You rock Ryan.
Maybe a dumb question, but is there a trick to getting the CT80 to boot on battery? When I turn off power to the furnace the thermostat turns off. I tried a different CR2032 battery that I had on hand with the same results. I’m willing to believe that the batteries I have could be old, so I will get a new known fresh one before I give up, but am I missing something? This unit takes a single CR2032 instead of AAs, but it can still run off that, right?
We only have CT100’s, I’ve never worked with a CT80 myself. I would have thought it would take AA’s like the CT30 and CT100.
It’s possible that the CT80 can’t run off battery alone. The CT80 manual does say “You must have a “C” wire or other 24VAC power available at the CT80 location. A new location will require moving your wiring.” If that’s the case and this is the problem you’re experiencing then it sounds like the work around won’t work on the CT80.
The only solution might be to get a newer model of CT80. Did you get it from Homewerks on Amazon? If so, I would reach out to Homewerks and/or Radio Thermostat and ask them to exchange it for a newer version. Tell them the radio version they sent has a bug in it that’s causing it to not work with Z-Wave. The issue report published April, 5th 2012 by Radio Thermostat says “This race condition is only present in v7.4 and has been eliminated in all subsequent firmware versions.” I think that implies that a newer firmware version which doesn’t have this problem was available more than 2 years ago. To me, it seems justifiable that they should send you a replacement with a more recent firmware version even if it’s passed the 30 day return window.
Hi Ryan and crew, I wanted to provide an update as this issue is resolved as of yesterday. Yes, I have not been idle in the last 6 months, but it did take that long to reach a conclusion. Radio Thermostat made it right in the end, but it took intervention from the Better Business Bureau to get there.
Long story short: The version “A” of the CT80 never ended up working. Radio Thermostat sent me a version “B” unit and that worked immediately. So, I think no matter how long we tinkered with the version “A” it was never going to work. I have attached a photo of version “B” (left) vs version “A” (right) - it is a completely different hardware revision, but just firmware.
Other thoughts: The reason I stuck with this instead of just giving up and buying a CT100 was the features. The CT80 has humidity control, which was the key reason I wanted it, but it has a few other things I have come to appreciate (perhaps the CT100 has some of these, I’m not sure). 1) You can set the fan to cycle for a few minutes every hour to keep the air circulating. 2) You can set how many degrees temp variation you are willing to tolerate before heating/cooling kicks in - this does increase efficiency. 3) It has little orange/green/blue lights on the panel to indicate heat/fan/cool. So we can always tell what function the HVAC is performing.
Ryan and team, thanks for your help on this a few months back - I certainly learned a lot if nothing else.
Excellent work! You’re a pioneer. I wonder if there is any way people can order one and ensure they get version B.
I would say as long as one orders direct from Radio Thermostat, you would be guaranteed a version “B”. According to them, the version "A"s are only floating around with 3rd party sellers, so if you order from another company I would make sure they have a 30 day return policy and send it right back if it is the old version. Same applies to the ZWave USNAP module - there is a newer revision of that too. I didn’t try the new CT80 with the old USNAP.
Thank you for the update. Interoperability issues are often resolved by a new version/revision. Good to know the exact answers in this case.
