Ecobee and Flair

Devices & Integrations Connected Things
1

Hey guys I have a possibly stupid question. Later this year I am going to be going with the Flair vents, well my thermostat has crapped out so I have to jump the gun on the thermostat. My question is the Flair and the Ecobee both have temp sensors, would I need both in each room or will one use the other?

2

Hi @Intimnasc,

It looks like the Flair vent use a proprietary radio frequency (according to their specs on the web site), so unless you have some additional information from the vendor, it looks like the vents won’t be able to integrate with SmartThings…

Smart Vents that are compatible with SmartThings usually are zigbee or z-wave.

Please check with the vendor first.

P.S. Ecobee has remote sensors, but if you want to use also occupancy for controlling the vents, then the ecobee’s remote motion sensors are not the best as they are not meant to be used for real-time HA scenarios.

Please read the ecobee3’s rremote motion sensors limitations here:

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Ecobee3RemoteSensorInit#Known_issues

Regards.

3

BTW, I have already several contributors who use my zoned heating/cooling solutions based on any ST connected thermostat and smart vents for more comfort at your home.

My Smartapps can orchestrate your (ST connected) thermostat(s) and vents in such a way that only occupied rooms will receive more airflow inside a configurable zone(s) based on schedules, So, for example, during the day, you can configure the zone(s) to be only for your downstairs & basement rooms.

For more details, refer to this thread:

Regards.

4

I am pretty new to Smartthings but I have made a few connections and sent money on a couple of apps. I read the FAQs on Flairs web site and they had the below data.

"Does it work with my smarthome platform?

We are integrated or integrating with best in class platforms:

Wink
SmartThings
Control4

The initial focus of these integrations will be on temperature regulation however we will be sharing sensor data and adding a curated list of ‘microapps’ for controlling devices and settings on each of these platforms.

After I started typing this I went and reread the FAQs on the website and it is covered here.

"Does this work with my smart thermostat?

We are integrated or integrating with virtually all major smart thermostat makers.

Nest
Honeywell Wifi and Lyric
Schneider Electric (once API is released)
Ecobee (note that we will leverage your remote sensors so you don’t need to replace them with a Puck!)"

I guess the last comment basically says use the Ecobee Pucks. Or am I misreading something?

5

If you refer to this thread,

It’s not really clear how the smart vents will be integrated to SmartThings.

I guess you’ll have to buy at least one Puck thermostat which means that you will not be able to control the vents directly from SmartThings, but through the Puck thermostat only.

Also, as far as the ecobee integration is concerned, this is not clear either.

And, please read the transcripts carefully:

We are integrated or integrating with best in class platforms:

This means probably that the integration is not ready yet. It could take months before you see an actual integration between the different platforms (ecobee, SmartThings).

Regards.

P.S. Another thing you need to consider is that any solution based on proprietary technologies that you buy (which do not follow industry standards) is riskier to evolve in the mid/long term.

6

Thank you for your responses I am definitely in a little over my head but I am learning a lot as I go. Ill digest alot of this and see when the time comes. Now the Ecobee is integrated into Smartthings yes? Because I am needing a thermostat at the house and I’d rather get what I want for the future. Im OK with the Ecobee aren’t I?

7

Yes, ecobee is integrated into ST as it has extensive APIs available.

There are many options to integrate your ecobee3 with SmartThings: you can use the ST stock device, there is another open source version, and there is my version which exposes all ecobee3 features to ST (including the remote sensors).

I ask for a contribution for my version as it took several months of development & testing to complete (more than 3500 lines of code)…

The benefits of my implementation is that there is an ecosystem of smartapps that come with it. See this thread for more details:

P.S. Also, I have already developed some smartapps to integrate Smart Vents with ST and ecobee. See this another thread:

Regards.

8

I think I was reading opne of those threads just a moment ago. I definitely send donations on apps I use and keep as I understand your time is valuable and usually you guys provide pretty good tech support too. So next week Ill order my Ecobee 3 and some remote sensors to start with.

Again Thank you very much for your time and tolerance of my lack of knowledge.