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Yes, there are individual settings to turn off the 'Sense' features like the learning-schedule, auto-away.

If you literally mean using it as an on/off switch... I don't think you can do that without just cranking the temp between min and max. There is a function to run the furnace fan for X minutes, but you can't directly tell it to run the heating and AC for a period of time.

Yes you can do that. The app and hardware let you set it to either heat, cool, heat/cool, or off. There are probably cheaper ways to do this (IoT hub + zwave controller?).

Yes, you can, very simply. Just turn off learning and don't put in any schedule.