Thinking about buying an ecobee3. Zwave or ecobee sensors?

@yvesracine or anyone else,

I know you’ve put in a lot of work into making the ecobee sensors “visible” in ST. If I’m buying an ecobee3 and have no existing sensors, would you recommend buying extra ecobee sensors or zwave sensors that can be integrated using your smart app? I only need 2-3 more.

Thanks.

@WTLimitless,

It depends on your use cases. If you want good temperature sensors, ecobee3’s remote sensors are fine.

If you want good motion sensors (with real time events), then I would recommend z-wave sensors instead.

The reason is that ecobee’s remote sensors are not reporting occupancy immediately, there is a lag that could
be several minutes before the data is available.

My 2 cents.

Too bad, I want both. Are the Aeon sensors good for temperature? I’ve heard they can be a few degrees off. Also, is there a chance that motion sensor latency in ecobee’s sensors can be adjusted in the future?

By the way, thanks for all the work you’ve done. I just bought a SmartThings hub and am probably going to get an ecobee3 because of what you’ve done. Ecobee should be paying you!

Hello @WTLimitless, I have the Aeon multisensor (generation 1), and they are OK for temperature (not as good as my wireless tags, see http://wirelesstag.net). For motion, they are good overall. However, I tried generation 2 (Aeon 5), and returned it as there were some issues when reporting Motion to ST.

However, Aeon is now at generation 3 (called Aeon 6). It looks better, and has a smaller form factor, but I don’t know if the temperature is more accurate.

See

As far as ecobee’s motion sensors are concerned, I don’t know about Ecobee future plans, but I doubt that they will be as reliable as regular z-wave motion sensors.

On my side, because of some issues with the ST and ecobee platforms, I had to reduce the polling interval to a minimum of 15 minutes due to some exceptions in the logs.

I’m just doing my best given the current platform constraints.

P.S. If you can, please send an email to mu@ecobee about my work, I would really appreciate it. I do agree with you, they should partner with me at least.

Just FYI, there is about close to 1500 hours of work on the device type and related smartapps! That’s about
1 year of my (work) lifetime!

My aeon multi is 6 degrees off. It seems repeatable though, there’s just no “out of the box” way to add offsets yet for anything other than the SmartSense Multis.

Guess I’d rather have accurate temperature than occupancy… Thanks and I will send that email. I’ll probably buy the two extra ecobee sensors.

Thanks!

Imho I’d rather control temperature based on mode, home, away, sleep. Then just average bedrooms vs living spaces.

With residential HVAC “follow me” doesn’t really make sense unless you have a mansion and move about it very unpredictability every day.

Just my two cents.

There is an app for that.

The app is now available for download at my store:

See the following thread for more details on look&feel and features:

Features:

This is the ultimate flexible smartapp for anyone who wants to better control her/his ecobee thermostat(s), and later, create heating/cooling zones using Ecovents, Keen Home vents or ecovents (when these vendors ship).

With this smartapp, you can also create “virtual zones” (without any vents) where you can then adjust the heating/cooling setpoints based on the avg temp calculated from different room sensors with the ‘occupied’ option or not (it could be with any ecobee thermostats, whether ecobee3, Smart-SI, STAT-02, or even EMS thermostats).

  • Flexible schedule definition: you can define up to 12 schedules for your zones (mornings, weekdays, evenings, nights, weekends, etc.)
  • For each schedule, ecobee users can associate their climate setttings at ecobee (i.e.,Home, Away, Awake, Sleep, custom ones)
  • You can set your schedules to run only for some ST hello modes (‘Away’, ‘Home’, ‘Night’)
  • For each schedule, you can assign the included zone(s) according to your own requirements (ex. Upstairs bedrooms, 1st level, basement, etc)
  • You can define up to 8 zones for your home which can include up to 16 rooms
  • For each room, you can indicate not only the vent switches (up to 5 per room) to be controlled, but also any temp sensor, motion sensor, room thermostat that can help you better control the temp settings inside the zoned rooms
  • For each room, the occupied threshold (in minutes) can be customized based on your own needs
  • Automatic adjustments of the vent settings (every 5 minutes) so that your occupied rooms (based on motion detection) will get the most heating/cooling during a schedule run
  • Ability to set your ecobee thermostat to ‘Away’ or ‘Present’ based on all rooms’ motion sensors
  • Ability to adjust your main thermostat’s settings (every 5 minutes) based on outdoor temp sensor (optional)
    ** lessCoolThreshold: decrease the cooling setpoint according to a given outdoor temp threshold
    ** lessHeatThreshold: decrease the heating setpoint according to a given outdoor temp threshold
    ** moreHeatThreshold: increase the heating setpoint according to a given outdoor temp threshold
    ** moreCoolThreshold: increase the cooling setpoint according to a given outdoor temp threshold
  • Support of ecobee climate settings for temp&fan settings
  • Average temp calculation based on all room temp sensors inside the zone so that heat/cool settings are adjusted at the thermostat even if your rooms are far away from it
  • Virtual zones definition even if your actual home setup does not include vents
  • Option to control room thermostats for fireplaces, electric baseboards, or others

