A fork of Home Assistant's generic thermostat to deal with some of the issues in that component, specifically:

1. Setting the temperature when the thermostat is in "away" mode overrides the current desired temperature. If you use automations to create a heating/cooling schedule, you can't use "away" to set a fixed temperature, e.g. when you go on hoiday. With Virtual Thermostat, setting the temperature when set to "away" updates the stored temperature, which is reverted to when "away" mode is cancelled.
2. Further to (1), with Virtual Thermostat the saved temperature is persisted and reverted in the event of Home Asssistant being restarted while in "away" mode. No more reverting to the set min_temp or max_temp
3. With Generic Thermostat, if the associated sensor goes offline or stops updating, the linked switch will stay on indefinitely. With Virtual Thermostat, if the sensor becomes unavailable, the switch will be turned off. There is also an option to set a timeout, after which the switch will be turned off if the sensor has not sent an update in that time. Note: if the switch is on and the sensor unavailable when Home Assistant starts, this will not turn the switch off. I'm working on that, but in the meantime, I suggest either using retained temperatures and the timeout (if using MQTT sensors), or a startup automation to turn off the switches.

Tested in Home Assistant 0.98.5. It should work in 0.96+, as it's based on the Climate 1.0 Generic Thermostat.

See the wiki for configuration details. It's basically the same as Generic Thermostat with one addition (sensor_timeout) though.