Official Ecobee 3 Integration

I took a look at where @disconn3ct did the fork and I think it still has some of the new license language in it.

I’m pretty sure I’ve found where the breakpoint is where the license switched over from Apache License, Version 2.0 and will do a clean break from there so that I’m working off a truly open version. I should hopefully have something next week ready during the Christmas break (if not sooner).

I’ll keep everyone posted and possibly start a new thread once there is something better to share.

// StrykerSKS

Hi Sean,

My experience with “hackers” is that the resulting code will be even worst than the original.

There is a lot of design, development, and testing work in the code that I’ve produced and I personally doubt than anybody will be able to reproduce the experience that I gained through the years.

“Hackers” tend to oversimplify things or take shortcuts without understanding the design.

My design is quite unique and I think that your efforts will lead nowhere.

In the meantime, people who want results will modestly contribute to my company and get a functional ecobee thermostat (with all bell & whistles) within a week.

My 2 cents.

P.S. And, it’s one thing to make it work (sort of) and another to make it evolved…

Thanks for your effort @StrykerSKS I’ll follow this forum, I did notice that @disconn3ct’s code still causes token issues. I have no idea about licensing, if it appears here I’m assuming it is in the public forum, if a notarized cease and desist appears I’ll stop using it.

Also I’m not familiar with the term “hacker” can someone explain this to me. From what I have read it appears as though these individuals put up broken code free to use and then demand money to fix it? Excuse my naivety but I’m not a techie.

Thanks again.

@droidguru, “Hacker” has become a “bad word” for many, often used by movies to denote someone trying to do harm to a system. It used to be that the word “Cracker” was used to denote those that were doing the bad stuff, but languag evolves. However, in many circles, hacker is still a word of praise and means someone who creates something, often from nothing. In the case of programming it is about creating more code and getting things done.

@yvesracine, I’m not even sure how to respond to your comments. I think everyone in the thread has tried to be civil and thanked you for all the hard work you put into the code. I’m sorry you have had bad experiences with “hackers” in the past but that is certainly no indication of the entire developer community around the world. You have a unique position where you could lead the development and control submissions. As long as you were to do that in a fair way then you would likely get good inputs and could simply reject those that are poor quality. That is what a maintainer does and what a good leader does.

So, yes, there is a risk that us “hackers” could end up with something worse but there is also a good chance that we might end up with something better, something that reflects the needs of many and that can evolve and continue to exist long after any one of us loses interest.

// StrykerSKS

I have to say, as much as I appreciate @yvesracine’s hard work and contributions to the current state of Ecobee integration into SmartThings, the simple fact is that his SmartApps aren’t one-size-fits all. Functionality is limited to the scenarios that he has deemed worthy of accommodating, which is both perfectly okay, but also severely limiting. @yvesracine has already made it clear that development and maintenance of his ST code is not his day job, so one can expect that his ability and willingness to add features and behaviors is going to be determined by both his availability and the willingness of the community to fund further development.

And that’s okay; this is a model that is great when it works. But the truth is that I’ve run into fewer problems with “hacker”-modified open-source projects than I have with single-developer closed-source projects. All it takes is a single life event (graduating college, having a baby, changing jobs, etc.) for one of these closed-source projects to completely cease development forever. And then the people who have been using that software are stuck using a stagnant and gradually less-reliable piece of software until the developer decides to hand the code over to someone else (uncommon, as most would prefer to tell themselves that they’ll get back to it someday), or another developer gets tired of the state of things and has to start an alternative project from scratch.

While @yvesracine’s device type and SmartApps may currently be far superior to whatever comes of people working off of his older open-source code, that might not always be the case. I’d much rather know that we have more than one option that is being actively maintained. Perhaps @yvesracine didn’t mean for his words to come across as so completely discouraging of any sort of parallel, competing projects, but if he did, then I’m very disappointed. Remember that neither SmartThings nor Ecobee were the first project of their kind. If we eschewed friendly and fair competition, and just left it up to the first project or product in the space to try something, we’d all be here trying to figure out how to integrate our Nest thermostats with X10, so that we could control them with our Palm OS devices.

