Using smartthings to schedule Ecobee?

I just had installed ecobee thermoststs.problem is ecobee only can set geofencing for 1 user & I cant setup my wife with her phone. Ecobee has a schedule but I’m wondering can I set schedules up in smartthings & tie it to geofencing since it recognizes both of our phones. I’m trying to set schedules for each thermostat & if both of us are gone then the heat would drop some degrees.
My other idea but I’m. It sure if I would cause conflicts with the thermostats is to setup schedules in ecobee & have smartthings lower the temp if the house is empty during the day based of grofencing.
Thanks
Dom

Off the top of my head could you set up a simulated presence device and set it to the closest of you or your wife, and then have ecobee read the simulated presence?

Use webCoRE to set the therm(s) to away if both phones are not present. Set therm(s) to home if any phone is present.

I will say that with the remote sensors, this is what the built in Smart Home/Away feature is…

Also, the Follow Me acts similar but only allows for the therm to average the active sensors temps.

Use the excellent Ecobee Suite linked below. Set up your ST automations to change modes for home/away based on geopresence (phones or other). Set up helpers in the Ecobee Suite app which change the thermostat mode to follow the ST mode. Keep the temperatures as established in your Ecobee profiles rather than controlling directly with ST.

If WebCore is your thing, the app exposes the controls to those automations as well, but you don’t need to learn that if you don’t want to.

3 Likes

Smart Home/Away isn’t smart - it takes over an hour to decide you are “Away” - add both your phones to SmartThings as presence sensors, and it will detect that within minutes of you leaving the house (just configure the Goodbye! automation to run “When all these people leave”).

Follow-me is also pretty useless - it takes over 15 minutes to realize you are in a room, and then it takes even longer to realize that you’ve left the room.

As @MarkTr notes, my (free) Ecobee Suite can automate all this for you quite simply and efficiently, and you don’t have to learn any programming (like WebCoRE).

2 Likes

Although I agree that using ST to speed things up is “better”, I wouldn’t say that the built in features are useless. In terms of temps in a house, it’s a “slow” process. Turning on/off your HVAC too often actually cost more money in the long run as it takes high amperage to kick on/off the system(s) vs just having them to slower bring temps up/down.

I have 2 Ecobees and found that just using the built in apps actually was more cost effective for the exact reasons I stated above.

I do use automations to turn on/off my systems in situations where I would just be throwing money out of the window…pun intended.

The Follow Me feature and the Smart Home/Away features do work however, as you stated, using SmartThings can greatly speed up their status although I no longer find this that advantageous.

Finally, for something as simple as:

If all presence are not present
Then with Therm
Set Status to Away
Else
Set Status to Home

Is, IMHO, super simple.

YMMV

As the presence sensors (and geofencing) are not always accurate, the most efficient way to set your ecobee thermostats to Home or Away is also to use multiple motion sensors in your home to detect if there is really somebody at home or not.

You can then leverage all your ST connected presence/motion/temps/contact sensors by using my smartapps built around My ecobee device which is the most comprehensive ecobee-ST integration.

The zoning smartapp called ecobeeSetZoneWithSchedule leverages all the ecobee climates settings (or scheduled programs) set at the ecobee portal and can adjust your thermostat setpoints for your far away colder/hotter rooms or set your thermostat to Home or Away using your existing ST connected temp/motion/contact/presence sensors. For each room, you can also customize the occupied threshold for better presence detection.

On top of it, My ecobee device can even give you some comfort and energy savings tips based on your actual indoor/outdoor conditions at your home (ex. runtime stats for each of your furnace/HVAC components)

If you have the Ask Alexa smartapp, it can give you the tips verbally through your Amazon Echo speakers.

Refer to this thread and the ST community wiki for more info:

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

www.ecomatiqhomes.com/store

Regards.

I am just very confused on what to use. This is what I wanted to try & setup. I have 4 thermostats (heat ) & wanted to setup schedules. I have nursing for my daughter so I have to keep 1 zone slightly warmer. When my son goes downstairs to play I want the temp to increase & when he leaves or mayne at a certain time have it g.back down. I w pop uld like geofencing for during the week if we are.not home but not for the weekend since we are home… @yvesracine I know you have apps for ductless units which I have but I still have to get the pucks which will not be until summer. I have to replace the motion sensor downstairs & im.not sure if I want to tie the heat based on those sensors. I am not sure what the heck to try.

Hi, I’d recommend to use a zoning smartapp to achieve what you want and more…And ecobeeSetZoneWithSchedule has been designed to orchestrate your ecobee thermostat(s) and Flair devices (puck, vents) in the most efficient way. The smartapp can use the Flair puck or any other ST connected temp/motion sensors to adjust the thermostat’s setpoints.

Refer to the ST community wiki for the use cases covered.

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

Refer to this thread for more information about the Flair devices available:

You can contact me at services@maisonsecomatiq.com if you have any questions.

Here is a screenshot of a virtual zone created by the ecobeeSetZoneWithSchedule smartapp. You can integrate the zone devices in ActionTile for easier control of your active zone(s).


Regards.

As a non bias opinion, I’ve used both offerings but settled on @yvesracine for reliability. Not saying that @storageanarchy implementation isn’t now but when I first used it I had issues with loosing the connection between ST and Ecobee.

For ease of use, I am a strong supporter of the Ecobee Remote Sensors if you catch them on sale. Plus the Ecobee App is really good IMHO.

The Ecobee sensors, although can be used in ST automations, are terribly slow. They are good for what they are designed for.

1 Like

Just for reference to other users following this thread, since over a year ago my Ecobee Suite no longer requires any manual intervention when Ecobee connectivity is lost - it will ride through outages and recover automatically.

And I do agree that the Ecobee remote sensors can be useful - mostly for reporting temperature, since that is updated more frequently than is “occupancy.”

And FWIW, choice is a good thing - users have several options when it comes to using Ecobee thermostats with SmartThings, each with its own merits.

2 Likes

Just FYI, not only My resilient Ecobee device can sustain ST or ecobee outages that last less than 24 hrs, but it can also ‘replay’ any failed commands in the next hour window following a short outage.

The failed commands are stored in a queue to be replayed later for more reliability… This is important if you’ve left home and want to make sure that your thermostat’s mode is really Away or to avoid waking up ‘cold’ in the middle of the night because there was a short ST or ecobee outage.

Regards.