[RELEASE] Initial Setup for Ecobee3 & 4, Smart-SI, EMS, Smart-02 thermostats - My Ecobee Device

saw it on their FB page…

Hello,

I am installing this app using the 2.0 version of the iPhone app. I am stuck on step 3.

  1. Use SmartSetup and execute My ecobee Init /*********************************************************************************************

From your phone or tablet, within the smartThings app and on the main screen, click on ‘+’ at the bottom, under SmartApps, scroll down to My Apps, execute My ecobee Init


My problem is that I can not find this in the new app. I looked under ‘my smartapps’ and it was not listed. Can you help?

Thank you,

Rob Bruce

Hello @rob_thebruce,

If you have upgraded to the new UI, click on the Smartapps link in the upper section of any of the following screens: Home & Marketspace, and then MyApps (last item in the list).

Also, please make sure that you have published the MyEcobeeInit app as specified in step 2g) in the readme file:

g) Go back to the code window, and hit the “publish/for me” button at the top right corner

Regards.

Please support the developer!

Thank you. I found it. :smile:

yracine: I’m very interested in setting up my Ecobee to work the best way possible and I’m liking the idea of using your app: MonitorAndSetEcobeeTemp.groovy to completely get rid of my ecobee schedule. Right now I’m only using your ChangeMode app to set the system to “Away” when the home mode changes to away (utilizing the nextTransition option of the device to resume my schedule). Seems like this is kind of a dumb way to do it because if we are still away when the “Sleep” schedule is scheduled, it starts cooling the house.

I also use “ResumeProg” to resume the schedule when my home mode changes to Home or Night. Again, it seems largely inefficient.

Do you have a set schedule on the ecobee itself or is it redundant to your latest app offerings and we should just use those? We only have one tstat and I don’t like “averaging the temp” across multiple rooms because I like the basement to be about 10 degrees colder than the upstairs (where the tstat is) and this happens automatically so right now my ecobee 3 mini sensor is little more than a paperweight and I haven’t paired it with my ecobee or ST. Maybe if I had those zwave vents it would be more useful. Anyways, any insight on how best to leverage your set of amazing apps?

Another question: in order to “update” your device type, init program or any smart app, can I just go edit the code, paste in the latest, save it and publish for me? Do I have to re-install or configure anything for the updated code to take effect?

Lastly, it has been WAY more stable the last few weeks and I haven’t had to re-init.

@drshaw,

1) I don’t recommend to get rid of any of your ecobee schedules. In many posts I’ve done in the past, I reiterated that ST users should not get rid of their ecobee schedules as ecobee scheduling is more reliable than ST scheduling (at the moment). For more details about the ST scheduling issues, see this thread:

2) The MonitorAndSetEcobeeTemp smartapp relies on ecobee scheduling for its processing. It combines ecobeeChangeMode and ecobeeResumeProg in one smartapp with some added features : it also monitors the outdoor temperature (you need to input your weather station or outdoor temp sensor) and adjusts your heating/cooling setpoints based on some thresholds that you provide (more/less heat, more/less cool based on some outdoor temp settings).

3) Based on the use case that you provided in your post, you may want to look into ecobeeSetZoneWithSchedule instead of MonitorAndSetEcobeeTemp. This smartapp is a bit more complex to set up, but it does everything MonitorAndSetEcobeeTemp does plus it gives you a room by room configuration through the definition of zones.

The zone settings can be “virtual” or “physical” as smart vents are coming to the market to control the airflow and create physical zones inside your home (ex. at nights, the ‘upstairs’ zone set for my house will ensure that only the bedrooms will be cooled or heated to avoid energy costs).

FYI, I’m currently testing ecobeeSetZoneWithSchedule with a smart vent manufacturer and it really provides some added value in terms of comfort and energy savings. The smart vents’ level settings (% open or close) is then reevaluated every 5 minutes according to the desired heating/cooling setpoints and the current temperature inside the zone(s) scheduled at a given time.

For more details about ecobeeSetZoneWithSchedule and ScheduleTstatZones, pleaser refer to this thread:

4) To update MyEcobee device type, you usually just need to copy and paste the code within the IDE and publish it (unless specified otherwise, that should be sufficient).

The same thing for MyEcobeeInit smartapp or any other smartapps.

If you update MyEcobee device, please make sure to have the latest version of MyEcobeeInit as the 2 work together for better exception handling.

5) I’m glad that you have less exceptions and errors in the past weeks….

I’ve noticed that same behavior at my home since the last ST platform update.

Cross your fingers, we may enjoy the platform stability that we had before all the platforms changes introduced for Hub V2

Before those platform changes, MyEcobee Device would run for months without any intervention.

Regards.

P.S. I don’t quite understand your following statements below. If the 2 smartapps are configured correctly based on your ST hello modes, they should be quite effficient to set the right ecobee climate/program and they should not conflict with your sleep schedule. You would then need to create several ecobeeChangeMode instances for each ST hello mode used as input.

Depending on your use case and lifestyle, you may also want to set your holdType input parameter to indefinite instead of nextTransition for the described scenario as the away ‘hold’ will then last as long as required till you come back to the house. If you are really a doctor then your schedule may be quite different from mine as I usually work 9-5.

