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Product Review: ecobee Smart Thermostat

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As the owner of a couple of vacation homes in climates more extreme than Seattle’s, I’ve had plans for a while now to eventually install thermostats in those houses which I could control remotely. In the winter, I could turn on the heat at my Utah house the day before I arrive so it’s nice and toasty when I arrive. In the summer, I could turn in the A/C at the log cabin in Eastern Washington right when we jump in the car to head over there, so it’s not too hot to sleep when we show up. Unfortunately, I could never find the perfect thermostat for the job. All of the ones I considered were either too expensive, or required proprietary furnaces, or weren’t user-friendly, or required subscription fees to monitor and manage.

Then I stumbled across the ecobee (pronounced EE-ko-bee).

The ecobee Thermostat at a glance

With an MSRP of $469 (but you can find them online for under $400), the ecobee thermostat isn’t cheap – but for what it can do, it’s still a bargain. ecobee’s marketing pitch says “The Internet enabled, wireless ecobee Smart Thermostat allows you to manage your home comfort from anywhere at anytime. Unique features automate energy conservation to help you conserve energy, save money and reduce your environmental impact.” At first glance, it functions as an elegant-yet-simple high definition touch screen replacement for your standard thermostat. But what makes the ecobee really sexy from a geek’s perspective is that it communicates with ecobee’s servers over your WiFi network and through your broadband connection, making your thermostat accessible via ecobee’s website and free iPhone app (more on that later). ecobee’s current offerings include a residential model (designed for homes) and a commercial model (designed for offices).

Buying an ecobee thermostat

I first contacted a heating supply wholesaler near my Utah house (I found their contact info on ecobee’s site) to see if they would sell me an ecobee thermostat directly. They claimed that they only sell to HVAC contractors, so I called the guys who had originally installed my HVAC system to see if they could make me a deal. They quoted me $475 for the unit, plus about 2 hours of install time. Ouch! I knew I could buy the ecobee online for under $400, so I asked if I could pay them just to install it. They refused, so I decided I’d just take a crack at installing it myself.

After a little bit of online research, I purchased a residential model from Alpine Home Air Products. They were helpful, friendly, and extremely knowledgeable about HVAC products, including the ecobee. The sales rep informed me that they used one at their office, and love it. If you’re considering buying an ecobee thermostat online, I highly recommend Alpine Home Air Products. I completed my purchase over the phone and chose the two-day shipping option so that it would arrive in Utah a couple days before I went back home to Seattle.

Getting Ready to Install the ecobee

During my two-day wait, I read the very well-written installation manual online as well as a few comments across the web from current ecobee owners. Most of what I read suggested that unless you’re familiar with HVAC units, you should have a professional installer help you. While I’m not very familiar with HVAC units (I’ve replaced “dumb” thermostats in the past, but that’s about it), I do consider myself pretty handy and I decided that I’d give it a shot myself before calling in an expert. I was emboldened by the guys at Alpine who assured me that they would happily help walk me through any questions over the phone – even if that meant going wire-by-wire with me as I installed it. As it turns out, the installation was a breeze. As long as you know the particulars about your HVAC setup (such as how many stages in your heating and cooling systems, whether you have a heat-pump, humidifier, an A/C unit, a dehumidifier, a ventilator, etc.) then you should be able to install your Ecobee in about an hour. However, I had no idea what type of system I had, so I called Alpine again. One of their reps instructed me to take the cover off my existing thermostat and read to him the wire colors and letters:

Existing ThermostatBased on what I told him, he informed me that I have a 2-stage furnace with a single-stage outdoor A/C unit.

I also told the Alpine rep that I had an after-market humidifier attached to my furnace, but that it was operated by a separate (and very cheap looking) humidistat with a low-tech plastic control knob. To my geeky delight, he informed me that I could disconnect that low-tech device and wire the thermostat directly to the ecobee, which also has a built-in humidity sensor. My awesome sense started tingling, and I waited impatiently for my ecobee thermostat to arrive.

Installing the ecobee thermostat

My ecobee arrived at the end of the next day and I tore into the box, which contained:

  • the thermostat unit
  • a small battery
  • an equipment interface Unit (referred to as an EI)
  • an installation manual, a quick-start guide, and a full user manual

Installation is done in two parts: First, all of the wiring from your furnace connects to the equipment interface, which is designed to be mounted near your furnace. Second, you only need four wires to connect the interface unit to the thermostat (which is likely less than the number of wires you already have running between your currently thermostat and your furnace). My existing thermostat had 6-conductor wire, which you can see above. The only additional item I needed to purchase to complete the job was six feet of 8-conductor thermostat wire (readily available from any local hardware store). I already had some screws in my toolbox which I needed to mount the equipment interface unit to the wall next to my furnace.

First, after shutting off the breaker to the furnace, I disconnected the 6 existing thermostat wires from inside the furnace and pulled the existing 6-conductor cable out of the furnace (again, the other ends of these wires were still connected to my existing thermostat upstairs). Here’s what the existing furnace connections looked like before I unhooked them (it’s always smart to take a photo of existing installations BEFORE unhooking anything):

Existing Furnace WiresIn addition to the six wires in this photo that are connected to the existing thermostat (W2->Blue, G->Green, COM->Brown, W->White, Y->Yellow, R->Red), there is an additional Red wire with a spade connector near the top of the image that connects to the humidifier (labelled HUM) and a Red/White pair that connects to the A/C unit via Y and COM (common ground for 24V powered devices) terminals.

After disconnecting the existing thermostat from the furnace, I used my new 8-conductor cable to connect the furnace to the six matching terminals on the ecobee equipment interface, then I used the two remaining (Orange and Black) wires in the 8-conductor cable to connect the R and COM terminals in the furnace to the 24V power connection on the interface. You could optionally power the interface unit with a 12V adapter available from your ecobee dealer or Radio Shack, but it’s more convenient to wire it directly as I did.

I also removed the existing White (COM) cable that previously connected my humidifier to the low-tech humidistat and reconnected it directly to the ACC1 (Accessory 1) connection on the equipment interface. All of the connections were clearly explained in the installation manual.

Here’s what my ecobee equipment interface unit looks like after it was all wired up:

ecobee Equipment InterfaceNotice that the six connections on the top-right are the same as the existing connections on my old thermostat. The Orange/Black pair in the top-left are 24V power, and the single white connection from the cable at the bottom of the photo connects to the humidifier.

The final connection is shown in the lower-left corner of the above photo. Because the main wiring is done between the equipment interface and the furnace, you only need four wires to connect the equipment interface to the touch-screen thermostat unit: Red (Power), Green (Ground), Blue (D+), and (D-). The two “D” wires (which I assume stands for “Data”) handle the communication between the thermostat and the equipment interface units. I merely re-used 4 wires from the existing 6-conductor thermostat cable that ran upstairs to the thermostat location.

