Having to authorize Ecobee 2-3 times a day

I connected an Ecobee Smart Si thermostat to my setup last December. It had been working flawlessly until I bought a second last month and set it up as well. The thermostats are in different locations (obviously using 2 different hubs). I’m using the smart labs app for Ecobee that Smartthings developed. Everything appeared to be working fine. But I then noticed that my thermostats started losing their link to the Ecobee website. I would have to go through the process of relinking (authorizing them) 2-3 times a day.

I’ve since de-registered the second Ecobee and tried to get my setup back to where it was before I added the second. But no luck. I’m still having to re-authorize the remaining thermostat through the Ecobee app 2-3 times a day (even though it worked prior to adding the second). Any insight is appreciated!

I would start with creating a ticket with ST Support (Link to support on top right of this website). I have found them to always be very helpful with troubleshooting and resolving issues.

Additionally by opening a ticket you help ST support understand where the community is having issues and prioritize resources/development on their side.

Also from your note above it wasnt clear, have you fully remove ST Labs Ecobee App and then re-installed only linking ‘original’ Ecobee tstat? Or have you simply de-registered the second tstat? For reference I have 4 Ecobee Smart Si Thermostats up and running

Thanks Jotto. I have reinstalled the Smartthings App for iPhone but I have not removed and re-installed the ST Labs Ecobee app. I will try that. I had also only deregistered the thermostat on the Ecobee website.

I did create a ticket with support 2 weeks ago. If you are running 4, that gives me hope. I’m sure it is something buggy - just have to find out how to resolve it. Are your thermostats running on different hubs or are all of them on the same one?

Yes, all 4 are running on the same Hub.

I would try deleting the ST Labs Ecobee App and then re-installing from scratch adding back both thermostats. I know this inst an ideal approach, depending how deeply you have integrated your thermostats in ST (e.g. modes, other apps, etc.) but pretty confident it will solve your problem.

Guessing you clicked the delete button here on the ecobee site? Think this may be culprit as you only have one account with Ecobee with two tstats, one saying ST can have access and other saying no access conflicting each-other.

I have never removed the access manually from Ecobee site, whenever you remove ST Labs app it should automatically remove that third party access you see.

Hi @newshoes,

You should try my custom Ecobee Device and compare (nothing prevents them to run in parallel).

I’ve recently implemented some changes to try to recover from all these exceptions that happen between ST and ecobee.

See this thread for more details:

Refer to the readme file for detailed instructions under the master branch.
Regards.

@Jotto, @newshoes
Just as FYI, I’ve contacted ST support about this recurrent authorization issue as this is causing me headaches for my Custom Ecobee device integration work that I’ve done with SmartThings (and sometimes few ecobee users blame my code about it).

Apart from the regular scheduling issues that we all experience with ST, it seems that there is also a specific issue related to the security certificate with ecobee…

I’ve seen this exception in my logs:

2015-06-30 10:30:09.211 AM UTC (2015-06-30T10:30:09.211Z) |
| description | My ecobee Kitchen verbose trace is refresh_tokens>exception javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: sun.security.validator.ValidatorException: PKIX path validation failed: java.security.cert.CertPathValidatorException: timestamp check failed at https://api.ecobee.com/token? |

P.S. If you have authorization issues with Ecobee, please contact ST support and open a ticket so that this issue will get more visible to them.

This is the email I sent to ST support (ticket # 109635)


Yracine
Jun 30, 10:59 AM

Hello,
On a regular basis, My custom ecobee device loses its authorization token with ecobee.
The problem is not unique to the My Ecobee device, but also occurs for the stock ST device as stated in this forum thread:

Having to authorize Ecobee 2-3 times a day

This is the exception that I found in my logs following a refresh_tokens() request:

| 2015-06-30 10:30:09.211 AM UTC (2015-06-30T10:30:09.211Z) |
| description | My ecobee Kitchen verbose trace is refresh_tokens>exception javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: sun.security.validator.ValidatorException: PKIX path validation failed: java.security.cert.CertPathValidatorException: timestamp check failed at https://api.ecobee.com/token? |

Could you investigate what is wrong with the security certificate between SmartThings and Ecobee? It looks like the security certificate’s timestamp is outdated.
Regards.

Here is the answer from ST support.


Chris Porter (SmartThings)
Jun 30, 6:02 PM

Hi Yves,

Thanks for letting us know what you are seeing. My developers have been aware of this happening for a little while now also, and have worked on it. I will let them know your thoughts about it being the security timestamp being outdated.

I don’t have an ETA around implementing a revision to the code, but developers do currently know it is not working consistently for users, and are addressing it.

Thanks for the heads up, and the suggestions.

-Chris P.
SmartThings Support

Wanted to let everyone know the work around I found for this issue. Again, I was using 2 Ecobee thermostats on 2 different Hubs in 2 different locations but both thermostats were registered to the SAME Ecobee account. I created a second Ecobee account and registered each thermostat to a difference Ecobee account. This worked.

Since then, I registered a second thermostat to one of the locations (so now I have a total of 3 thermostats) and it still works.

So in my case, it appears I need a different Ecobee account per Hub.

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