Ecobee automation after Groovy/Webcore retirement

What’s the terminology of what I should tell them in terms of what I want them to support? Eg what is the stock integration vs what the custom DTHs are using?

I would avoid all SmartThings-specific terminology. Just tell them you use SmartThings and list which Ecobee features you would like to control from SmartThings.

@Terri_Baker how did you reach out to Ecobee? I just went to do it and can’t see they offer the ability to just submit a ticket/email anymore which seems really odd. I am only given WhatsApp, Messenger, or phone call. I’ll do one of those if needed, but being transparent, feeling kind of lazy since I know its not going anywhere and don’t want to have a real time conversation if I don’t need to.

1 Like

I used support@ecobee.com. Since it is no longer listed on their help page I have no idea if it is monitored any longer. I do know they are very helpful but phone as well.
I requested comfort profiles and hold duartaions be exposed to Smartthings.
Hope that helps

Thanks. I will just shoot them an email and see what happens. If that doesn’t work, maybe another day, I will feel less lazy and chat or call them. I am attempting to make this work via an Alexa routine and my head is currently spinning since I have never really used Alexa for much nor done anything with Edge.

Just tried this Alexa path and works great. . . except for what ErnieG pointed out that it verbally responds. Don’t really want to be sitting in a meeting (or maybe asleep) and have my phone start speaking up. Thought I had it licked as we have an old dead Echo still on the account which I tried to point it to. . .but seems it actually looks to verify the audio output happened before executing the routine so doesn’t run. No error, just doesn’t run. Figure any way around that?

For now I just got this working with IFTTT. Using 2 virtual buttons created from this custom Edge driver I setup 2 IFTTT applets tied to them that when they are pushed run an Ecobee command to resume program. Then in SmartThings I created 2 routines. The first is when everyone is away sets the cool/heat temp of each thermostat to the same settings I use in the Away comfort profile. The second is if anybody returns, it pushes both buttons to resume program. That hopefully takes care of the away/home.

I then set the fan min on time of both thermostats to 5 min because I had pistons that checked for temp variance and set the fan on time. Set lower than I did with the “smart” routine because it will now run 24 hours a day.

Then set each thermostat to make sure Follow Me and Smart Home/Away were on because I used to have a pistons that set the thermostat into a comfort profile that was a few degrees offset after no motion for 20 min. This is clearly not very close in functionality, but figured I would see how it goes. If I don’t like it I will probably create SmartThings routines to use the motion sensors and again hard set the temps I usually use, but I thought I would see how Ecobee’s built in smarts work as I never really tried it.

Finally, I just went through and paused all my WebCore pistons that covered all this behavior. What a sad day. :frowning:

2 Likes

I just enabled the Ecobee Plus skill and set up four Alexa routines (home, away, good night, good morning) to manage ecobee modes. They’re controlled by two virtual switches which I added into (hopefully all of) the routines I use to manage ST modes. I’ve confirmed that the routines activate modes correctly and respond to the buttons; we’ll see how it goes from here. I already have echo devices so it wasn’t an issue to have one of them respond to the command. I still hope Ecobee will bring this function into the API so I don’t need such a Rube Goldberg setup to accomplish something that used to be simple.

3 Likes

They just responded and said thanks for the feedback and they would forward on to the appropriate party, noting they would not commit to actually making any changes, which isn’t a surprise at all. So looks like the email is still alive for now at least.

2 Likes

I purchased a Hubitat C7 Hub about 2 years ago as the writing was on the wall for SmartThings, IDE, Groovy, and many integrations (especially WebCore). For all I know, Hubitat could be taken off the market tomorrow. However, the function of the C7 is about 95% local and from what I understand, the Webcore Pistons all run local. The Ecobee Automation from yracine is available for Hubitat and runs flawlessly. The other thing I have really liked about Hubitat is the Integration with Lutron Caseta. It’s the best Hub based Lighting Integration I have used.

I think this is a good option short of doing things with Servers, Raspberry PI or other more advanced systems than I want to tackle.

2 Likes

Since SmartThings can lose connection with Ecobee without notice, I have a Webcore piston that monitors for the temp change staying the same for 3 hours and if so sends me an SMS. I think if I have a button virtual device I can have a SharpTools rule that if the temperature changes I can push the button. Then have a SmartThings routine that if the button stays off for X hours, send the SMS. I could do both in SharpTools, but to start I am using the free tier which can’t send SMS. Anyone have a suggestion that I could do that is contained to stock SmartThings tools?

So depressing I have to create all these Rube Goldberg machines to replace all my nice consolidated compact solutions in WC. On the good news front, my home/away solutions using IFTTT have been working fine.

Any chance anyone has figured out how to make IFTTT set a comfort profile indefinitely? It only lets me set it until the next program, which defeats the purpose of “away.” If I could get that, that would be a little less Rube Goldberg than what it looks like I’m going to have to setup.

See post 10 above. That may help give you some ideas. If not, let me know

As Terri suggested that post above has some ideas using comfort profile, but I ended up just using set points as they are indefinite. I was originally worried I needed one for each mode (heat/cool/auto) but you just set heat and cool in each one and the process is smart enough that it only applies the point(s) that are relevant. E.g.if in heat mode it doesn’t flip you back to auto when you set heat and cool points.

I figured I rarely change the set points for away so just accepted I’d have to change in IFTTT. The major downside is you can’t control which external sensors are participating or the fan mode.

1 Like

I was able to set indefinite away and schedule resume for both my ecobee with Alexa skills. Need edge virtual switches with contacts enabled to see the switch in Alexa routines.

1 Like

Were you able to do that without it giving a verbal notification? Or really any notification at all… Wouldn’t really want frequent notifications on my phone either.

Mine responds out loud but only from the device that’s selected to send the command. You could probably set Do Not Disturb, or set volume to zero, in the automation before you send the Ecobee command, if it bothers you. There’s no phone notification.

2 Likes

Yes, with my custom actions in Alexa routines, there is always an “Ok” response on whatever device I execute the routine from. Unfortunately, if you set the volume to zero or turn on DND before executing the custom action, you can’t reset it because the custom action will always be the last action to be performed.

Yes, you’d need a second routine to turn the sound back on.

This would be great, but you can only set the temp as low as 65. I had my away setting to be 62. I’ll probably just do this anyway since it should work but it’s a bummer that I can’t even set the temp to what I want

Unfortunately, I’m a Google Assistant user and not an Alexa user so this would mean yet another automation engine in the mix.