After prettying up the wire connections, here’s how the connection between the equipment interface and the furnace looks:

Cleaned UpThe Red wire at the top of the image connects the humidifier to the HUM connector in the furnace and the White wire connects to the ACC1 terminal in the equipment interface. The three cables coming from the left side of the equipment interface are (from top to bottom): the 8-conductor wire providing the main connections and power from the furnace, the other end of the white wire from the humidifier, and the re-purposed 6-conductor wire running upstairs to the existing thermostat location (with only 4 wires connected).

Installing the Touch Screen

Connecting the touch-screen thermostat unit was the final step. The thermostat comes apart into two pieces: the rear piece acts like a wiring harness, into which the four wires from the equipment interface connect. I snapped the small battery into the thermostat, then clicked it into place. I ran back downstairs, did a quick visual inspection to verify all my connections, then turned on the furnace’s breaker to power everything up. I ran upstairs and was greeted with a glowing thermostat:

ecobee Smart Thermostat(the lighting in my hallway makes it look orange – it’s actually a neutral beige).

Setup and Configuration

I spent the next few minutes tinkering with the ecobee’s interface. I went into Settings and walked through the Installation Wizard, which asks a number of questions about your setup (I answered 2 stage heat, 1 stage cool, and a humidifier connected to ACC1). I then ran the WiFi connection wizard which scanned and found my network, prompted me for my wireless password, and then verified that everything was working by connecting to ecobee’s website. It also allowed me to create a free monitoring account right on the unit, which I found very cool.

The ecobee’s interface is extremely intuitive and reminded me very much of my iPhone. Sliding your finger to adjust the temperature set point is easy. If you tap the weather icon in the lower left corner, you’ll get a weather forecast for your area (based on your zip code). You can quickly program Wake, Away, Home, and Sleep times for any combination of days so that your thermostat conserves energy when you’re not at home. Vacation Mode allows you to tell your thermostat when you’ll be away from the house so that it conserves energy while you’re gone, but has the place back to cozy (or cool) when you return. Quick Save Mode lets you move your set point up or down any number of degrees (the default is 4) for a few hours with a single button press if you decide to leave the house and want to save energy while you’re gone.

Remote Access of the ecobee

While you can access all the settings and programming options for your ecobee through its well thought-out interface, you don’t need to. Using the email address and password I entered when I set up the thermostat, I was able to quickly log in on ecobee.com and gain access to all the available settings on my thermostat, in addition to detailed reports on temperature and humidity, and precise details on exactly when my HVAC system heats or cools and for how long. This is the best way to access the full array of features and settings of your ecobee.

However, as powerful as ecobee’s web interface is, my favorite way to access my thermostat is with ecobee’s free iPhone app. It doesn’t let you access anywhere near as many settings as the web interface or touch-screen, but it does allow you to access the most commonly used features, such as temperature set point, System Mode (Heat, Cool, Auto, or Off), fan settings, Vacation Mode, and Quick Save Mode. The iPhone app’s interface looks almost identical to the touch-screen interface:

ecobee iPhone App

The day after I installed the ecobee, I woke up in the wee hours early and felt cold. I grabbed my iPhone from my nightstand charger, clicked the ecobee app icon (which automatically logged me in) and slid the temperature two degrees warmer. By the time I placed my iPhone back in its clock-radio charging station, the furnace was blowing warmer air into my bedroom. I went back to sleep for a couple more hours before my alarm went off. Bumping up the heat without having to remove my covers? Now that’s geeky goodness I could get used to.

Drawbacks and Suggestions

I’ve been back home in Seattle for a few days now, and I’ve been checking in on my ecobee remotely with my iPhone app and the web interface. So far, it’s been operating as it should. However, I do have one major concern with the unit, as well as a few suggestions for some minor improvements.

First, while the iPhone app and ecobee.com web interface are great, both remote access methods rely on ecobee’s private servers to provide remote access to your thermostat. If ecobee ever disappears, or their web server dies, so does your ability to use this thermostat for its intended purpose. Any device this smart that sits on your network and has an IP address should have a user-accessible web interface. But the ecobee doesn’t, which is a big drawback for me. Just as I can with my router, modem, wireless printer, and a host of other network-enabled devices in my house (including my Yamaha piano), I should be able to access and control my ecobee thermostat directly from any web browser on the local network, as well as set up a port forwarding rule on my router to access my ecobee from any remote browser using a dynamic DNS service. If that functionality were added, I’d also like to see the ability for the iPhone app to optionally bypass ecobee.com’s server and control the thermostat directly via an IP address. I’m not a fan of doing away with the hosted application altogether. There are a number of good reasons to give a hosted app the ability to control the thermostat and also to have the thermostat report status back to “the mothership.” The perfect scenario for me would be to allow both.

While we’re on the subject of networking, I was a little disappointed that the ecobee’s equipment interface required a WiFi connection and didn’t also support an Ethernet cable connection. I realize I’m probably the minority, but my furnace happens to be in the same room as my wireless router, so running a cable would have been preferable to relying on a wireless connection. Wired Ethernet is generally more reliable than WiFi and less prone to interference.

Compared with older touch-screens I’ve used, the ecobee’s touch screen is pretty good. But perhaps because I’m so used to using my fingers on an iPhone touch-screen, I sometimes get unexpected results when using the touch-screen on the ecobee. The screen sometimes scrolls unexpectedly when I want to select an option, or selects an option when I actually wanted to scroll. To be fair, this isn’t a “showstopper” type of bug, but it is a minor annoyance that I experience every now and then when I’m forced to use the touch screen. If the iPhone app allowed me access to all the same functions as the touch screen interface, this wouldn’t be an issue, but it doesn’t. Which actually brings me to my next drawback.

Another problem with the ecobee is the limited feature set in its iPhone app. An iPhone screen is about the same size as the thermostat’s touch screen, and both operate without the need for any hard buttons (yay!). But the iPhone app doesn’t allow you to do any programming on the ecobee, or access any of the main settings. Of course, I can understand why ecobee wouldn’t want you to be able to change the wireless settings remotely (you could accidentally cut off your remote access), but everything else really should be fair game. I’m hoping we’ll see this in a future iPhone app update.

Another weakness of the iPhone app is that if you connect to your ecobee while it’s in Vacation Mode (which mine is most of the time because it’s a vacation house) you can’t see the current temperature or humidity. The screen merely displays that you’re in Vacation Mode, and your only option is to press “OK” to return it to its regular mode. The ecobee.com web interface allows you to see the current settings, but I’d rather the iPhone app let me see more.

