Comment by cyberax
15 hours ago
An analog fallback is a good idea, to be sure your house doesn't freeze when you're away.
> EDIT: Digging around a little more it seems that Mitsubishi H2i minisplit systems don't speak zwave or zigbee, neither does Haier Arctic
There are no mini-splits in the US that speak anything remotely standard. If you want to go with ducted systems, TRANE and others have smart AC units that use "communicating thermostats". The protocol is based on Envirocom system and it's pretty basic.
Good news is that you can still control them by shorting the wires with a traditional thermostat, so you still can have an analog backup in case the regular digital thermostat fails.
The Honeywell thing I bought on amazon turned out to not be analog after all. It's got an Atmel Atmega something or other in it. It obviously can't connect to the internet through its 24VAC 3 wire interface but it's running software I can't inspect and therefore assume to be completely riddled with bugs. It's going back to be replaced with Whites-Rodgers Emerson unit.