Hi @mhadler,
When you buy a smart thermostat such as ecobee (which is more expensive than others on the market), you may want to take full advantage of its features for Home Automation, especially when combined with a platform such as SmartThings (which is very versatile although it has some weaknesses in scheduling amongst others).
- My ecobee device has been designed to take the best of both worlds: ecobee’s reliable scheduling and ST’s home automation capabilites in a unique package.
I’ve been the 1st developer to fully expose all the richness of ecobee APIs here on the ST platform (it’s been more than 2 years already). Before the ST stock device, I was also the 1st to expose all the ecobee3’s remote sensors to SmartThings for home automation.
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As you may know, the ST stock device does not even expose the methods to set your thermostat to away or present, so it’s a very basic version that just allows you to set your setpoints, your thermostatMode and thermostatFanMode, and resume your program (not much more than a cheap z-wave thermostat). I believe the ecobee thermostat as much more to offer to ST, so that’s why I created My Ecobee device.
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With the latest version (which uses async http requests), My Ecobee device is more resilient (and more reliable) than the ST stock device to any ecobee disconnect due to the unique mechanisms in my code. Recently, there was some maintenance done at ecobee, and My Ecobee device was not even disconnected during the whole maintenance window.
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You may want to use any of your ST connected (motion & temp) sensors to average out your inside temp and set your thermostat to away for more comfort & energy savings.
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Here is the ecosystem of smartapps available with MyEcobee device, just check it out:
With My ecobee device and my smartapps, it can be done in a matter of few minutes instead of waiting for at least 30 minutes (often more than 1 hour) with ecobee’s default smart away feature.
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Now, since My ecobee device V5, there is a very nice integration with Ask Alexa and you can get ecobee tips for more comfort and energy savings by interacting with Alexa (get/play/repeat tip verbal commands ). The generated tips are based on the actual indoor/outdoor conditions at your home, and the HVAC runtime stats available at ecobee (Furnace, air conditioner, fan, any connected equipment).
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There are many other benefits of using MyEcobee device, you may want to check the full list under my thread (and also some user feedback):
Finally, I’ve also implemented some zoned heating/cooling solutions based on My Ecobee device and smart vents such as Keen Home (and they can leverage also any other ST connected thermostats, motion & temp sensors) that can create zones inside your home for more comfort. Check out the details under this thread:
- My ecobee device and most of my smartapps are documented under the ST community wiki (with some screenshots):
http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=My_Ecobee_Device
http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Category:Unpublished_SmartApps
http://www.ecomatiqhomes.com/store
If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to contact me at services@maisonsecomatiq.com
Regards.
P.S. I ask for a small contribution to download MyEcobee device given the work that I’ve done so far (there is more than 15k lines of code around My Ecobee device and its ecosystem of smartapps).