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@go_robot_go, just one thing: my dedication brought the ST community to have a unique ecobee integration, and I can assure you that I will make it evolve even more…

Not sure about all the «hackers» out there who don’t even know the ecobee APIs…

Good luck to those who choose the ‘hackers route’.

P.S. If you pay me, I will able to customize anything ecobee related… My point is that I don’t have any more time for ‘free stuff’…

I hope I’ve properly expressed my appreciation for your work to date, and I do believe that you have every intention of continuing that trajectory. I have no complaints regarding what you’ve done or what you plan to do.

My problem is with the idea that everyone should hitch their wagon to the same horse, and trust that it will never stop running. I have financially backed plenty of single-developer software projects in the past, and I have also seen a great many of them go dark for long periods of time or cease development entirely; sometimes they get back on track after a lengthy hiatus, sometimes the developer makes a final blog post either admitting the death of the project or that they’re handing it off to someone else, and sometimes the website just disappears entirely, as the developer hasn’t even bothered to renew their domain registration.

These dead projects are merely disappointing when I’ve spent money on them, but they’re downright frustrating when they’re the only project of its kind, and there’s no alternative for abandoned users to switch to. Again, I get that you have every intention of keeping your work here alive, but you have only so much control over the future. I’d like to know that we’ll have an alternative option if you happen to get crushed by a meteor six months from now.

And really, in general, “I think that your efforts will lead nowhere” just isn’t constructive. I hope that you aren’t simply trying to discourage competition in order to drive adoption of (and therefore income from) your work to date.

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Hi,

If you want an ecobee thermostat integrated with ST, the real choices are between those 2 options:

(1) You use the ST stock ecobee device.

Due to its architecture, it’s not reliable as there is tight coupling between the Service Manager and its child
devices. The Service Manager needs to know about every little command that it’s sent to the device handler (which is a major issue to all cloud-to-cloud ST integration and its the root cause of many cloud-to-cloud integration issues, such as MyQ and others).

I’ve tested it many times before. It works for few hours, or few days, but then it gets desynchronized, and you
cannot change its setpoints or resumeProgram…

(2) You use the new MyEcobee device’s codebase to be shared soon.

My ecobee device has a unique design and I’ve made it more independent from ST cloud related issues.

I’m currently testing a new approach to the ecobee integration to be more independent from ST.

And, there is much more commands available, see the list at the ST community wiki:

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=My_Ecobee_Device
P.S. I’m currently aware that the last codebase that I distributed is now not as reliable as before and shares the problems as the ST stock device for the moment, but with the new codebase, this situation will change.

All other options are just ‘vaporware’ (not real solutions).

Stay tuned.

EDIT: And, with my solution comes a lot of expertise and some knowledge base (see the community wiki as an example).

I have an Ecobee question independent of Smartthings integration. Consider the following scenario. I want to know if I can set the ecobee to behave as I would like.

1: I have Smart Home/Away enabled in settings
2: The current mode is Away, but Ecobee detects someone is home now.
3: Ecobee sets itself to Smart Home.
4: The person raises the temp so it is now in a Hold.
5: The Ecobee hold action is set to “next scheduled activity”.
6: The person who was home leaves again, scheduled mode is still Away but the hold is on.
7: Will Ecobee go back to Away mode once the person leaves?

If they had not altered the temperature it would, but now it has a hold. I want it to go back to Away mode anyway and cancel the hold. Are there settings that will do this? I don’t think they account for this situation.

@yvesracine

I just donated to your cause, you are the reason I bought an Eccobee3 and a Smartthings hub (I also have some vents coming), how long till I can expect my code link?

Cheers,

Matthew

Hi @Matthew1234, please follow this thread

I just posted today the latest update:

Regards

@yvesracine

Gotcha, your WIKI said that after donation we would get a link for the code, should I be expecting it on the weekend then? Or is there something I need to do first?

Cheers,

Matthew

You’ll get the link this weekend and the installation steps.

