Smart Thermostat, Tuya Zigbee Thermostat Temperature Controller Powered By Battery for Electric Heating

Tricky setup, but got it working with Home Assistant
I got this as I was looking for a super-basic thermostat that I could control with Home Assistant. I also wanted it to be battery powered as there’s no power where the thermostat is mounted. This meant ZigBee as Wifi is too power-hungry.This seems to be the only one that fits the bill. Installation is pretty simple. Just insert some batteries and connect the two thermostat wires to the terminals.It tells you to use the Tuya app to use it, but I was not interested in any of that nonsense. I wanted it to be locally controlled and avoid any cloud reliance and Home Assistant is the best tool for that.Getting it to play well with Home Assistant is the tricky part as it’s a non-standard ZigBee device. I’m using ZHA and adding the thermostat to Home Assistant was fairly easy. Unfortunately it’s not recognised as a thermostat and none of the entities feed through. To get it to work properly involved using “custom_zha_quirks” and adding a “ts0601_thermostat_zwt198.py” config to my Home Assistant installation. Getting it all set up was a bit of trial and error but some Google searches lead to good community discussions, documentation and the necessary code to get it working.Not for the non-tech inclined though.Once set up it’s worked pretty flawlessly though. HomeAssistant sees it as a thermostat. Temperature measurement seems reasonably accurate. The batteries have been going strong for about 7 months with no signs of going flat.Overall pretty good. It’s a shame there aren’t more options in this space though.

Much better via app
I hate buying devices when there is no review – but I took the plunge and bought two of these as they were the only option that seemed plausible. Adding a review to encourage othersSo far so good (but early days). I bough these to replace two old thermostats in a large old building. The thermostats I was replacing were battery powered with a simple two wire connection to turn the boiler/pumps on and off. After researching Nest, Hive and others I discovered none of them would work for me. At best they required a two part system with part A placed by the boiler and proprietary Wi-Fi then talking to part B place where the thermostat normally lives. As I live in an old building with thick walls this was a non-starter for me. (If they had connected over my regular network that would have been fine, as I’ve already solved that problem with multiple routers/wires etc.).So to the product itself. First impression is the display is bright but annoyingly only seems to stay lit for about 1 second when you push the ‘on’ button (really the display button). That makes it a race to read everything before it goes back to sleep. So far not so good. I had an Aqara Home M2 Zigbee Gateway but unfortunately this wouldn’t talk to it strike two.Despite this poor start, I’m a fan. I bought a £30 Tyla Zigbee gateway. Setup with the Tyla app was surprisingly simple and the app gives decent control over the thermostat, showing both current and target temperature, allowing overrides, and importantly allowing you to set the schedule via the app rather than by hammering on a poor quality button on the device itself (with a display that goes to sleep every second). Alex integration is also easy, but I have not experimented very far with it yet.Good: With Tyla gateway and Tyla app it is easy to control and responsive with a clear display of current and target temperature and easy to set schedules. I have two identical units and the app is quite happy with both.Bad: The ‘screen only lights for a second’ is really irritating. Zigbee range is also rather poor for me – I’ve had to buy a second hub as the two device are positioned either side of a thick wall. I haven’t got the second hub yet so don’t know if this will continue to work smoothly.Unknown: Only had them for a day, so can’t comment on battery or longevity. Not tried talking to it yet either – but both are showing in the Alexa app with live temperature displays. I’m hopeful this will work well4 stars as infinitely cheaper than Hubs and Hives and appears to do exactly what I need. Point off for a display that won’t stay lit long enough to read – and needless to say written instructions are minimal, with no description of the many icons that appear. App is a must to make the most of this.