I was wondering if anyone else has had issues getting my Ecobee’s to respond to the ChangeMode SmartApp apparently randomly. I am using the latest Ecobee Device (5.7.7) and followed the directions that you’ve provided in here in the Smartthings Community for using EcobeeInit and the ChangeMode SmartApp. Form what I can gather it seems to be related to me running my “Away” routine in the ST mobile app manually versus waiting for one of the configured triggers to occur. I have not used any optional watchdogs at this point 9set to defaults). I’m using 3 Change Mode apps - one for Away, Sleep and Home mapped to Away, Night and Home relatively in the Ecobee. I’ll run through your troubleshooting tips but wondered if there was something you knew off that folks often mess up that would cause this.
First, you need to be aware that ecobeeChangeMode will change your setpoints according to your ecobee Away program by applying a ‘hold’ at your thermostat (the thermostat unit or the ecobee app/portal will not display the Away mode per se): this is due to the way the ecobee APIs work. Some people expect the same behavior than at the physical thermostat, but this is not possible as MyEcobee device uses the ecobee APIs for any change.
When you’re back home, you should then run ecobeeResumeProg to cancel the hold, and return to your normal schedule
Thanks for the information. I clearly misunderstood how the ChangeMode app was supposed to work. I have three instances of the ChangeMode smart app installed one for each mode. I had thought if I used routines that set the “Home”, “Away” and “Sleep” based on specific triggers and assumed the SmartApp would set the Ecobee to the corresponding Ecobee mode automatically each time the routine ran (even if it’s a “hold”).
Yes, it should work based on your routines… The ST hello mode should be set correctly before in order to trigger the right ecobee setpoints change as a ‘hold’.
I just wanted to throw a note of support in here for this project, as it’s obvious Yves has put a lot of work into it – to all of our benefit – and the results clearly show that.
After fighting with the default Smartthings/Ecobee integrations, and then again with the major open source handler, I spent the money on this project… then everything just worked. And has been working well.
I like that there’s plenty of convenience functions built into the code, which makes it pretty quick and easy to work into almost any automation workflow. I’ve got it successfully integrated with Alexa, Ask Alexa, and my CoRE/Piston rules. It’s pretty great!
For those coming in from Google, and still on the fence, make your lives easier and give this project a shot… I highly recommend it! This thread, specifically, is also extremely helpful (and, pay attention to your holdType setting!).
For the benefits of everybody who is looking at hooking up their ecobee Lite or ecobee3 to ST, I’ve described
at the beginning of this thread all the features and smartapps available with MyEcobee device.
First, I want to say I switched from a single nest in my two story home to two ecobee3 lites using your apps and I’m extremely happy with how well it works. I greatly appreciate your efforts in creating and maintaining this code!
I’ve had an odd issue I was hoping I could get some help with. As I said, I have two of these devices - 1 upstairs and 1 downstairs. I’ve setup our Android phones in the house as “presence” devices with ST and have it setup so that when we leave the house ST goes into its Away mode and when we return it goes back to Home. I’ve then configured the ecobeeChangeMode to trigger for when we go Away to set the program to Away on the ecobee3 and then I’m ecobeeResumeProg to tell the ecobee3’s to resume their regularly scheduled programming when ST triggers “home”. All of this should run the away and home climate programs on the ecobee’s accordingly. The upstairs one has worked perfectly without issue from day 1. For some reason, the downstairs one seems to constantly get stuck in the away mode and doesn’t resume.
I’ve checked the logs for the problem device and I can see the APP_COMMAND setThisTstatClimate where it gets set to away and the device responds with changing modes as expected. I can then also see when we return in the logs where it says the APP_COMMAND resumeThisTstat and it says the command was sent to the problem thermostat but when I go look later the downstairs one says its still in Away mode and holding while the upstairs has resumed properly. As far as I can tell everything is identical between the thermostats and the apps that I’m using the triggers on has both thermostats selected in the away and resume program. It’s possible I’ve done something wrong as I’m relatively new to ST and the ecobee’s but I don’t think so. I would also say I’m a fairly technical user so I think I can make sense of most of this usually, but I’m definitely open to suggestions if I may have something misconfigured.
Anybody run into this or have any help or advice to get around this issue?
I will work on this and try to get some logs to you! I was just trying to reproduce it on demand right now by manually activating the routines but of course its working properly at the moment. I’ll just try to keep and eye and see if I can catch it doing it.
@yvesracine Do you know of a way to conditionally release a setpoint hold on a given schedule, reverting to the Ecobee baked in schedule? Whether through your suite of SmartApps or something else?
I ask because I currently use SmartThings to set setpoints on the Ecobee based on the occupancy of my wife and I. This places the thermostat in a hold and it ignores the Smart Recovery feature of the Ecobee. Ideally, I want to keep ST in charge of occupancy but still want to take advantage of Smart Recovery for schedule changes (work days). My temperature schedule currently resides on the Ecobee itself (which appears to get ignored because of this). If I could schedule this release during the day on specific days, that’d be great.
I switched from a Nest and their “Early On” feature had an on/off setting to override holds if desired.
I use Core to do a Resume Program call for this type of thing. I keep the Ecobee set for nextTransition so it will revert back to its schedule on its own if I don’t call for it before then. Not sure how the smart recovery interacts with this though in terms of it kicking in even though there is a hold in effect that’s only till transition.
You need to be aware of the holdType parameter in MyEcobee device. You can set it
to ‘nextTransition’ so that your hold will stay till the next schedule at ecobee.
See the ST communiity wiki for more details (item 3b):
Also, my Zoned Heating/cooling smartapp (ecobeeSetZoneWithSchedule) can set an Away “hold” based on motion detection at home and “resume” the current program when you’re back home automatically (or vice-versa).
The smartapp can also do the same with the “more/less heat/cool thresholds” based on an outdoor temp threshold.
There is a lot of “intelligence” in the smartapp that cannot be reproduced in Core…
Thanks @yvesracine. I’ve made that change so that should help some of the other edge cases but probably not Smart Recovery.
I think what @farlicimo referred to will cover the Smart Recovery situation. Occupancy sensors do me no good in that case because I want the system to bump up the setpoints prior to sensing occupancy, so the home is “at temperature” when people get home, not requiring the warm up period to occur with occupants present.
This is really only useful for highly scheduled events like coming home from work at a repeatable time. Everyone leaving the house randomly on a Saturday won’t benefit from it. In that situation, occupancy and your smart apps would work well.
Hi there - I’m not fully clear if the ability to use contact/multipurpose sensors with the Ecobee3 and this device type requires the full Ecobee3, or if it can work with the Ecobee3 Lite. I assume since the ST hub will be taking the input from the remote sensors and handling the actual logic, the Lite should work as there is no need for direct remote sensor input. Can anyone confirm that?