@compliance are you asking if the Ecobee will go to ‘smart away’ when the person leaves even if it’s on hold?

If you have the sensors setup properly they will override both home and away settings depending on if they see motion. If the setting is on ‘home’ and the sensors don’t see motion for a period of time the system will go into Smart Away.

Having said that you are asking about if it’s in ‘hold’.

I’ve also noticed that changing the temperature by dragging the dial is less permanent then pressing on the ‘quick changes’ Home and Hold and Away and Hold options.

So I think there are two things you may want to look at which could change your results to what you are wanting:

  1. What type of hold are you setting? (Changing the temp, or setting the mode?)
  2. What type of hold do you have enabled in the settings? (Until next transition, x hrs, indefinite etc)

Note, this should really be asked of Ecobee, not SmartThings :slight_smile: The beauty of linking the two systems together is that you can automate all of this stuff so much more.

Smart Home/Away

Smart Home/Away is a feature that applies all the sensors in your network – including the sensors in your thermostat. Smart Home/Away will work by following your schedule unless any sensor in your network is in conflict with your schedule. In other words, if your ecobee3 senses that you are home during a scheduled Away period, or away during a scheduled Home period, it will automatically override your schedule by placing you in Smart Home/Away mode to maximize comfort (Smart Home) and savings (Smart Away)
https://www.ecobee.com/faq/i-do-not-understand-how-smart-homeaway-and-follow-me-work/

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@yvesracine - Will your code/app allow me to control the Ecobee3 from my Amazon Echo?

No, but I believe that some ST community member did leverage my code to do so…

Regards.

My post above is a lot more in depth about the options available than your post. There are 2 stock ecobee devices (I know you said that they don’t work, but they seem to work for other users. These are both viable options)

Option 3 is usable, but again limited, as I outlined in my post. And my option 4 is your code, which I assume has the exception issues, but you should be careful when insulting your own code. :smile:

Not sure how that’s all ‘vapourware’.

You know that I don’t really agree with you using SmartThings’ open source code to create a paid app. But I also respect your decision to ask for money for your time spent. I think in light of that I’m trying to be very fair to you even though we disagree:

  1. I put your option as #2 after the option created by SmartThings
  2. I acknowledged with you that your code isn’t fully functioning, but you are working on it. And I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you had fixed the code. (I see on another forum that you’ve since admitted that your new code isn’t working and a second update will come out soon. While this is the case, I would like to mention to everyone reading that I still stand by my opinion that @yvesracine means well and will eventually fix the issues.)
  3. and I made it clear that your code is the most feature rich option out there. None of the other options currently available come close to what you are selling.

So please don’t call all other options ‘vapourware’. Your option isn’t for everyone. Some of us like to call this a hobby, and a fun thing to play around with. Perhaps a simple device that tells you the basics about your thermostat and lets you set the temperature etc. is enough. Before spending another $15 which someone could use to put towards a connected light bulb, don’t you agree that it would be fair for them to know their options?

*For anyone wanting to look into this, please see my post from Dec 14th. I’ve tried to lay out all of the options with the benefits and issues attributed to them.

And I’ll say again, there are other options, but none of them come close to @yvesracine’s code. If you are looking for an official SmartThings’ integrated device that connects to all of Ecobee’s options you are out of luck. The closest we have available will cost you $15 to get and is not official. But there are other options if you don’t need that rich of a feature set.

$15, but with no guarantee of updates without further compensation. … if it breaks due to st or ecobee you will likely need to repurchase. …

I’m having a great time enjoying all the features of my Ecobee… from the Ecobee app. It is great at managing itself! Just saying!

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@schapper05, that’s why I’m wanting people to be aware of the other options as well. “Donating” to @yvesracine is not a contract really. He hasn’t figured out what his business model is at this point. So right now it’s all on good faith. No developer I’ve ever met has been able to actually deliver everything that they promised when they promised it, but I think @yvesracine has shown on these forums that he does put work into this stuff.

But obviously I would never guarantee any of that. This would be between you and @yvesracine if you decide to buy his code.