Thanks! I saw that but it says, “Circ time is only adjusted while in these modes or programs. Time will remain at the last setting while in other modes”. That led me to believe It will only adjust run times while running the Ecobee sleep program but will still circulate air in the other modes based on the last time setting. I don’t want the fan to run at all in the other modes unless the AC or heat kicks on.
If I set it to only adjust in the Ecobee Sleep program, will the fan still circulate air at all in the other programs if the AC or heat isn’t on? Ie. I don’t want the fan to circulate at all when we are away from home unless the AC or Heat is on.
Smart circulation ran last night while we were sleeping and the last setting was 5 min/hr. Now we are “Away” thus the Ecobee program is currently “Away” and I just looked on the Ecobee app and it’s still set at 5 min/hr. I’d guess it’s not adjusting right now but I’d rather it be off (0 run time) while we are away from home. Any way to make that happen?
You have several options that will get the fan circulation time reset back to 0:
You can use the Smart Mode/Program helper to set the fan min on time to 0 when your Location’s mode (or the thermostat’s program) changes to Home and/or Away.
Or, you could create another Smart Circulation helper that only runs during Home and Away, configured for a Min fan on time of 0, and a max fan on time of 0.
So my Open Contacts worked flawlessly until a recent update Sunday/Monday. Now I’ve still updated to the latest but it doesn’t work.
When I attempt to edit the Helper’s settings, see they’re perfect and Save, I get a red “An Unexpected Error Occurred”. I deleted and recreated - but get the same error.
Could you please check Live Logging for both Ecobee Suite Manager and the specific Helper App at the time of that error?
FWIW, Open Contacts hasn’t been updated in 20 days, and this weekend’s changes to Ecobee Suite Manager changed nothing related to creating/editing Helpers…
Try the just-posted Ecobee Suite Open Contacts v1.6.16 - I fixed an initialization error that could be the cause of your problem. If not, please send me Live Logging info as noted above…
Will this be updated to work with the new app? Everything seems to show up and work in the new app, but the temperature settings from the room sensors does not seem to show up.
Just as soon as SmartThings releases the “new” API for doing thermostats, I’ll be working on getting Ecobee Suite integrated. For now, you get only basic information.
You should be seeing the remote sensors as Motion Sensors, however, and they do report their current temperature also (you have to open up the device to see the temperature). This because in the “new” world, there’s no such thing as a temperature device that also reports motion, so it has to be defined as a motion device that also reports temperature (like the standard SmartThings motion detectors).
Unfortunately the later “Or, you could create another Smart Circulation helper that only runs during Home and Away, configured for a Min fan on time of 0, and a max fan on time of 0.” didn’t work. When it went from sleep this morning to Away the fan stayed at the current setting from the sleep mode. It never changed back to 0.
I’ll try the 1st option.
Another question, what does “smart auto temp adjust” mean?
Now that I have the Ecobee and SmartThings at my mom’s house and tiring to make her a bit more self sufficient I wanted to address seasons and changing and changing the system between heat and cool. Since she lives in the Midwest there is no need to have the thermostat daily move from cooling in the day to heating at night like there is in the south western states. Also since she is in her seventies she feels temperature much different than I do.
I was thinking about having the thermostat only go heat or cool based on seasonal boundaries but that didn’t work since we had a heat wave one week before the official start of Fall. So I was thinking about using daily weather highs and lows, a little math, and then changing the system mode to heat or cool. Where I run in to the issue is that her schedule temps are overlapping.
Most days in the fall or spring requires heating at night after the temps fall off and with the sun falling on the house stays right around 75 degrees. In summer we just leave it in cooling mode and winter heating mode.
I am looking for suggestions on how to best handle the system changes date/time/predictive/season so she doesn’t have to worry about touching the thermostat.
The Smart Mode Helper in my Ecobee Suite may do the trick - you can control the thermostat Mode (Heat/Cool/Auto/Off) based on the outside temperature and/or humidity. You can use the Ecobee weather data (very poor), or a WeatherUnderground data source (via SmartThings linkage), or temperature/humidity sensors that you specify (eg from an outdoor SmartThings sensor, or even from your own Weather Station).
I’ll have to poke around with Smart Mode helper… Like I posted the date change to fall didn’t work and I put my mon’s system into Heat mode when AC was needed in some webcore scripts due to my calculation of the Autumn Equinox. She wasn’t very happy coming home to a 80 degree house.
I may have to write a weather smart app to determine if the day will be a heating degree day or a cooling degree day.
Dang, I was hoping to use my multi-sensor’s temperature reading to act as a remote sensor for my Ecobee. Looking through the Smart App helpers it isn’t possible.
It’s always better to use your actual local conditions to make such decisions. Smart Mode should do exactly what you want, especially if you have a nearby reliable source of outdoor temperature and humidity - I built it in response to someone else who had similar requirements.
When in Auto and you adjust the global setpoint using the up/down arrows of the main tile, Smart Auto tries to figure out which setpoint you meant to adjust (heating or cooling).
Yep I agree on reliable weather sources, I configured the helper last night but haven’t enabled it until I speak with my mom.
One thing that it’s missing from the calculation seems to be weather forecast. If Weather Underground says the temps will be in the mid 80’s then prepare set the system into mode for A/C and let the schedules take over. I still can’t think of how I would handle that logic though.
I really don’t think that should be necessary - your HVAC really doesn’t care about outside temp - it recovers from the internal temp delta to the setpoint. And even if it is forecasted to be a High of 50F tomorrow, we still want Cool mode if today’s temperature is 80F. At this time of year, many of us need/want Cooling during the day, but Heating at night…Smart Mode handles this use case nicely - based on the outside temp, not day/night or Summer/Fall…
So this got the SmartApp to initialize, but it doesn’t work – if a window is closed then open it will turn off, but it seems to be superseded by a Sleep/Home/Away/Home/Sleep change. This feels like a recent behavior that wasn’t happening in spring this year, although it’s been a few months since I would want to have the windows open all day.
Just wanted to say a quick thanks. I’ve been meaning to setup the smart mode helper, and this discussion gave me a nudge. Worked like a charm over the last couple days of varying outdoor temps, and has a high WAF!
