go to separate heat and AC units had no "C" wire and no spare, so I had to run a new thermostat wire. 3) A laptop or tablet will greatly simplify your initial installation. After you power on the unit for the first time. "wfi setup" will flash on the display. Just use your tablet or laptop to search for available wireless networks. You will see "new thermostat" as an available wireless network. Connect to it and open a web browser. If it fails to automatically direct you to the setup page, just enter 192.168.0.1 It will walk you through the entire setup, and provide a link to create a free Honeywell account to connect to your thermostat from a PC or smart phone. It will even automatically connect you back to the wireless network you were using before connecting to the thermostat. The "wifi setup" will stop flashing and you will see an icon indicating signal strength on the thermostat. You can also have it send you an email if the thermostat loses connection to the network. 3) Once you create a free account with Honeywell, you can view current room temperature, the outside temperature (based on where you tell Honeywell the thermostat is located, not an actual sensor), set / change / override schedules, or turn the system on or off. 4) Don't forget to program the thermostat for the type of system you have- see page 50 in the manual. Very easy to do. One trick I discovered is that if you have a Rheem heat pump, function 2 must be set to a value of "1". And of course, the location where the thermostat is located needs to have wifi, with or without encryption (It gives you an option during setup to choose what SSID to connect to and to enter the code if required). Overall, I am extremely pleased with this product, and not only expect it to provide peace of mind, but also expect to save money on my utility bills and have a convenient and centralized way to control all of my heat and air conditioning units.

I am very pleased with the unit and it is performing exactly like I hoped, after a month of usage. Its very cool to be able to modify and monitor the temperature setting of my home on my iPhone or laptop from anywhere. Since installing it I have not yet taken a long trip away from home but I know that when I do its going to bring some piece of mind to be able to check in and make sure the house is warm and not freezing up.Scheduling: I really like the ability to set the daily/weekly schedule from the web interface. If you've ever tried setting schedules on thermostats with only a few buttons on the face plate you can probably relate to how frustrating it can be. For this unit however, the web interface through Honeywell Total Connect makes it quick and easy to make schedule changes. The app for iOS works well for this also though I prefer the regular web interface.Reliability: Once the unit was connected and happy, which took a little bit of work (see below), to date I have had no disconnects or some of the other issues reported by some reviewers.Wiring Setup: This took some head scratching but it in the end wasn't too bad. Upon removing my old thermostat, of course I found I had no "C" wire, and the labels on the old thermostat did not match the Wifi thermostat (the old thermostat had "G", "W", and and "RH/RC" wire, with only "G" matching). However I found that the instructions that came with the Wifi unit had decent enough cross-correlation for what to do with non-matching labels ("RH" was actually "R" for example). To deal with the missing "C" wire I was lucky to find a number of unused wires in the wire bundle running to the furnace with the existing wires -- I chose one and it became the "C" wire, hooking up to the Wifi thermostat on one end and my furnace (a York Diamond 90) on the other.Wifi Setup: This was surprisingly more painful then the physical installation, but once finally connected I had no issues. I had repeated "Connection Failure", error code "E02" which according to the manual means I was entering an incorrect Wifi network password -- but I was not. Through a lot of internet searching I found out my problem was I had a space in my Wifi network (SSID) name, which the Wifi thermostat does not tolerate. Removing the space from my network name solved the problem, however only after also changing my network security from "WPA TKIP PSK" to "WPA2 AES PSK" (the former is supposed to work however it would not work for me, at least with my particular router-Wifi thermostat combo -- oh well it was time to start using the better wifi security setting anyway!)Switching Wifi Networks: I replaced my old router with a new router recently (with a new Wifi network name) and tried to go through the network setup again. Not sure how to have it join the new network, I tried resetting the unit by removing the face plate from the wall, waiting a few minutes, and putting back in place -- well this only resulted in having to set the clock again and it was still looking for the old Wifi network. Tried this a few times with no luck. If I had read the instructions again I would have seen there is a section called "Disconnecting Wifi" with a particular set of key presses to have it forget the previous network and start the Wifi search again (hold down up and fan keys for three seconds, then change setting #39 to "0"). Did this and quickly had it on the new Wifi network. This is good to know how to do as I imagine you would need to do this if you changed your Wifi network password as well.The documentation is good, especially regarding installation and the wire hookups. They could add more Wifi troubleshooting hints -- it was frustrating when it was giving me an error suggesting an incorrect Wifi password when that wasn't the trouble at all.If I experience any major issues I will revisit this review but so far I am happy.