Another iPhone app drawback that I’ve heard about (but not seen for myself yet) is that if the Internet connection to the ecobee is lost, the iPhone app displays the last known temperature readings and settings for the device instead of the actual ones, and doesn’t alert the user that the WiFi connection is down, so there’s no way of knowing while you’re using the iPhone app if you’re really connecting to the ecobee and controlling it. The ecobee can alert you via email for a number of reasons (temperatures or humidity outside specific ranges, reminders to change filters) so I know this is possible. I’d really like to see ecobee fix this iPhone app issue with an update, as well as add support to their web interface to alert the owner if ecobee loses network connection to the thermostat for a specified period of time.

My final suggestion for improvement is driven by my own usage of the ecobee. I have mine installed in my Utah house where I usually spend one week every month. During that week, my wake, sleep, away, home schedule is pretty consistent – and so I’d love to be able to program my preferred temperature set points for those times and then put the unit into Vacation Mode when I’m not there. The problem is that while actual vacation dates are usually known in advance, my travel schedule to my Utah house isn’t 100% consistent and I usually don’t know the exact date of my next trip before I end a current trip. I’m afraid that if I guess at a Vacation Mode end date and then end up going a week or a month later than planned, the system would come out of vacation mode way before I arrive there and I would heat and/or cool an empty house and waste a lot of money.

Another option is foregoing Vacation Mode and just putting the unit into an indefinite hold at a low (or high) set point right before I leave, and then remotely telling it to resume normal operation the day before I return. However I’m afraid that a power failure might return the unit to normal operating mode weeks before I return. I may have to check with ecobee support to see what happens if power to the equipment interface and/or thermostat is interrupted. ecobee support informed me that the ecobee uses a non-volatile FlashRam and will maintain its settings, programs and preferences indefinitely. So if I have my ecobee into a Hold event when it loses power, it will resume the Hold after the power has been restored.

Another option is to have my ecobee set so that all-day every day is “Away” mode and have it set to heat below 50 degrees and cool above 95 degrees – and then use a manual hold at a comfortable temperature when I’m at the Utah house. But I’d love to have some sort of option for an alternate “Occupied” program that I could remotely switch over to the day before I leave that includes my wake, sleep, away, and home settings for when I’m there, and then switch back to the “Unoccupied” program when I’m not. Another solution would be to allow an open-ended Vacation mode, since I always know when I’m going to leave the Utah house but I don’t always know when I’ll be back. Or perhaps there could be a combination of Vacation Mode with the my suggested Occupied/Unoccupied Modes in some sort of “Inverse Vacation Mode.” I could use the web interface to manually set an Occupied start and end date once I know my travel schedule for an upcoming visit, and it would use my Occupied settings for wake, sleep, away, and home settings during that date range, and then automatically return to the Unoccupied settings at the end of that date range.

I suppose I could just reprogram the device before every trip, which wouldn’t be very difficult. Still, I’d much rather have the ability to have two sets of complete programs and then just switch back and forth. And I bet other vacation or part-time residence owners would love an option like that, too.

Final Thoughts on the ecobee Thermostat

Here are my final impressions of ecobee’s Smart Thermostat:

Pros:

  • Relatively easy to install
  • Initial configuration is very easy
  • Complete and detailed documentation
  • Extremely easy to use
  • Good set of features
  • Free iPhone app with intuitive interface
  • No subscription fee required for web access

Cons:

  • Priced for early adopters
  • No direct access or embedded web interface (requires third-party interaction for remote access)
  • Requires wireless network (has no Ethernet interface)
  • Touch screen can be finicky (minor annoyance only)
  • iPhone app doesn’t allow programming, access to system settings, or Vacation Mode temperature display
  • iPhone app may display inaccurate information if connection is lost
  • ecobee’s servers don’t proactively alert owner if connection is lost
  • Only one “main” program, so programming for part-time or vacation residences could be improved

Overall, the ecobee is a great smart thermostat with an excellent interface, detailed documentation, and terrific features. The small annoyances shouldn’t be enough to scare anyone off, particularly since bugs can be fixed and new features added via firmware and/or app updates (it’s already connected to ecobee’s servers so updates should be a breeze).

ecobee’s got a winner on its hands, and you should get one in yours.

Further Reading

If you really wanna geek out with the ecobee, check out this link over at the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology site to see internal photos and bunches of technical documents.

11/24/2010 Usage Update:

After being away from the Utah house for almost a week, I’m happy to report that the ecobee is still working great. I’ve been enjoying using the reporting feature to see how things are going, so I thought I’d share a copy of the current graph:ecobee Chart

The ecobee seems to collect and report data back to the mothership (ecobee.com) every 5 minutes or so. There are a couple gaps in the data collection (Nov 22 after midnight and Nov 22 after 4PM) which I believe were caused by network issues (could be my wireless connection, or my router, or my ISP, or ecobee’s servers).

The key at the bottom of the image helps identify the different values on the chart. The top chart shows temperatures (left Y axis) and humidity (right Y axis) over time (X axis showing dates and hours). The bottom chart shows HVAC system usage such as heating, cooling, and fan activity using the same X axis as the top chart. The bottom chart also shows how many of the minutes in the 5-minute data collection cycle were used for that HVAC activity.

Looking at the charts, the red and blue dotted lines show my desired heat and cool settings (the set points I chose in my programming). You can see where I changed the programming a couple times as I experimented with the unit. I’ve now got my ecobee programmed to my normal wake, away, home, sleep schedule when I’m in Utah. Rather than use Vacation Mode (see above for why I don’t like Vacation Mode), I’m using an indefinite hold to keep the house above 50F while I’m not there.

The green sloping line is the indoor temperature at the Utah house. As would be expected, this has been slowly drifting down since I left last week. The black line is the outdoor temperature. Utah got hit with a cold front last night, and you can see how the big drop in the black line affected the green line – it helped pull the indoor temperature down to 50F, which is where I told the thermostat I wanted to keep the house while I’m gone so that the water pipes don’t freeze.

Because I was aware that a cold front was coming, I remotely set the ecobee to run the fan for at least 10 mins per hour in an attempt to see if circulating the air in the house would help pull insulated warmer air from the basement and to slow the decent of the indoor temperature and reduce the need for heating. You can see the grey lines showing when the fan turned on in the bottom graph starting at around midnight on the 24th. Then, at approximately 4:40am, the indoor temperature finally hit my set point of 50F, so my ecobee gave the house a shot of stage 1 heat (shown in red in the bottom graph). It needed another short blast at 6:45am, and then a couple bigger ones at 9:45am and then again at 10:45am. My wallet is crying. :(

I turned the fan-only settings off early this morning, because it didn’t seem to make much difference. However, now that it’s cold enough that it looks like the furnace will be turning on regularly throughout the day, I’m going to tell the thermostat to run the fan for at least 5 mins per hour in an attempt to circulate the heated air around the house. Will it work? I don’t know yet – but that’s the beauty of the ecobee. I can sit in my warm house in Seattle and play with the thermostat settings in my cold house in Utah – and I get geeky charts to show me the effects of my tinkering!

