There are three ways that Thinking Home can control a thermostat. The least expensive hardware is simply an appliance module controlling a thermostat set-back. A thermostat set-back is a very small heater that mounts below the home"s thermostat to trick it into seeing a small increase in temperature, resulting in the thermostat "cutting back." Thinking Home treats this as the appliance module it is and provides no special handling.

There are also thermostats available that are designed for more sophisticated control via X-10 signals. One-way thermostats change settings in response to X-10 commands and two-way thermostats can also report information back to the Thinking Home software.