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Thanks for the info! While I process it, maybe I can clear up one of my statements that didn’t make sense:

with nextTransition as the hold type, sometimes the home would be in “Away” mode and the ecobee would resume it’s sleep schedule (currently set at 9:30 pm) even if the house was still empty. Conversely, the ecobee would transition to “home” mode (currently set at 7:00 am) even if we happen to of left the house earlier than 7:00 am, putting it in away mode. Yes, maybe infinite would be better but I get nervous with that if the stability issues happen again. If “Good Night” happens and puts the house in sleep mode (which is cooler than home mode in the summer) and something goes wrong with ST… when I leave for work it may continue to keep the house extra cool all day if my good morning routine, home routine or away routine never successfully changes the hold parameter.

@drshaw
OK, I understand your dilemma better now.

If you have multiple motion sensors in your home, then using ecobeeSetZoneWithSchedule would help you in setting your home to away or present w/o having to change your holdType parameter.

You could then use the smartapp with motion sensors and associate your ecobee schedules (Home, Awake, Sleep, any custom ones) to given schedules within the smartapp and run them only for specific ST hello modes.

The ecobee Sleep’s associated schedule in the smartapp should only run when you’re at home, not when your ST hello mode is away.

I hope that you understand my point: in brief, ecobeeSetZoneWithSchedule is very flexible and can combine a given ecobee schedule with some specific ST hello mode(s) if required…

Anyway, if you need further help, you may want to hire my services as a consultant. See http://www.maisonsecomatiq.com/#!home/mainPage for more details… :grinning:

Regards

Nice! I can’t think of someone more qualified than you to consult on things like this! If it comes down to it, I’d love to compensate you for all the help you’ve given me and for your super awesome ST integration.

I am trying to delete this smart app so that I can move over to the new v2 hub but it errors on both on the mobile app and ide. IDE says it cannot delete because it’s install on the mobile device. Mobile device simply says “An unexpected error has occurred.”. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi @3one5,

  • I suppose that you’re talking about MyEcobeeInit smartapp…

  • If it’s the case, you need first to click on MyEcobeeDevice under Things (or under the right room if you have upgraded to the new UI), click on the gear at the upper right corner and check which smartapps use the device (you can do the same under the IDE by clicking on the device under https://graph.api.smartthings.com/device/list)

  • You’d need to uninstall each smartapp first before being able to uninstall MyEcobeeInit.

  • You can also click on https://graph.api.smartthings.com/ide/logs for more trace.

Please support the developer!

That did it! Thank you Sir!

I’ve been getting constant exception errors for the last few hours. I don’t know a lot about the Smart Things programming language, but is there a way to write an error handler for this so it doesn’t send notifications for each one?

@flashburn, if you do not want any notifications, just say ‘no’ to ‘Send a push notification’ in the last page (called Other settings) of MyEcobeeInit (just before pressing done).

Regards.

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Nice, thanks Yves. That’ll do until Ecobee can get their act together.

@yvesracine Hey there, just got a ST v2 and used your awesome work to link my Ecobee3 so thanks for that. I just got it running a few hours ago and just got a message of too many exceptions. I see someone else had a similar issue so I went in and turned on the logging. Its running now but nothing out of the ordinary. GOing to let it run for a bit and report back.

Question though , on the prefs side there are other prefs such as appkey, ecobeetype, and thermostatid. Do I need to be filling this in in order for it to work right? I didnt see it mentioned in your guide but maybe I just missed something. I did confirm that when I set the temp it did update the web portal for ecobee (since I’m at work at not in my home)

Thanks again!

HI @Roach, I had a high number of exceptions myself and it looks like this is due to slow response times on the ecobee servers side.

Since I created the MyEcobeeInit (service manager) smartapp, the above preferences do not need to be populated anymore as they are set by my service manager.

Regards.

Please support the developer!

Hello and thank you very much for you work on this!

The instructions got me up and running in no time – but (there’s always a “but” isn’t there?) I’m not seeing a way that I can use the ecobee vacation scheduler to manage my ST mode. Am I missing it somewhere? In general, I’ve been happy with their scheduler and I appreciate its ability to handle recovery times. Is there some reason this would be a bad idea?

Hi @Tracy_S_Fitch,

I’m not sure that I understand your use case here…

Why would you want to set your ST hello mode based on your ecobee vacation schedule?

Usually, people would associate their ST “Away” mode with their ecobee “Away” program…

The ecobee Vacation “schedule” is normally for few exceptional events throughout the year that are outside of the realm of ecobee programs such as Home, Away, Sleep, Awake, or any custom ones that you define.

Anyhow, my smartapps just handle the ST modes associated to the regular ecobee programs, but nothing prevents you to use My Ecobee Device to code your own smartapp according to your requirements.

Please support the developer!

P. S. FYI, in MonitorAndSetEcobeeTemp & ecobeeSetZoneWithSchedule smartapps, the ecobee ‘Away’ program is automatically set when there is no motion at home according to a threshold in minutes that you define… As those smartapps constantly run and wake up, this usually takes care of most of the requirements out there for switching back and forth between the ecobee Away and at Home programs.

Regards.

Is it possible to increase the 3 Ecobee max limit in your App?