Z-Wave Smart Thermostat - ZTS-500 with Your Z-Wave Hub

It basically works: it can maintain a temperature. It also connects to z-wave network. UI is very limited, but works. But its z-wave capability is almost zero. You can set the target temperature, that is it. No mode changes or anything. All commands are ignored. It does not report the target temperature. It does not report at all. It does not report any temperature. I had to enable polling for the sensor. Automatic reporting does not work, although I tried to enable it. There are two parameters, but they are ignored. It does not allow to get the target temperature. It does not report it either. Polling does not help. It says: not supported. Installation I have C-wire. I do not use batteries. Connected all wires easily. But there is no room for wires behind the unit. I have to cut/drill the wall to hide wires. Currently there is a gap between the unit and the wall. I am not sure what I'll do.

The best in battery eating. It uses 4 AA batteries and they last about 4 days. I have the C wire in my system, but could not for the life of me get it to work off of 24V from the furnace. I even purchased an Ecobee Power adapter, connected the R and C wires, and no power. I did change it to 24V mode after disconnecting from the Z-Wave hub, but it still would die as soon as I took the batteries out, so I figured, maybe they are only for backup. 3 days later my ZTS-500 was dead. No response to pressing buttons, so I changed the batteries, and voila it works again. So I do not know what is going on, but I ended up returning BOTH my units ( I purchased 2, because I have 2 furnace home). Now I have 2 Ecobee3 Lite, connected with the SAME C wires and they WORK without problems, on both furnaces. I thought I would have to use the Ecobee PEK kit after all the connection issues with Remotec, but didn't. So in my opinion it looks awesome, has the right features, everything can be setup thru the SmartThings app, but I couldn't install it on either of my furnaces...

Aside from a few minor quirks, this device is a great option for a Z-wave thermostat. Almost all pre-2018 Z-wave thermostats simply don't have encryption, which was a deal-breaker for me - the encryption on this device worked great out of the box for all command classes. You'll need to make sure your Z-wave gateway supports the device. It uses the standard Z-wave thermostat (and fan) command class, so most should be able to add support easily or support it as a generic thermostat - though some of the features exposed via configuration variables (low battery notification, filter change warnings) will need some extra integration. The only strange thing that I haven't been able to work around well is that the gateway can't "poll" the current temperature setpoint - it only gets updates on the setpoint command class from the ZTS-500 after it's changed (locally or by remote Z-wave command). My furnace has some electrical oddities - the 24VAC wire's voltage becomes inconsistent while the heat is in a post-cycle cooldown, which was causing the ZTS-500 to flicker and sometimes reboot. Adding AA batteries to the thermostat as a backup worked perfectly - the device no longer loses power when the furnace voltage has issues. As far as basic "thermostat stuff" - the temperature sensor seems accurate and consistent, the differential and swing options work well to configure the behavior of your HVAC. There's no scheduling capability (your Z-wave gateway will have to do that) - it's pretty much just a simple, dependable thermostat that exposes literally everything to Z-wave.

Touch screen case plastic gets stuck in down position often, causing temperature to ramp down to.minimum. Will freeze you out if you don't catch it happening... Internal relays to turn HVAC on/off are LOUD. Do not install in a bedroom! Thermostat does not have a minimum runtime or minimum rest time. So sometimes it will cycle your HVAC unit VERY frequently, which is extremely bad for the equipment. I will say the zwave connectivity worked perfectly, though.

After double-checking my wiring and jamming some AA batteries in the back, I can confirm that it's a good z-wave thermostat. I easily added into my Hass.io setup and can mangle my temperatures from my phone. The only gripe I have is that it's an oil magnet and is *very* clicky. Pretty minor complaints, overall, though.

