I’ve been writing about thermostat designs since 2016, at which point I was making my own because I found the thermostats on the market somewhat lacking, especially if you wanted to provide remote access including guest and holiday rental access. Then along came Google Nest, all very nice, but it was exceedingly expensive, still didn’t do what I wanted so I gave that a miss.
I’ll include links to some of my articles here for anyone interested. Meanwhile today I received a new wall mounting 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 one looks like an absolute corker.
I’d do a long blog on the subject but as I already made a YouTube video about the new device this morning (my first of its kind, with which I’m quite pleased), I’ll just make this a short entry. I hope you find the additional information in here interesting/useful.
Funnily enough the techniques I used to design those early thermostats included using early Sonoff displays called Nextion which are still around today and which I believe are in some form part of their Sonoff NSPanel designs but which, way back when, were quite finnicky to programme.
At least it was a way to get a wall-mounted smart cheap thermostat display up and running. I’ve had lots of people asking me about my stat designs and variations over the years – all in 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 from the house that needed a decent stat (air souce heating) so that interest died off. I eventually went onto using Home Assistant, a relay and various sensors (totally coincidentally an old Sonoff 4 channel WiFi relay board and Sonoff Zigbee climate sensors).
Until now that is. This new Zigbee device which works a treat in Home Assistant or the Sonoff eWeLink package… is just too good to miss and VERY pretty. See the included video. And soon – I have the Sonoff working in Home Assistant… The device automatically installs as a device in Home Assistant.
It’s just a case of adding it to some default or plug-in thermostat control, but there are a comprehensive range of controls within Home Assistant, pretty much automatically appearing.
etc. Lovely.