ecobee3 w/ External Sensors

I wonder if it will have all the GeoThermai settings that made it popular with the Geo crowd?

Just had a read through the Ecobee 3 installation guide. Looks like you can only have one accessory device connected to it. In my case I have two (humidifier and ventilator/HRV). That’s too bad, I was hoping to upgrade. While it looks much nicer than my current Ecobee…it seems like they took a step backwards in removing multiple accessory device support.

What unit are you using now?

I’m using the Ecobee EMS thermostat.

Any word on the sensors??? Would be great to expose those as motion and temp sensors in smartthings as well… Mine is on its way…

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Hi bgadam, there is no specific API release for the sensor yet. I posted a question about it
on the ecobee developer’s forum. Let’s see how they will respond…

http://developer.ecobee.com/api/topics/access-to-ecobee3-sensor-data-via-api?rfm=1

Cheers.

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I just hope they eventually let us use these external sensors (or have a variant) for my Smart Thermostats…

Got my ecobee3 today and hooked up tonight… very cool, works well, but external sensors aren’t even visible in the ecobee3 app… not holding my breath that they’ll be exposed by api…

I just logged in to the Ecobee web site and looked at the Home IQ section. They are now showing data from the remote sensors! Maybe the API will be updated to see those soon…

– Fred

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Got mine up and running yesterday. Really nice thermostat. Looks to have a really nice api. @yvesracine you have done a great job on the integration by the way. I signed up for a developer account and noticed there is a sensor object. Have you been able to access the remote sensors via API yet?

@jodyalbritton

Not yet, but part of my code is ready for it…

Still waiting from ecobee to have access to the data via the API…Should be available in March
according to the ecobee forum.

See
http://developer.ecobee.com/api/topics/access-to-ecobee3-sensor-data-via-api?rfm=1

Regards.

@yvesracine
When that occurs, does this mean we’ll be able to use the ecobee’s remote motion sensors to trigger other things, such as lights? Will that also be the case for the motion sensor in the thermostat proper?

VERY interested if this is the case as I am toying between buying nests or ecobee3s in the coming weeks.

@potus, unless it’s totally different from the way ecobee reports sensor data now, I doubt that you will be able to use the remote sensors in real time as motion sensors we are accustomed to in SmartThings.

The reason is that all ecobee thermostats (ecobee3, Smart, Smart-SI, EMS) report sensor data 15 minutes after the events take place at the moment. Unless ecobee exposes totally brand new APIs, there still be a delay (in minutes) between an actual event and the data being reported by the APIs.

See https://www.ecobee.com/home/developer/api/documentation/v1/operations/get-thermostat-summary.shtml for more details about the delay (under the field internalRevision).

I think that the value of getting this data is more for data correlation with other factors in your home.

My 2 cents.

P.S. I’ve asked a question about the remote sensor data’s refresh frequency on the ecobee forum to have a better sense where ecobee is going with releasing this data to end users.

@yvesracine

Thanks. I’d be curious to hear what the refresh rate is and if that’ll be somewhat modifiable.

Too bad. I think that would give the ecobee3 and its remote sensor a real leg up over the competition (nest)

As an aside, do you know if the motion sensor in the nest can be used to control lights (as a real time motion sensor)?

@potus, I don’t know Nest very well, but as far as I know, there is very little data available thru its official APIs compared to Ecobee. Ecobee’s APIs have been around for many years;Nest’s official APIs are quite recent…

Bye for now.

I don’t expect real time motion events but if they make the current occupancy state of a room available that would be very very nice.

Hi, I got the following answer from ecobee about the ecobee3 remote data’s refresh rate this morning:

http://developer.ecobee.com/api/topics/what-will-be-the-refresh-rate-for-the-ecobee3s-remote-sensor-data?rfm=1

In brief, no details are available till the APIs are published.
Regards.

Hello @yvesracine, @Dianoga Were you able to to get an update from ecobee 3 remote sensors API if we can leverage them to use with our existing smartthings hub… Also, any confirmation if ST hub is compatible with ecobee 3 as till now ST product page has not updated eb3 as supported product…

Thanks…

Hi @Meero,

Ecobee3 is very well supported by My Ecobee Device, which is a custom device that exposes almost all ecobee 3 functionalities using the APIs.

If you want more detail, please refer to this thread:

You can also expose the ecobee3’s remote sensors as individual ST temperature and motion sensors.

Regards.

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Thanks , much appreciate…