11/29/2010 Update:

I’ve lost contact with my ecobee. :( I can access my router at the Utah house and I see all my other wired and wireless devices active in my device list, but I don’t see the ecobee on the list and the reporting function on the ecobee.com website shows no reported data after 11/26. So either it’s lost power or lost connectivity to the network. I really wish the ecobee had a feature that alerted the homeowner via email and/or SMS when connection is lost for a set amount of time. Also, this outage allowed me confirm the iPhone app bug I’d heard about where the app appears like it’s connecting just fine to the ecobee, even though I KNOW the ecobee is offline. There’s no error message on the iPhone app or the web interface telling me they’ve lost the connection with the thermostat. The only reason I noticed is because the reports are empty. :( I’ve called a techie friend in Utah who is going to head over to the house later today to tell me what he sees on the ecobee screen and then we’ll try to troubleshoot. I’ll post another update here later tonight after we (hopefully) get it back online.

11/29/2010 Update 2:

My friend Kevin was kind enough to go by my place and check on my thermostat. He called me on the phone and acted as my eyes and ears as we walked through some troubleshooting. When he checked the thermostat upstairs, the screen on the ecobee was dark and it didn’t respond to any input. Not good. He went downstairs to the furnace room to check on the ecobee interface module, and the green power light was not on. Still not good. We checked the breaker – it was fine (but we flipped it off and on for good measure anyway). I walked Kevin through opening the main access panel and then removing the lower panel that hides the wiring. He remarked that the Status Code light on the furnace circuit board was blinking: 2 fast blinks then 4 slow blinks. A quick Google search told me that this probably means the 3 amp fuse on the circuit board is blown. Kevin checked the fuse. Yep! It’s blown.

I didn’t have any extra fuses on hand, but Kevin is going to pick some up tomorrow morning and we’ll try simply replacing it. However, I have a hunch that the fuse will simply blow again, so what I really want to do is figure out what’s causing the fuse to blow. The furnace worked for years with the old thermostat without a single glitch, so the problem must stem from my recent installation of the ecobee. However, at this point, it’s impossible to know if the ecobee itself is causing the issue, or if perhaps as I wired it up I inadvertently left part of a wire exposed which, after a week’s worth of vibration (as the furnace worked to keep the house above 50F during a spell of extremely cold weather) has moved to the point where it’s now touching something it shouldn’t be, thereby creating an unwanted short.

Kevin is heading back out there tomorrow morning with a box of 3 amp fuses and we’ll try to figure it out (Kev – you should REALLY get an iPhone 4 so we could FaceTime this! :) ). Again, our first step will be to simply pop in a new fuse and see if it blows. If it does (and I really think it will), we’ll need to find out if it’s the furnace or the thermostat that is blowing it. I’ll have him disconnect all the wires from the furnace terminals that connect to the ecobee. Then, I’ll have him jump the R and W terminals (connect them together) on the furnace manually, which will tell the furnace to heat. If that blows the fuse, then the problem is with the furnace, and I’ll have to hire an HVAC specialist to check it out. If it doesn’t blow the fuse, then we’ll reconnect the wires to the ecobee’s interface unit and then I’ll remotely tell the thermostat to heat. If that blows the fuse, then we know we’ve either got a problem with the ecobee itself or the wiring to it, and we’ll keep troubleshooting from there.

Stay tuned to see how this exciting HVAC saga turns out (and thanks, Kevin, for helping me out)!

11/30/2010 Update:

Kevin called me this morning after visiting a few home improvement and auto parts stores in the area – all of which were out of 3 amp fuses. Apparently they are popular with furnaces this time of year. :) He eventually found one at O’Reilly Auto Parts, and bought a five pack.

Kevin called me from my house and the first thing we did was what all geeks should do: connect his laptop to my WiFi and try to establish a video conference! I was able to hear him, and he was able to see and hear me, but we weren’t able to get his camera going so we bagged the idea and reverted to ancient VoIP technology. Kevin popped in the fuse and the green light on the ecobee’s interface module system lit up as the ecobee came back online. I watched via my router interface as the ecobee made itself aware to my router and received its reserved IP address. I then logged in to the ecobee.com web interface to try and control the router, and noticed a feature that I had previously ignored. In the top right corner of the interface (next to the Logout button) it read “Thermostat is not connected.” I’m glad to see that the web interface keeps track of whether or not the ecobee is commmunicating back to the mothership, so I’ll keep bugging ecobee to add functionality to their web interface that allows the system to proactively alert me of that fact. :) After a few minutes, that message changed to “Thermostat is connected” and I had full remote control of my ecobee once again!

Kevin let the heat run for 10 minutes or so before he buttoned everything back up on the furnace. We also pulled apart some of the wires that run from the furnace to the ecobee, just in case any were shorting. Hopefully, I won’t blow any more fuses before I head back to Utah in a a little over a week. When I get there, I’ll rewire everything and keep a close eye out for any nicks in the wire insulation. So, while I’m glad the system is working again, I’m a little uneasy about the fact that I have no idea what caused the fuse to blow, and I still have some investigating ahead of me.

Big thanks to Kevin for taking time off work (and dragging his son along with him) to help out a friend in need. L&L is on me next time I’m in town, Kev! :)

Here’s the graph showing my ecobee is back to life (and that the furnace is back with it and heating the house back up to 50F):

11/30/2010 Update 2:

About 10 mins after making the above blog post, ecobee.com lost connection to my thermostat. I connected to my router remotely and saw that while the DHCP lease was still active, the wireless signal from the ecobee wasn’t shown. That means it’s offline. I suspected the fuse was blown again.

I contacted PPM Plumbing Heating and Cooling and they dispatched a technician, who was at my house in less than 30 minutes (impressive). He called me when he arrived (as requested) so I could talk him through getting into the house (note to self – change access code on next trip) and downstairs to the furnace. I explained how the ecobee worked (to which he replied “that sounds really cool!”) and he took the panel off the furnace. Blown fuse. He’s troubleshooting now and should call me back with an update (although I can see that he at least got it powered up again – the ecobee website says it’s connected again and my router confirms wireless signal). Stay tuned!

11/30/2010 Update 3:

PPM’s technician (Ben) called within seconds of me finishing that last update. :)

He said he replaced the fuse and that the system fired up again (not a big surprise) and that it had been running for about 10 mins now without blowing the fuse. Ben then actually asked me if I just wanted him to just leave it like that. I politely explained that since I had already replaced one fuse today less than an hour ago, simply replacing another and crossing our fingers just didn’t feel like the right option. :) He quoted me $187 to rewire everything, to which I reluctantly agreed (although I suppose busted pipes would be much more expensive). Let’s hope Ben’s re-wiring does the trick. Stay tuned!

