I’ve been writing about thermostat designs since 2016, at which point I made my own because I found the thermostats on the market a bit lacking, especially if you want to provide remote access including guest and vacation rental access. Then came Google Nest, all very nice, but it was extremely expensive, still didn’t do what I wanted so I missed that.
I will link to some of my articles here for anyone interested. Meanwhile, today I received a new wall-mounted smart “Thermostat Core” – Model TP-WGZBA from Sonoff (their THERMO series), who, as we all know, are known for producing cost-effective smart devices, and this looks like an absolute corker.
I would make a long blog on the subject, but since I already made a YouTube video this morning about the new device (my first of its kind, with which I am very pleased), I will just make this a short entry. I hope you find the additional information here interesting/useful.
Funnily enough, the techniques I used to design the early thermostats included early Sonoff displays called the Nextion, which are still around today and which I believe are in some form part of their Sonoff NSPanel designs, but which, back in the day, were quite finnicky to program.
At least there was a way to get a wall mount smart cheap thermostat display up and running. I’ve had many people ask me about my statistical designs and variations over the years – all on the blog.
2025 thermostat
2020 thermostat
2018 thermostat
Original Nextion thermostat
Back in 2022, I reviewed an AliExpress-type TUYA thermostat, which turned out to be no good. In the end we moved out of the house, which needed a decent state (air heating), so the interest died. I ended up going to Home Assistant, a relay and several sensors (quite coincidentally an old Sonoff 4 channel WiFi relay board and Sonoff Zigbee climate sensors).
So far that is. This new Zigbee device that works a treat in the Home Assistant or the Sonoff eWeLink package… is just too good to miss and very beautiful. Watch the included video. And soon – I have the Sonoff working in the Home Assistant… The device automatically installs as a device in the Home Assistant.
It’s just a case of adding it to some standard or plug-in thermostat control, but there are a comprehensive range of controls in the Home Assistant, appearing quite automatically.
etc. Nice.