I opened the Ecobee app on my phone (Android) last Friday as we were going out of town for the weekend and I wanted to put the thermostat in Away mode. When I opened the app I saw a notificatio for a new "feature" which uses some Ecobee Door/Window sensors. These also have built in motion detection. They offered me a pair of these sensors, for free and did not take any credit card info. These are $79 USD for a pair. I figured I would see what they are and signed up. The sensors came in today and I have just played with them a little bit but here is what I found:
Setup is easy enough. You open the Ecobee app on your phone and add a device. You scan a small QR code which is on a little tab that is attached to the unit. The app then tells you to pull the tab, which then engages the battery. (If yo do not have the tab, the QR code is inside the battery compartment as well as 2 alphanumeric codes you could use.) It says it is associating the unit with the thermostat. It took a while for the unit to associate with my thermostat but eventually it did. It asked me for information about where the unit is/will be placed and then I was on my way.
The app does want to use your phone for automated Away/Home settings but I do not use my phone for any indication of where I am, so I am not using this portion of the capability. Plus I would have to install the Ecobee app on the phones of anyone else in the house and allow tracking and they have already said they don't need the app. So a manual setting it is.
The app has 3 settings for Monitoring: Arm Away, Arm Stay, and Disarm. It offers the option to Edit each mode but there is no setting under Disarm to edit. In this mode no notifications are pushed to my phone. Arm Away and Arm Stay allow me to turn on/off notification for Motion and when the Door open is triggered. So for Arm Stay maybe you only want a notification iif the door is open. You know, for when the kids are sneaking out or Grandpa is breaking out and shouldn't be.
Notifications took about 2-3 seconds to appear on my phone. The sensor is probably about 50 feet from the thermostat and there is drywall, carpet, plywood, metal duct work and beams and also floor joists between the two right now. Nothing out of the ordinary and well within any expectations I would have.
There is no indication of the protocol used by the units to communicate with the thermostat. I had HOPED to be able to use these to then tell the thermostat that if something is open more than x seconds/minutes/whatever then stop cooling/heating the house. Would I spend $40 US for each window to so this? Maybe not since I would need 16 but it would keep me from building the Arduino units I was thinking of putting around. Just that with them I would also check other things as well, and use MQTT to report changes. Plus I wouldn't have phone notifications banging off.
Anyway, a lot of stuff to say there is something new with the Ecobee stuff and is there any thought of supporting it, if even possible?
Setup is easy enough. You open the Ecobee app on your phone and add a device. You scan a small QR code which is on a little tab that is attached to the unit. The app then tells you to pull the tab, which then engages the battery. (If yo do not have the tab, the QR code is inside the battery compartment as well as 2 alphanumeric codes you could use.) It says it is associating the unit with the thermostat. It took a while for the unit to associate with my thermostat but eventually it did. It asked me for information about where the unit is/will be placed and then I was on my way.
The app does want to use your phone for automated Away/Home settings but I do not use my phone for any indication of where I am, so I am not using this portion of the capability. Plus I would have to install the Ecobee app on the phones of anyone else in the house and allow tracking and they have already said they don't need the app. So a manual setting it is.
The app has 3 settings for Monitoring: Arm Away, Arm Stay, and Disarm. It offers the option to Edit each mode but there is no setting under Disarm to edit. In this mode no notifications are pushed to my phone. Arm Away and Arm Stay allow me to turn on/off notification for Motion and when the Door open is triggered. So for Arm Stay maybe you only want a notification iif the door is open. You know, for when the kids are sneaking out or Grandpa is breaking out and shouldn't be.
Notifications took about 2-3 seconds to appear on my phone. The sensor is probably about 50 feet from the thermostat and there is drywall, carpet, plywood, metal duct work and beams and also floor joists between the two right now. Nothing out of the ordinary and well within any expectations I would have.
There is no indication of the protocol used by the units to communicate with the thermostat. I had HOPED to be able to use these to then tell the thermostat that if something is open more than x seconds/minutes/whatever then stop cooling/heating the house. Would I spend $40 US for each window to so this? Maybe not since I would need 16 but it would keep me from building the Arduino units I was thinking of putting around. Just that with them I would also check other things as well, and use MQTT to report changes. Plus I wouldn't have phone notifications banging off.
Anyway, a lot of stuff to say there is something new with the Ecobee stuff and is there any thought of supporting it, if even possible?
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