11/30/2010 Update 4:

Ben called back after re-wiring everything and reported that the system seemed to be working…. for a few minutes. He said that when he first turned on the system after the rewire he came upstairs and saw that the thermostat was dark, so he went back downstairs to check the connections (everything seemed fine) and that when he went upstairs again the thermostat was powered and the heat turned on. Yay! But victory was short-lived. Ben said a few minutes later, the fan stopped and the screen on the thermostat went dark. However, this time, the fuse was NOT blown. :(

Ben’s voltage meter is showing that we are getting 24V coming from the furnace to the ecobee interface unit, but that we’re not getting 12V coming out to power the wall-mount unit. Diagnosis? We think the equipment interface may have been causing the short and is now fried. :( Whats interesting is that it’s not completely dead – the status lights on the equipment interface motherboard still light up (the power light is on and the communication failure light is on). So while it may not be totally dead, there’s no 12V power coming out to power the thermostat unit, so we can’t use it.

While Ben and I were on one phone doing all this, I called ecobee tech support and spoke with Bobby, who was very friendly and helpful. He walked us through a few different troubleshooting attempts, but in the end his diagnosis matched ours: the equipment interface needs to be replaced. Bobby took my contact info and explained that everyone except tech support had already left the office for the day (ecobee is a few time zones ahead of me in Toronto), but that he would contact me again tomorrow morning to arrange a warranty swap of the interface. That’s the true measure of a company’s customer service – not that they have glitch free products (hey, I’ve been a geek long enough to know that all hardware goes bad eventually), but how they handle it when the inevitable happens. ecobee seems to be handling it well.

I asked Ben to re-install my old-school thermostat so that I can keep the house above 50F until I arrive back in Utah in a couple weeks (to a cold house, unfortunately). That should give me plenty of time to get the replacement equipment interface unit from ecobee, and verify that the system doesn’t blow any fuses using the original thermostat (but only if I can convince my friend Kevin to drop by the house a few times between now and then). :)

12/11/2010 Update:

Last week, before returning to Utah, I spoke on the phone with David in tech support at Alpine Home Air Products and got a few more suggestions for troubleshooting. He said that even though the ecobee manual says it shouldn’t matter, he recommends wiring the 24V power lead from the furnace to the top connector on the ecobee interface unit and the COM to the bottom one, and that it’s possible my short could have been caused by something as simple as that. He recommended I try that first, and if it didn’t work he’d gladly replace my ecobee under warranty.

I arrived back at my Utah house yesterday. The old-school thermostat was still functioning, and the furnace had been keeping the house above 50F. This confirms in my mind that whatever was causing the 3 amp fuse to blow had to be related to the ecobee thermostat, the ecobee interface unit, or the wiring to either of these devices. I wanted to do some troubleshooting for myself, because as I mentioned in my 11/30 Update #4, I found it extremely strange that Ben from PPM’s voltage meter showed 24V going in to the ecobee interface unit and turning on the green LED status light, but that 12V was not coming out of the interface unit to feed power to the thermostat. I found this strange because when electronics short out, they generally won’t power up at all. If the interface unit was fried, I would have expected the LED light to be off.

I switched off the furnace and disconnected all the wiring that Ben from PPM had done. Then I rewired power to the ecobee interface unit, making sure (as suggested by David at Alpine) to connect the orange wire from the furnace’s R terminal to the top 24V connector on the ecobee interface unit and the black wire from the furnace’s common ground (COM) to the bottom connector. During my original install, I had connected the back on top and the orange on bottom, since the ecobee manual said it didn’t matter which went where. I switched the furnace back on. The ecobee interface unit’s LED lights ran through a test (all four lights fire sequentially). When the test was over, two lights remained lit: the top green light indicating power (always a good sign) and the bottom red light indicating a communications error – which I totally expected since I hadn’t connected the thermostat.

I grabbed my voltage meter and tested the 24V terminals on the ecobee interface unit. My meter showed 25.8 volts AC. This is also what Ben from PPM saw, and was also exactly what I expected (otherwise, the LED lights wouldn’t have lit up). Next, I tested the bottom two terminals on interface unit that supply 12V power to the thermostat. My tester showed some strange negative numbers. That’s when I remembered something else that David at Alpine had mentioned on the phone: the incoming voltage to the ecobee interface unit is 24V AC (alternating current) but the power going to the thermostat is 12V DC (direct current). Of course, I would have realized this had I paid closer attention to pages 5 and 6 of the ecobee’s installation manual. :) I switched my voltage meter to DC and presto: 12.22 volts DC was coming from the terminals. Ben from PPM was wrong. The thermostat power terminals on the interface unit weren’t dead, he just wasn’t measuring it right!

But Ben had also reported that even with the ecobee interface unit connected to the furnace and powered on, the ecobee thermostat upstairs didn’t work. That what I decided to check next. I finished wiring the rest of the furnace terminals to the ecobee interface unit as I had originally, then I reconnected the 4 wires going upstairs to the bottom left terminals on the interface unit. Finally, I went back upstairs to disconnect the old thermostat and reconnect the ecobee’s wiring harness bracket. After completing all the wiring and powering the system back on, I carefully pushed the ecobee thermostat back into the wiring harness bracket… and it sprang to life! After its boot sequence (which displays a bee with wings flapping for a few minutes), the normal interface appeared – with my original settings and programming intact! This confirms what ecobee support told me about its solid state memory.

However, this was both good and bad news. Good news, of course, because my ecobee wasn’t fried and seemed to be operating normally. But the bad news was that I still didn’t know what was causing the short in the first place. I had already switched the 24V wiring into the interface unit as suggested, so maybe that solved it. I let the furnace heat for an hour, and the fuse didn’t blow. And while that was encouraging, before declaring victory I wanted to make sure the system wouldn’t short out and blow the fuse again during a cold snap in my absence, so I decided to do one more wiring change.

Any electrician will tell you that most electrical shorts are caused by grounding problems. And while I was rewiring the ecobee interface unit back to the furnace this time around, I had some difficulty getting all three wires that needed to use the furnace’s common ground terminal (the ecobee interface unit, the humidifier, and the A/C unit) to stay in place with a good connection. I could get two connected well, but I was always able to wiggle the third one free with little effort. So I decided to used a wire nut to connect the three device’s ground wires to a fourth wire: a short piece of red wire that Ben had left of the ground. Then I connected that short red wire to the COM terminal on the furnace. This ensures that all the ground wires stay connected, and greatly reduce the risk of any shorts.

Here’s what everything looks like now:

The only difference to the wiring in the above photo is the orange wire from the furnace’s R terminal is connected to the top 24V terminal on the ecobee interface unit and the black wire COM wire is on the bottom.

The terminals in the furnace in the above photo are the same as I wired them originally, with the exception of the wire nut connecting the white wire from the humidifier, the brown wire from the ecobee interface unit’s ACC1r terminal, and the black wire from the ecobee’s 24V power terminal to a small red wire connected to the furnace’s COM terminal. This should ensure a good ground to all the devices that require one.