I bought 5 of these devices for a mountain home that does not have any C-wire, nor any nearby wall plugs where I could have used a AC-to-24V adapter. I used brand-new, Duracell batteries into each on Sept 6, 2018. After 2.75 months, towards ThanksGiving in Nov 2018, one by one, these thermostats slowly "went offline". I came up to my cabin in the 2nd week of December. All 5 had gone offline by then. Sure enough, they all ran out of battery juice. And that's with each thermostat using 4 AA, brand-new duracell batteries. Just 2.75 - 3 months max! Wow. Luckily, I suspected that these thermostats may die too quickly, so in the basement rooms of this mtn home, I used the uglier Radio thermostats. Those still had plenty of battery juice left. Anyhow, I replaced 4 x 5 = 20 new duracell batteries again into my 5 Remotec ZTS-500 thermostats. They all turned back on, and I could control them again thru my Wink.

Initially ordered 3 and only 2 work off 24VAc, ordered 4th and it also didn't work. I only picked these up because I decided to upgrade the hand full on z wave (non plus) devices to z wave plus, something easier to see from across the room and because my wife complained that our Trane XL624 in our bedroom was too bright even at lowest level(they worked perfectly other wise). The display on these seemed to fit the bill and they're also z wave plus. First bad actually displayed it was running on 24VAC while only having batteries install, it also wouldn't include on the network. Second bad one Intially displayed 24VAC while connected and batteries installed to get it power up and Batt when not connected HVAC power, it would include as the 2 good ones did but quite show 24VAC when re-connected. Either way I want to run these off the HVAC 24VAC so I don't need to worry about changing batteries, want it to always be awake so I can use them as repeaters and also so I can have the display always on. I was happy that these were actually a bit cheaper than our Trane thermostats but after seeing cheap the display was (don't get me wrong it gets the job done) compared to our old ones that have dated mono(black dots for text/images) LCD display with white back light being just some square lights to make the numbers/text and some lights for the states. While I didn't care about getting all the fancy scheduling stuff since well not only do we not use that I can do that all with my home automation controller over z wave, it's missing things that seem to be pretty standard on modern thermostats like humidity sensor and optional external sensors. How well does it actually work you might be thinking. Well not very well at all, the temp sensor is so slow that setting it for a 1 degree temp swing runs more like 3 degrees. It doesn't always update the states on the controller so they're pretty much worthless for my set up (only one thermostat is actually controlling my HVAC and mostly works as a slave, the other 2 control it via the home automation controller-since they're states don't always update-even with parameter set to force send every 1 min- my AC might not even turn on/off without me query them). Temp while being much better at updating most of the time also doesn't always and I also use their temp to control ceiling fans that are in the same room. I find it ironic that while these look more modern than my Tranes the display is actually way more dated but with that said it met the needs for purchases them in the first place. I could get by with losing humidity reading (especially since my motion sensors have that as wells several over sensors and for >half the price) and the external sensors (it would be nice to use the one I already had in place with the old units). However, with me not being able to rely on these to actually report things like temp and heating/cooling state I may have to return the 2 that mostly work. Unfortunately at this time I believe the only other option that's z wave plus and can repeat for my door locks looks even more date than my Tranes (it does have good reviews for working well which is more important than looking good). I may trying writing a program that queries them ever X min and see how that goes. At least I've been home ever time the ac didn't turn on/off except for once and luckily that day was mild for this time of the year. The way I have heating/cooling set up the main/slave thermostat will still kick in before things get life threatening and the other 2 only set it a couple of degrees from it's current reading but the whole reason for having the 2 extra thermostats is because the temp can get way past comfortable long before it changes at the main thermostat and the point of Thermostats is maintain a comfortable temp.

Pros It looks very slick. It has quite a few advanced features. The price is good compared to something like Nest. It also has outside temperature feature. Cons Does not work with Samsung Smarthings. It did sync quickly but commands are not available The thermostat syncs as Stepl Ki, which is a whole different product. There is no support. No phone number you could call. The name Remotec doesn't go to manufacturer website. There is no troubleshooting page in the instructions.