Cheers.

Hi!, I.m thinking to buy ecobee3 in Europe. But i would like to know if ecobee3 can control other devices like danfoss living connect, that are electrovalves controled by z-wave.

http://heating.danfoss.com/PCMPDF/living-connect_VIIDH102.pdf

The purpose is control each radiator individually.

Hello @jorge09,

The ecobee thermostats are not able to control any z-wave devices per se. It’s only through a Home Automation hub such as SmartThings that z-wave devices can be controlled.

You need to know if ST or any other hub with z-wave (EU version only) can control those devices and how. Are they considered as z-wave thermostats and/or z-wave valves?

If they are considered as valves (and can be controlled like a switch) when connected to ST, then the ecobeeSetZoneWithSchedule smartapp may be able to control them as vent switches (on/off) or with a setLevel on a scale from 0 (close) to 100 (fully open).

Any ST connected thermostat would do (not only ecobee) as I’ve also coded a smartapp (called ScheduleTstatZones) that can control a main thermostat and vent switches disposed in rooms.

You need to check with the manufacturer of those thermostats/valves if they are supported by hubs such as Vera or SmartThings first and what are the z-wave commands available to communicate with them.

The documentation you posted is not clear on this topic. The protocol seems proprietary to me (Danfoss Link).

My 2 cents.

P.S. My smartapps only run on the SmartThings platform.

Does anyone know if the Ecobee 3 will work with Lennox??

I suggest using the compatibility tester on the Ecobee website:

I checked mine (Red and White wires) and it says that it’s compatible, but I won’t get all of the features. Any clue as to what features I’ll lose?
It also says that “I need to install another wire to get all the features”. I’m assuming that my HVAC guy that services my furnace could do that. I’ll have to ask him.

I’m about to buy the Ecobee 3 with 1 sensor. I have a few Aotec sensors that I’m not currently using. How do you get the non-Ecobee sensors to work with the Ecobee thermostat?
Is that all handled through your smart app or do you add them via Ecobee’s native app?
Thanks

Hi,

It’s done with my smartapps. There is one called MonitorAndSetEcobeeTemp which is available
at my github.

For more details about MonitorAndSetEcobeeTemp:

I have another one called ecobeeSetZoneWithSchedule (paid version) that can do the same, but has more features. Amongst others, it can average out only the “zoned” rooms (ex. Upstairs bedrooms only at Nights)…It can also orchestrate smart vents (optional) to create “physical” zones inside your home for more comfort and energy savings.

Both smartapps will create a temporary hold when adjusting your ecobee setpoints. However, as soon as the “hold” is not required, they will “resume” the scheduled program.

Under ST, there are no other “smarter” apps available, only for the ecobee!!

P.S. I have just revamped the ecobeeSetZoneWithSchedule, it has a very nice UI now.

Regards.

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This is awesome! You may want to set yourself to “do not disturb” in a few days when my package arrives.

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Hi @vitamincm,

if you have any questions, there are some ST community wiki entries that can help (with a troubleshooting section):

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=EcobeeSetZoneWithSchedule
http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=MonitorEcobeeTemp

All my smartapps require My Ecobee device which is the most comprehensive ecobee implementation
under ST:

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=My_Ecobee_Device

My Ecobee device is available at my store for download:

http://ecomatiqhomes.com/store
Regards.

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Hey! How well does Ecobee4 work with ST? does it have any problems or glitches?

Hi @leadsrating,

As you can read here, there is no glitches with the ST integration, it’s the same APIs for all the ecobee thermostats:

Regards