The furnace ran just fine for the rest of the afternoon and evening (and it worked hard to get the house back to 73 degrees). It also ran fine overnight and has been working normally all day today so far. Hopefully, whatever was causing the short that blew the fuse was solved either by switching the 24V leads to the interface unit as suggested by David at Alpine, consolidating all the ground wires with the wire nut, or a combination of both.

So far, so good! Hopefully, I’ll only have to post one more update when I leave next week to say that everything worked great all week!

12/20/2010 Update:

I don’t want to jinx it, but I’m hoping this will be my last update for this post. It’s been 9 days since I re-wired the ecobee, and so far it’s still performing flawlessly. I enjoy being able to check on the house remotely, and I’ve currently got the thermostat set in Vacation Mode. I’ve purchased three more for other properties, and look forward to further enjoying the benefits of this great product.

12/30/2010 Update:

I’ve written a new follow-up post here.

10/23/2011 Update:

Due to repeated requests about an Ecobee users discussion forum, I’ve started one myself. If you’re an Ecobee owner, enthusiast, or would just like to join the conversation, you can subscribe here:

Google Groups
Subscribe to Ecobee Users
Email:
Visit this group

ecobee Mothership Won’t Let My Thermostat Phone Home

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One of my favorite movie lines is from the 2001 movie Bandits, starring Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton. Billy Bob plays a neurotic genius who, at one point in the movie, states “You know the hardest thing about being smart? I always pretty much know what’s going to happen next. There’s no suspense.”

So at the risk of sounding less-than-humble, this is an “I knew what was going to happen next and I told you so” post.

Last month, I wrote a product review for my new ecobee Thermostat. I still love the product, but in that review I expressed my primary concern with the unit: remote access to the thermostat, and remote control of the thermostat, is completely dependent upon ecobee’s servers remaining online. And, as of today, ecobee’s servers have been offline for at least two days.

I first noticed the problem yesterday when I decided to check on the thermostat in my Utah house. ecobee’s main website (http://ecobee.com/) was still online, but when I logged in with my username and password I got this:

On a positive note, that’s an attractive and well-designed failure notice. It’s a bit less attractive in the iPhone’s web browser:

And as for ecobee’s dedicated iPhone app, it just sits there “Authenticating…” for a while until a pop-up tells me “Error connecting to the server. Data could not be retrieved from the server. Please check your network settings.”

LOL. My network settings are fine and dandy, thank you very much! I can access my email, my blog, my Facebook, my Amazon Web Services account, all of my web servers, and the routers in my Utah house, cabin, parents’ and inlaws’ houses. I just can’t access my ecobee. :)

Compounding this issue is that it’s the week between Christmas and New Year’s, so I suspect that more than a few of ecobee’s technicians are likely on vacation. I’ll be keeping an eye on their remote access servers to see how long it takes to get them back online and I’ll post an update here. Maybe we could get a pool going in the comments! :)

The “good” news is that I already know when my next visit to Utah is, so I had already placed my ecobee thermostat in Vacation Mode so that it would return to normal programming the day before I got there (I like the furnace to kick in a full day in advance so that hard surfaces such as counter-tops and wood floors have a chance to warm up to air temperature). But if my trip happened to be tomorrow instead, and had I been planning on simply remotely connecting to my ecobee the day before my flight and manually adjusting the settings, I’d be arriving to a cold house… which is precisely what a WiFi-enabled thermostat like the ecobee is designed to prevent.

Please, please, please, ecobee! Please listen to your customers. Or maybe just listen to this one. I just happen to have a wee bit of experience with home automation, remote access, networking, web servers, hosted applications, and technology in general. Don’t get me wrong – I really like your product. It’s a good product, and because you were smart enough to build it with hardware that allows its embedded software to be remotely upgraded and improved, it has the potential to be a great product. I also really like the well-designed and powerful interface of your remote access website. However, as I stated in my earlier review, the power of your product all hinges on a single weak point: the uptime of your servers. And as of right now, they’ve been offline for at least two days that I know of (I don’t know if they were offline earlier when I wasn’t checking my thermostat).

I still want to be able to use your hosted web interface, but I also need to be able to connect to my thermostat directly in situations where your server crashes, or your network connection goes down, or your DNS records get messed up, or a tornado takes out your building, or Jimmy in tech support accidentally trips over a power cord and takes your hosted application offline. Unless you’re willing to invest in the type of infrastructure that can ensure 99.99999999% uptime to your remote access servers, please give us direct access to our thermostats.

I don’t mean to be overly harsh, ecobee. I like you guys. And I wish I’d been wrong. But, at the risk of sounding less-than-humble again, that just doesn’t happen very often. :) Server downtime is a reality that all true geeks must accept. Therefore, taking whatever steps are necessary to ensure that customers can access a device whose primary purpose is to be remotely accessible, even if something goes wrong on your end, should be what keeps everyone at your company up at night – from the CEO to the marketing managers to the engineers to the web designers. Heck, I’d get the janitor on board with the concept, too.

Please allow me to quote my earlier review:

…remote access methods rely on ecobee’s private servers to provide remote access to your thermostat. If ecobee ever disappears, or their web server dies, so does your ability to use this thermostat for its intended purpose. Any device this smart that sits on your network and has an IP address should have a user-accessible web interface. But the ecobee doesn’t, which is a big drawback for me. Just as I can with my router, modem, wireless printer, and a host of other network-enabled devices in my house (including my Yamaha piano), I should be able to access and control my ecobee thermostat directly from any web browser on the local network, as well as set up a port forwarding rule on my router to access my ecobee from any remote browser using a dynamic DNS service.

I stand by those words – and I know you guys want to stand by your product. You’ve got a smart thermostat. It should come as no surprise that smart customers buy it. So if you have smart customers, the smart thing to do is listen to them.

————————

12/30 @ 4:30PM PST: Now when I attempt to login, I’m redirected to this page, which says:

Our Webportal is currently under maintenance. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

That’s different than the previous error message, so I’ll cross my fingers and hope that means they’re making progress on a solution!

12/30 @ 7:19PM PST: I’ve received two emails from ecobee so far today thanking me for this blog post and assuring me their development team is feverishly working on a fix. I’ve been in their shoes in the past, and I know it’s not fun.

12/30 @ 9:37PM PST: Ecobee’s MAIN site (http://ecobee.com/), which didn’t seem to have any issues before now, now looks hosed when viewed in my primary browser, Google Chrome. I checked and it looks fine in Firefox and IE (even after clearing my cache), so either Chrome is connecting to an out-of-date version of the site on a cloud-based edge server, or their server is sniffing for browser strings and feeding the wrong info to Chrome (that’s my guess). Chrome is seeing a version of their site where all the URLs (including links to CSS) are the wrong local hostname (just “web2″) with no TLD string. I’m assuming web2 is an intranet or dev site hostname, which probably works inside ecobee’s network, but breaks for the rest of us. Their stylesheet, for example, is trying to pull from https://web2/wp-content/themes/ecobee/style.css. Bummer. But fortunately, that’s an easy fix (and I just emailed them to alert them).

