David Trebacz Blog

It seems Honeywell added some new features with a recent update to the RTH9580WF WiFi thermostat firmware. One new feature is called Utility Schedule Options. I looked on their website and found no information on it, so I decided to put together this blog post and a Utility Schedule tutorial video . The feature allows people to take advantage of special time of day pricing programs offered by Electric utility companies. I did this in the past by setting up my schedule, but essentially lost 2 programs steps setting it up. The new menu item is under "preferences" under main "menu" (Menu>Preferences>Utility Schedule Options>On). Video tutorial of Utility Schedule option setup The video walk though of RTH9580WF Utility Schedule options setup , I shot walks through the setup. It also gives an idea of the different options you can set (up to 4 different breaks and active on different days). The thermostats then uses the temperature limits you set on ...

I'm still having issues with the Honeywell wifi thermostat (RTH9580WF) displaying "waiting for update" on when the wifi is routed through my proxy server, so I decided to do a deep dive into what the thermostat is doing when it's getting the weather updates. I also wanted to better understand how to trace traffic on my network. Here's what I learned about the thermostats weather updates system by tracing the communication between the thermostat and servers. Currently: Thermostat requests the current weather and 12 hour forecast from a server:  http://104.209.185.251 . This server appears to run code managed by Honeywell in Microsoft's Azure cloud. Every 15 minutes it makes two port 80 GET requests to the IP address: http://104.209.185.251/WeatherAPIProd/api/weather/current?appKey=b9db7a3d469892e8&language=en-us&locationKey=36691_PC  (return current weather for location) http://104.209.185.251//WeatherAPIProd/api/weather/forecasts/hourly/12hou...

Just bought my wife a new thermostat for our house. We missed the HAI home automation thermostats in our previous house and their ability to display outdoor temperature. The NEST removed too much of our ability to control our thermostat and didn't show outdoor weather conditions. We choose the Honeywell RTH9580WF  (from Amazon) for a few reasons: RTH9580WF Outdoor Temperature - shows waiting for update Pros: Ability to control from a remotely Easy WiFi connectivity Reliable thermostat company Good 4 star plus reviews from Amazon Ability to show outdoor temperature and humidity Easy to use touchscreen and nice design Cons: C wire required No external temperature sensor Replacing  our existing heat pump thermostat was uneventful. I just carefully followed the instructions from Honeywell on how to install it. Our system was new enough to have a C-wire run but not connected to the existing thermostat. Honeywell's online tools and video helped me through this ...