FYI, I’ve coded a custom Device Handler (My Ecobee Device) and many smartapps for ecobee in order to access its full capabilities.
I’ve also recently coded 2 smartapps to create heating/cooling zones inside a home (whether virtual or physical ones using smart vents). One smartapp, called ScheduleTstatZones, works with any ST- connected thermostats (whether zigbee, z-wave, wifi,etc); the other one exclusively works with ecobee, and it’s called ecobeeSetZoneWithSchedule.
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They allow a room by room configuration where you specify which temp & motion sensors you want to use and whether the rooms need to be occupied or not.
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Basically, both smartapps can average out and adjust your heating/cooling setpoints based on temp & motion sensors (just like ecobee3 does with its proprietary remote sensors); however, my smartapps can work with any temp & motion sensors as long as they are connected to ST.
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Both smartapps can set your main thermostat and your room thermostat(s) (if any) to a specific setpoint based on your ST hello mode (away, home, any custom ones that you’ve set).
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Also, both smartapps can change your fan mode based on a temp differential inside a zone. If the temp differential is too big (you set it up yourself as an input parameter), then you can change your fan mode to
“circulate” or “on” depending on your requirements.
Here is the thread about my smartapps and their capabilities:
Now, there have have been discussions around the pros & cons of using “smart thermostats” such as ecobee and Nest vs. “dumb z-wave and zigbee thermostats” such as the CT-100 or others.
You’ll see in the following thread the rationale of using the smart ones vs. the dumber ones. It really depends on your requirements.
On top of it, one needs to keep in mind that ST scheduling is not as reliable as ecobee’s own scheduling. See this other thread for more details:
So, do you want to exclusively rely on ST for scheduling your heating/cooling schedules? That’s something you need to ask yourself. On the East Coast, I don’t think so…
Regards.