No matter what theormstat you use, you’ll need to understand the wiring. Here’s my best guess at what they are:
- Common
- R(c) hot wire for heating
- R(h) hot wire for cooling
- Y fan
- G cooling ; or possibly heating/cooling if O/B is needed
- S2 sensor, apparently
- W/E w = heating ; E = emergency/electric heating
- O/B reportedly a “reversing valve for Heat Pump systems”
This mainly comes from the diagram here: Wall installation ONE · HestiaPi/hestia-touch-openhab Wiki · GitHub
And the additional ones I filled in from Honeywell’s support page: https://www.honeywellhome.com/us/en/support/how-do-i-wire-my-thermostat/
It’s always good to check and verify these things though. If you jumper the R to Y, the fan should turn on, R to G for the compressor for cooling, and so forth.
If you can turn on the heating and cooling with W and H (respectively), then you should not need O/B. You will also be supported by the HestiaPi out of the box.
If you can only get heating or cooling, but not both, then you’ll need the O/B wire and the HestiaPi will not work out of the box. It’ll require updating some rules on how to do the controls.
If I was a gambler, I’d say you’ll probably be supported out of the box. Having two R wires implies there are separate heating and cooling systems. But please check and make sure.
As for which open source thermostat project to use, I can say that I am still supporting the software. The latest image uses a supported version of Debian, but what @jrtaylor71 says about OpenHAB being old and not upgradable on the original Pi Zero boards is true. I don’t know anything about a “remote connector” but I can say that I have connected remote temperature sensors to the current HestiaPi.
Here’s the plan for software updates:
- split the front end (web browser) and back end (OpenHAB)
- upgrade to Debian 12
People with the Pi Zero 2 (which is what all new units are built with) should be able to run both on the thermostat itself. Or they can to run the back end on another machine (a newer Pi, a server, etc.).
People with the original Pi Zero will have to run the back end on another machine if they want to upgradem if they don’t want to set up another server, they can just not upgrade. That’s always an option.
As to the question of when I’ll get to these updates, probably pretty soon, actually. I’ve been getting some other projects to a good stopping point which has freed up some of my time. I’m not going to promise to have it done by a certain date, because life happens, but I’m much more optimistic than I normally am when trying to figure out when I can squeeze in some updates.