I made a little feature manual to help others understand how the thermostat functions and how to manage your settings for your use case. You can skip to the end if you would like to just see the notes and little manual I made. The manual is in the pictures so just skip right down to the photos. Hopefully I can save some others the trouble I went through figuring everything out
Anybody who has purchased the Wyze thermostat knows that Wyze really dropped the ball by not providing a user manual, wether digital or paper, to help users understand how it works, the features it has, and how the thermostat behaves based on how you set it up.
I purchased my thermostat on Pre order and other then spending a lot of time to try and figure out how it behaves it has been a great product that has helped me save energy and money as well as provide me with remote control of of my homes heat system. If Wyze provided a detailed manual about the features and how the thermostat works then they would have ticked all the boxes. Wyze cams and other devices are pretty straight forward and don’t need a manual per say, however the thermostat is not one of those devices. It can be quite complex, confusing, and tough to use when you don’t understand how it functions and how your settings will affect the way the thermostat operates. Why they didn’t provide a manual is beyond me.
I personally had to spend a day or two coming and going from my house (driving down the road just to make thermostat switch modes to test things etc) to see how the thermostat behaved and I recorded my results and that’s basically how I got an understanding of how this thermostat functions and how I need to set it up to do what I want. It’s terrible that Wyze has made a product where I had to spend half a day and half gallon of gas just to figure out how it functions. But that’s what I had to do and what I did.
I wrote all my results into a somewhat manual that I figured I would share with the community to hopefully save the next person from the same trouble I went through trying to figure out all the features and settings. There is one thing left that I have to test and that is what the thermostat reverts to after a hold is set. I will be testing this soon but I wanted to get this manual out to people as it is, and I will update that one later.
*** PRO TIP- You can use geofencing on the thermostat to control your notifications (or anything else) based on location. I have a rule set to turn off my lights and turn on my notifications when thermostat switches to away mode. And I have a rule set to turn notifications back off when it switches to home mode. So even though Wyze app doesn’t have native geofencing support for notifications or anything else. You can use a rule with your thermostat state to achieve the same outcome as if the app had geofencing option. I’d like to point out this only works if you use the auto switch geofencing to control your thermostat modes. So basically anytime I leave my house it switches my thermostat to away using my location and then my rule activates and turns off all my lights and turns on notifications automatically. You can set rules for all modes (home, away, and sleep)
a little note for Wyze If one of your associates happens to see this post I’d like to point out that it took me about a day of testing and then less then 30 mins to write up this little manual. It wouldn’t take a lot of effort for your team to make a digital guide to help your customers use and setup their thermostats. The little effort it would take far outweighs the struggle your customers have to go through to try and figure out this device. It’s not as simple as most of your other product line and not having some sort of manual, guide, or feature explanation is unacceptable. The little effort it takes to make one would go a long way in saving your customers a lot of frustration. Not to mention it will save your team the trouble of explaining these features over and over again to frustrated customers. Even if you want to take this manual I made and turn it into something official I would be more then happy to help or provide whatever you need to make that happen.***
If there is anything I can do to help don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d be more then happy to assist if I can.