Ecobee Data in SmartThings

[Steerpike]

I have two ecobee thermostats in my home (two AC units, upstairs/downstairs) with a total of 3 remote sensors. The system works great. I also have the ecobee integration with smartthings (Ecobee connect).

Last night, my AC kicked in around 10, 11pm, 12am and 1am. But looking at info in SmartThings (I’m using logging, but same data is visible in the ‘recently’ tab of the thermostat, and in the ‘events’ list in the API), it only has the 10pm and 1am run; it completely missed the 11pm and 12 am runs.

The ecobee web app will present detailed charts of events, and also, you can download the data into a CSV file. I just downloaded the last month of data, and I can clearly see run-events at the 11 and 12 times, and also, temperature readings that occur every 5 minutes exactly. But in ST, not only does it not have the two major on/off events, it only has sparse temp readings (in the ‘recently’ view, and/or in the API view of events) - a reading at 10:42pm, and another at 12:17am.

It almost looks like the ST app is ignoring readings that aren’t whole digits different; that is - it’s recording a temp of 79, 80, and 81 … while ecobee is showing 79.1, 79.2, 79.3, … etc.

So question 1 might be - is there a way to tell ST to capture more data from ecobee?

question 2 - I can live with ST missing the ‘fine details’ reading, but I can’t live with it not capturing the ‘on/off’ events for the AC. Is there any way to address that?

Edit To Add: I just took another look at the data. While the ‘recently’ tab in the ‘Things’ view shows very sparse readings (one at 10:37, one at 10:42, then nothing until after 12 midnight), the ‘Event List’ in the API shows an event every 5 minutes; in fact, two events. “APP_COMMAND, Ecobee (Connect) sent generateEvent command to (my thermostat)”, and “COMMAND, generateEvent Command was sent to (my thermostat)”.

So there IS communication going on between ST and Ecobee, every 5 minutes, but only very occasionally do I see data coming back

2019-05-14 11:17:25.588 PM MST
15 hours ago	DEVICE		humidity	32		humidity is 32 %	true
2019-05-14 11:17:25.474 PM MST
15 hours ago	APP_COMMAND			generateEvent		Ecobee (Connect) sent generateEvent command to Temp - Eco - Up	true
2019-05-14 11:12:25.575 PM MST
15 hours ago	COMMAND			generateEvent		generateEvent command was sent to Temp - Eco - Up	true
2019-05-14 11:12:25.495 PM MST
15 hours ago	DEVICE		humidity	33		humidity is 33 %	true
2019-05-14 11:12:25.415 PM MST
15 hours ago	APP_COMMAND			generateEvent		Ecobee (Connect) sent generateEvent command to Temp - Eco - Up	true
2019-05-14 11:07:25.867 PM MST
15 hours ago	COMMAND			generateEvent		generateEvent command was sent to Temp - Eco - Up	true
2019-05-14 11:07:25.615 PM MST
15 hours ago	APP_COMMAND			generateEvent		Ecobee (Connect) sent generateEvent command to Temp - Eco - Up	true
2019-05-14 11:02:25.645 PM MST
15 hours ago	COMMAND			generateEvent		generateEvent command was sent to Temp - Eco - Up	true

Who wrote / who is responsible for the ecobee integration with ST? How would I know if there was a new version?

I just looked and I don’t even see a SmartApp for the Ecobee integration, nor a custom device handler. It’s been so long since I set up Ecobee integration, I don’t even remember how I did it!

[DavinD (Davin K Dameron)]

I believe it’s provided by Ecobee. There are a couple of independent integrations written. One is free and one is paid. I’m sure they’ll both comment here shortly.

[Steerpike]

Rather than post the obscure data from the ST event list, here’s a more accessible explanation of the problem. You can download ecobee data in a spreadsheet (HomeIQ->System Monitor->Download data). Here’s a sample extract of a short period of time when my AC ran several times:

As you can see, the AC was ‘on’ from 13:30 to 13:45, and again from 14:05 to 14:20, and again from 14:45 to 14:55. (it’s actually a bit more complicated than this, as you have to interpret the ‘seconds’ column in conjunction with the ‘time’ column, but we don’t need to get into that here).

Now this is the data from the SmartThings log for the same period:

As you can see, there are no ‘events’ relating to AC in the 13:30 timeframe. There is a ‘cooling’ event at 14:14 (and idle at 14:19) which roughly correlates to the 14:05 to 14:20 cooling time from Ecobee, and there is another cooling event at 14:49 (and idle at 14:59), which roughly correlates to the 14:45 to 14:55 cooling time from Ecobee. This very loose correlation between ecobee and ST has been consistent across several days.

I’m quite confident that the Ecobee data is accurate and the ST data is wrong. I’ve also verified that this is not a ‘logging’ issue; the raw data in the ST event logs (seen in the API) reflects what the ST log shows. I’m eager to hear from another ecobee user to see if they see this issue.

[DavinD (Davin K Dameron)]

I wonder if the integration is intended to be that detailed? Given that the meat of the Ecobee setup can’t be accomplished in SmartThings anyways, I’m not even sure it’s beneficial to connect the two. I never use SmartThings to manually adjust the temperature. If I needed to, I’d just the Ecobee app.

I can’t speak for Samsung or Ecobee, but I get the feeling it’s a pretty bare-bones integration. Maybe the custom device handlers work better?