The maintenance message after attempting to login to the remote management interface is prettier now, and says:

We are currently experiencing issues with the ecobee servers and our Development team is working on the resolution. We apologize for this inconvenience and if you would like to be sent updates on our progress please email support@ecobee.com and we will add you to our notification list. Thank you for your understanding. The ecobee Team.

I emailed and asked to be put on the notify list.

12/30 @ 9:43PM PST: ecobee just sent this announcement to the customers on their notify list:

ecobee Server Update – December 31, 2010, 1:00 am EST

Thank you to all of our customers who have shown patience through this period, we appreciate your understanding and support. The Development team has been working on the issue and has isolated the problem which is great news. We are now bringing a select group of thermostats online as part of our due diligence and we will send another email informing you of when this process is complete. In response to some concerns that have been raised, your ecobee Smart Thermostat will continue to run the program you have created during this period of limited web accessibility.

12/31 @ 6:09AM PST: ecobee just sent this announcement to the customers on their notify list:

ecobee Server Update – December 31st, 2010, 9:15 am.

Good Morning;

The Development is continuing to make progress on bringing a limited number of test units online but we have are not able to reinstate full web portal accessibility for all customers at this time. The entire team is continuing to work on the issue and will do so until there is a resolution.

Thank you to those who have offered their support and encouragement and we are sorry for the inconvenience that this is causing to our customers.

12/31 @ 9:45AM PST: ecobee’s main website works in Google Chrome again. The maintenance message on their website has been updated to say:

We are currently experiencing issues with the ecobee servers but we have isolated the issue and the Development Team is running their final due diligence. We expect to have all of our customer’s web portal access available in the next 2 hours.

they also just sent this announcement to the customers on their notify list:

ecobee Server Update – December 31, 12:45 pm EST

Good afternoon,

We have isolated the issue and the Development Team is running their final due diligence. We expect to have all of our customer’s web portal access available in the next 2 hours. Thank you for your patience during this period.

Happy New Year.

That sounds encouraging! However, I can’t help but think that during a technical outage (of which my companies have had their fair share), I would never include a specific deadline on a website or email message (such as “in the next 2 hours”), no matter how certain I was that we would hit it. Optimism is great, but I’ve said stuff like that in the past, and then ended up with egg on my face 3 hours later. Until everything is actually up and running again, I prefer to stick with “as soon as possible.”

12/31 @ 11:52AM PST: ecobee just sent this announcement to the customers on their notify list:

ecobee Server Update – December 31, 3:00pm EST

The issue we have been experiencing with the ecobee server has now been resolved. All customers should have access to their web portals. Please note that during this interruption some of the reports data may not have been captured resulting in the reports graph having no data at certain times.

Thank you for your patience during this period and a Happy New Year.

Hooray! I have verified that I can login and access my thermostat and reports. They were less than 15 mins late on their 2 hour promise, so that’s commendable. Surprisingly, I’m only missing reporting data from around 2:45AM to 6:30AM yesterday morning. All of my programming data and other settings appear to be intact, and everything appears to be back to normal. I really didn’t want to have to write a tongue-in-cheek blog post entitled “My ecobee has been offline since last year!”

12/31 @ 2:06PM PST: ecobee Founder and CEO Stuart Lombard (who had commented earlier on this post… see below) sent the following open letter via email to all ecobee customers:

An Open Letter to ecobee Customers:

I am a founder and President of ecobee. Please accept my sincere apologies for the issues we have experienced over the last two days with our web servers. I believe that, up until Wednesday, we have had an excellent uptime record (over 99.9%). Unfortunately, on Wednesday we ran into a performance-related issue and the resolution was not straightforward or easy to isolate.

We had a dedicated team working around the clock to resolve the issues, and we are now operational again. We will review our processes thoroughly to determine what went wrong and how we can prevent this situation from happening in the future.

We are extremely upset with the downtime. We are committed to delivering excellent uptime and reliability, and we expect that to continue in the future. We appreciate your patience and ongoing support.

If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact me directly.

Best regards,
Stuart

A well-written letter saying exactly what it should for the average customer. Of course, über-geek customers want to know the gory details of the outage, but an open letter isn’t the right place for that. The comments section of an über-geek’s blog is the right place for that (hint, hint).

Good job getting it sorted out, guys! Look on the bright side: tomorrow, you can say you’ve had 100% uptime in 2011! :)

Go enjoy the New Year’s holiday. You’ve earned it. But when you get back in the office, I’m still dying to know exactly what went wrong, and what you’re planning on doing (in geek talk, not marketing talk) to decrease the chances of it happening again.

And, yes, I still wish we had direct access to our units. :)

10/23/2011 Update:

Due to repeated requests about an Ecobee users discussion forum, I’ve started one myself. If you’re an Ecobee owner, enthusiast, or would just like to join the conversation, you can subscribe here:

Google Groups
Subscribe to Ecobee Users
Email:
Visit this group

Installing my 2nd ecobee and Using Group Admin Features

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A few months ago, I wrote a product review for the ecobee Smart Thermostat (along with complete installation instructions and photos) which had I purchased to remotely monitor and control the thermostat in my Utah house while I was away. Overall, my review of the ecobee was positive and I really like the product, but I also pointed out a couple things about the ecobee that didn’t like. My main issue was the absence of an embedded interface to allow users to control their thermostats without relying on ecobee’s hosted application, which meant that ecobee customers couldn’t access their thermostats if when ecobee’s servers went down.

My second big issue was the somewhat limited functionality of ecobee’s iPhone app. Don’t get me wrong, I dig the ecobee iPhone app. It has some great features and I love the fact that the app’s interface looks almost identical to the thermostat’s main interface. But my initial review listed a few annoying limitations of the iPhone app, and yesterday I discovered another one. Read on to find out what it was.

Installing an ecobee with a Heat Pump

Yesterday, I installed my second ecobee unit at our log home at the Lazy J Ranch in Eastern Washington. This house is actually the place I wanted an ecobee the most. It gets really cold in the winter there, and really hot in the summer. Usually, we show up, set the thermostat to a comfortable setting, then leave immediately to go grocery shopping while the house heats or cools, which can take a while depending on the extremity of the outdoor temperature. But not any more, thanks to my ecobee!

