Homatic.ai
Climate
Vacation rental thermostat automation
Heating an empty house for three days is the cost. Handing a guest a cold one is the bad review. Both come from the same gap: the thermostat has no idea whether anyone is there.
Your PMS knows exactly when the property is occupied. The thermostat doesn’t. Homatic connects the two, so the climate follows the booking calendar instead of a fixed schedule. A late check-in moves the pre-heat, and a cancelled stay never triggers it.
Start free — no credit card Four rules worth setting up first
Works with
Google Nest, including a bring-your-own option where you use your own Google Device Access project. Honeywell. ecobee, which has paused new developer registrations, so an ecobee connected through a SmartThings hub is often the route that works today. Plus thermostats on SmartThings, Hubitat, Homey and Home Assistant. Occupancy comes from Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Guesty, Lodgify, OwnerRez, Hostaway or any iCal calendar.
Four rules worth setting up first
1. Ready on arrival
A set time before check-in, bring the property to a comfortable temperature. It’s tied to the booking, not the clock.
2. Setback after checkout
After checkout, drop to a holding temperature. Mark it once per stay and it runs once, instead of firing again every time the cleaner walks past a sensor.
3. Protect the empty property
Limit any rule to while the property is empty, or at least N minutes after checkout, so your vacant settings never fight a guest who’s actually there.
4. Freeze protection
If the indoor temperature drops below your minimum, raise the heat and text you. Set a retry limit, so a thermostat that can’t be reached ends in a text to you rather than silence.
Door open, AC blasting
A guest props the patio door open and turns the AC to 64. One rule handles it:
- When a door or window has been open for a few minutes, remember the current setting and switch the AC to a holding temperature.
- While it stays open, keep that setting, undoing any manual change.
- When it closes, put back exactly what was there before.
The guest gets their comfort back automatically, and there’s nothing to message them about. If you set it up in a way that would overwrite the remembered setting, Homatic refuses to save it, instead of letting you find out in July.
Automate your rental thermostat → Describe the rule in a sentence; Homatic checks it against the thermostat that property actually has.
Is the AC actually working?
A thermostat set to cool isn’t necessarily cooling. Homatic shows whether the system is heating, cooling or idle right now, how long it has been running, and, if the thermostat doesn’t report that, says so rather than showing “idle”. You can also compare readings between devices, so you can set an alert for “inside is warmer than it should be given the setpoint and the weather outside”, the early sign of a failing AC.
Details that keep rules reliable
- Your unit, everywhere. Set and read temperatures in °F or °C. Homatic converts consistently, including in the AI assistant, which refuses a setpoint that doesn’t make sense in the unit given rather than guessing.
- No endless re-firing. A rule that sets a temperature and watches that same temperature is compared to a tenth of a degree, so it doesn’t fire forever over rounding. A rule whose trigger and setpoint are too close together gets a warning when you save it.
- An offline thermostat isn’t a cold one. If one device can’t be read, it’s left out of the decision rather than counted as “no”, so one dead thermostat can’t block a rule across the whole house. For rules that need every device, such as “if all windows are closed”, you can require them all.
- Told when the connection drops. If the thermostat’s vendor stops responding, you get an email instead of finding out from a guest.
Where this fits
These rules are one step in what a booking sets off. The pre-arrival step belongs to check-in automation and the setback to checkout automation. The money case, with an example you can fill in with your own numbers, is on vacation rental energy management.
Common questions
Does Homatic work with Nest?
Yes — both the shared Google Nest integration and a bring-your-own path where you run your own Google Device Access project, so the quota and the fee are yours rather than shared with every other host.
Does Homatic work with ecobee?
ecobee thermostats are supported. ecobee has paused new developer-app registrations, so an ecobee reached through a SmartThings hub is often the working route today — Homatic will show you which routes reach a given brand and which of them are actually available here.
Can I change the thermostat automatically after Airbnb checkout?
Yes. A checkout setback is one of the most common rules people build, and it runs off the reservation rather than a fixed time of day.
Can I pre-cool a rental before guests arrive?
Yes, with the lead time you choose. Give it longer than feels necessary if the property has been sitting at a vacant setback.
What happens if the thermostat goes offline?
A thermostat Homatic cannot read is excluded from a rule’s decision rather than counted as false, and a device that has gone silent raises its own alert. A vendor cloud that answers happily while the device itself is unreachable is treated as unreadable too — that is the case a simple "did we get a response" check misses.
Can I automate the thermostat based on occupancy?
Yes. Rules can require the property to be occupied, or empty, or empty for at least a set number of minutes since checkout.
Does this work with Vrbo and Booking.com?
Yes. The occupancy signal comes from your reservations, and Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Guesty, Lodgify, OwnerRez and Hostaway all feed it — as does any iCal calendar.
See Homatic on your own properties
Connect a property and the dashboard fills in from your real devices — your locks, your thermostat, your calendar. Free for 30 days on Starter, no card required.