Hi @drshaw,
As I said earlier, I don’t own an ecobee3 myself, but I’ve coded some smartapps for it.
Here are some tips for you based on the smartapps that I’ve developed.
Refer to
Most of my smartapps have been developed with this principle in mind: ecobee is responsible for the basic scheduling and ST is responsible for managing exceptions to the schedules that you define.
So, here are the suggested steps for setting up ecobee and ST, so that they work together for
your comfort.
(1) Create your schedules (climates or programs) at the ecobee portal
Go to www.ecobee.com, register, and set your climates based on your regular schedules (ex. 7h-8h am ‘Awake’, 8ham-5hpm ‘Away’ for work, 5h00-10h30 pm ‘Home’,10h30hpm-7h am ‘Sleep’ on weekdays, define also your schedules for the weekends).
With ecobee, you can not only set up your heating/cooling setpoints, but also your fan settings in your climates (fan set to ‘On’, ‘Auto’, and ‘Circulate’ with the fanMinOnTime settings which allows you to
set a minimum fan time in minutes per hour).
As your preferences may be very different from mine, I won’t recommend here any specific cooling/heating settings. It really depends if you put more emphasis on your comfort or your savings…It’s a delicate balance between the 2 dimensions that your may need to fine tune for you and your other family members (if any).
(2) Set up My Ecobee Device type in SmartThings
You seem to have already done this step. If not, refer to the readme file at github
(3) Set up the holdType input parameter for My Ecobee Device (refer to step 7 in the readme file)
To avoid overlaps between ST and ecobee, I use the holdType input parameter to define the type of ‘hold’ (exception to the basic scheduling). By default, the holdType is indefinite. I prefer to use the ‘nextTransition’ holdType myself, so that a ‘hold’ stays only active till the next transition (schedule).
For more detail on holdType, please refer to
https://www.ecobee.com/home/developer/api/documentation/v1/functions/SetHold.shtml
(4) Choose one of the following smartapps for your requirements
I’ve listed them in a progressive order of complexity. The most complex smartapps are only needed
if your requirements are high.
a) Use the ecobeeChangeMode smartapp for setting your thermostat to ‘Away’ or ‘Home’
This smartapp sets the ecobee thermostat to ‘Away’/‘Home’ mode according to the corresponding ST hello mode changes.
So, you can define two instances of the same smartapp: one for the ‘home’ ST Hello mode that will set your ecobee thermostat to ‘Home’ when you’re back from work for example, and another one for ‘Away’ for the ‘Away’ ST hello mode when you leave your home (you’d need to rename the smartapp at the last screen).
You can also use the same smartapp for your custom ST hello modes & custom ecobee climates if any.
b) Use both AwayFromHome and ecobeeResumeProg for more complex use cases
If you want more accuracy/granularity when setting your thermostat to ‘Away’ , you may want to use
the ‘AwayFromHome’ smartapp. This smartapp allows you to more precisely define the presence and motion sensors required to set your ecobee thermostat to ‘Away’.
I initially created this smartapp because the ST hello mode changes were not always reliable (now it’s much better) and I wanted to trigger more specialized actions when leaving my home than what ST can offer: turning off the lights, locking my doors, arming my alarm system (it needs to be connected to ST), arming my cameras, etc.
On the opposite side, ecobeeResumeProg resumes the ecobee’s climate (or program) when one of the predefined presence sensors is back home or when one of the motion sensors specified in the smartapp detects movement in your home.
(c) Use MonitorAndSetEcobeeTemp if you want even more control over your ecobee thermostat
I initially created this smartapp because I live in Montreal (Canada) and the outdoor temperatures
can vary a lot throughout the year (+30°Celsius in the Summer to -30°Celcius in the Winter), and sometimes, but to a lesser extent, during a single day!
So, the smartapp allows you to set up some ‘more heat’ and ‘more cool’ thresholds for increasing/decreasing the heating/cooling setpoints based on an outdoor temp sensor (could also be a virtual weather station).and a user-provided adjustment setting (ex. +/- 5°F) during the day.
I also added the average temp calculation algorithm that you have built-in with the ecobee3 and its proprietary remote sensors, but you can now use any of your ST-connected indoor temp and motion sensors. This way, you can enable more heating/cooling when your house temperature varies from one room to another.
In fact, with this smartapp, you can also use any types of ecobee thermostats (not only ecobee3) such as the ecobee Smart-Si, EMS, or stat-02 (which is the older version) to have basically the same behavior as the ecobee3 and its remote sensors.
In brief, this smartapp combines all the previous smartapps in a) & b) in one single package because
it monitors your home based on outdoor/indoor sensors and can set your ecobee thermostat to ‘Away’ or ‘Home’ according to a time threshold (in minutes) that you define.
Again, this smartapp makes automatic adjustments to your existing ecobee schedules, so you also
need to define your basic scheduling within ecobee first.
d) If you plan to have smart vents later, look at the ScheduleTstatZones smartapp (beta code) or
ecobeeSetZoneWithSchedule
https://github.com/yracine/device-type.myecobee/tree/beta/smartapps
I’m currently working on a smartapp that will control any smart thermostats (not only ecobee but also Nest and any z-wave thermostats) and ST-connected vents (such as Keen Home vents or ecovents) to reach the ultimate comfort in the preconfigured ‘zones’ of your home. The smartapp’s logic is also based on indoor temp/motion sensors, an outdoor temp sensor, and smart vents (optional).
You’ll then be able to configure your own schedules (ex. weekends, evenings, mornings, weekdays). The smartapp will then set/adjust your main thermostat & your smart vents (and some optional room thermostats for baseboards or fireplaces) every 5 minutes based on the average temp algorithm calculated from the rooms’ temp sensors that are part of the zone that you’ve configured.
As this smartapp works with any smart thermostat, it will not depend on any basic scheduling done
at the ecobee or at the Nest portal.
See this thread for more detail:
I have also a similar smartapp just for ecobee thermostats (ecobeeSetZoneWithScedule). It actually controls the vents (virtual or physical ones) based on the climate settings based on ecobee’s own scheduling (Home, Away, Awake, Sleep, etc). It has the same features as scheduleTstatZones, but it’s really dedicated to ecobee users out there.
5) f you want to expose your ecobee3’s remote sensors to SmartThings as individual ST motion/temp sensors (optional)
I’ve created a smartapp for that, see ecobee3RemoteSensorInit.readme file at my github and this
thread for more detail:
However, please note that the 3.6 firmware is required for occupancy updates.
Conclusion
In summary, you have many options available for your new ecobee3 thermostat. I’d recommend
to start with the simpler smartapps and evolve from there to the others if needed.
I don’t personally think that you need to disable any settings at your ecobee3 thermostat as
my smartapps will probably be more responsive that the default ecobee3 settings (so, there
should not be any conflicting issues).
From what I understand, ecobee3’s current settings will set your thermostat to ‘Away’ only after
a minimum 30-minute threshold, which is quite high (the average time is more likely to be 1 hour and a half).
With the above smartapps, this threshold can be cut to few minutes (again according to your requirements) for more savings.
There are other smartapps available in my github, but I don’t think that they are relevant to
this discussion now.
Let me know if you have any further questions.
Regards.