One of the advantages of the ecobee over other smart thermostats is that it doesn’t need a dedicated CAT5 cable. If you’re replacing an existing thermostat that has at least four wires (and nearly all of them do) and you have WiFi in your house (and anyone geeky enough to want this thermostat already does), you can use the existing thermostat’s wiring – meaning you don’t need to run any additional wires inside your walls. In a normal home, that’s good news. But in a log home, that’s great news, because fishing wire through solid logs is practically impossible.

Because the cabin is in a remote location, there’s no natural gas available (although thanks to a WISP, I do have high-speed Internet). So the HVAC system is very different to the one I have in Utah. The Cabin’s HVAC system is comprised of an older single-stage electric furnace (Lennox CB19-65-3P-TXV) with a newer single-phase outdoor electric Heat Pump (Lennox HP29-060-5P). The thermostat I replaced was one of the older brown Honeywell digital models.

Essentially, the most straightforward way to install an ecobee into any existing HVAC system is to follow these three steps:

  1. Disconnect the existing thermostat wires from the furnace’s wiring terminals,
  2. Use new thermostat wire to connect the ecobee interface unit to the same terminals on the furnace as the old thermostat, then
  3. Use the existing thermostat wire that runs from the furnace room to the thermostat location to connect the ecobee interface unit and the thermostat.

Checking the Existing Wiring

So my first step was to check out the wiring of the existing thermostat to learn what connections I’d be using on the ecobee interface unit. I always take photos before re-wiring anything, so I can restore things back to their original state if I mess anything up. The existing thermostat wiring looked like this:

The existing wires are (clockwise from top left): Red->R (24V power), Pink->C (common ground), Yellow->Y (cooling), Orange->O (heat pump reversing valve), White->W2 (AUX heat), Green->G (fan relay), Brown->L (system monitoring – more on that later).

Next, I documented the existing wiring at the furnace terminals:

Another shot of the wiring:

As confusing as this looks at first, after staring at this mess for a few minutes I realized that there are only three sets of wires that I should care about in the above photo:

  1. The brown cable exiting to the right contains the existing thermostat wires that run from here to the thermostat location upstairs.
  2. The smaller brown wire on top contains a blue, green, and red wire that connect to an external fan control relay (which has a manual override switch for the fan and which also connects to some mechanized valves in the ducting).
  3. The brown cable near the bottom-right corner contains a red, yellow, orange, white, and brown wire and runs outside to the heat pump.

Wiring in the ecobee Interface Unit

Before doing any wiring, I shut off power to the heat pump and the furnace. After mounting the ecobee interface module to the cold air return, I ran two new 7 conductor wires through the hole on the right and exposed all the appropriate ends with a wire stripper. I then  began disconnecting the wires that ran upstairs to the thermostat and connecting the remaining wires to the matching color wires on one of the new cables – some connected to the terminal block on the furnace, others connected out to the heat pump (I used those same orange wire nuts). The only wire left without a match was the brown that used to connect to the L terminal on the old thermostat, and everything I could find online said I could simply tape it off. When I was done, I used the second new cable to connect red and black to the R and C terminals on the furnace to provide 24V power the ecobee interface unit.

Wiring in the ecobee Thermostat

After the interface unit wiring was done, I connected four of the wires from the old thermostat cable (Red, Black, Green, and White) to the 12V, GND, D+, and D- terminals on the ecobee interface unit, then went upstairs to wire the other ends to the ecobee thermostat wiring harness. After securing all the connections, I went back downstairs and turned on the power. The ecobee interface unit powered up, and cycled its lights. But the bottom “COMS” error light remained red, and the thermostat upstairs remained dark, which bummed me out. However, a quick check of my wiring revealed that I had accidentally connected the black wire as GND on the interface unit, but used the brown wire at the wiring harness. Switching to the correct ground wire solved the problem, and my ecobee sprang to life!

Setting up the Thermostat

First, I connected the WiFi, which was very simple and straightforward. I gave it the same email address and password I had used to register my first ecobee. Next, I stepped through the installation wizard, which was just as simple as it had been at my Utah house. I merely replied with different answers this time to match the different setup: 1 stage heat pump, 1 stage electrical furnace as AUX heat, etc.

Checking Online Access

When I opened the ecobee.com remote access site in my laptop’s browser, my new thermostat was available in a drop-down menu, alongside my Utah thermostat. I named the new one “Cabin” and then clicked around to finalize the programming and other options. All went without a hitch and ecobee has done a great job allowing their web interface to organize and control multiple thermostats. I created a group called “Vacation Homes” and put the Utah house and the Cabin thermostats in that group (I’m installing three additional ecobees in my primary residence, which will have their own group).

Checking iPhone Access

My next step was to see how ecobee’s iPhone app managed multiple thermostats. I fired up the app, which said: “Authenticating…” then “Looking for thermostats…” then “Received thermostat list…” This was encouraging, since the the words “thermostats” and “list” leads me to believe that the app supported multiple thermostats on the same account. However, after a few seconds, the Vacation Mode screen popped up, which looks like this:

I suppose I understand why this screen appeared, since my Utah ecobee technically is in Vacation Mode. However, it seemed that the only way to access any other thermostat on my account via the iPhone app was to press “OK” on this screen, which would put the Utah house back in Standard Mode, which would heat the house while I’m not there. I tried “swiping” my finger from right to left to see if the screen would page over to a new screen and display the other thermostat (like flipping through photos on the iPhone). Sigh… it didn’t work. :(

I was hoping that perhaps it was merely user error on my part, so I called ecobee Tech Support. After a short wait, I was connected to a representative. After explaining that I had just installed a second ecobee thermostat, I asked if their iPhone app supported multiple thermostats. He said “yes.” Sweet! I asked how to display a second thermostat if one of them was in Vacation Mode.

An awkward silence…

He replied that unfortunately, the iPhone app didn’t allow management of multiple thermostats if one of them was in Vacation Mode. Double sigh. He went on to explain that this was a known issue, and that support for that feature was planned in the future, etc, etc. I thanked him and hung up the phone.

Turning Off Vacation Mode

Still interested in checking the app’s functionality, I decided to press the OK button on the Vacation Mode screen anyway, explore the multi-thermostat interface, and then re-enable Vacation Mode on the Utah thermostat. After pressing OK, the standard ecobee interface appeared, but with a new Thermostat icon on the bottom:

Pretty cool! Pressing the yellow Thermostat icon displayed the following screen:

“Gables” is the name of my Utah thermostat, and “Cabin” is the extremely creative name I gave the one at the cabin. :)

I was able to select either unit and display the standard interface, exactly as I would expect, although it sometimes took more than one press to keep the desired thermostat selected before pressing Done.

Turning Vacation Mode Back On

The humorous irony of the situation is that while Vacation Mode blocks the ability of the iPhone app to manage any thermostats on the account, the iPhone app does allow a user to re-enable Vacation Mode. Pressing the More icon in the main interface displays the following screen:

Pressing the Vacation icon displays a screen that allows the user to set the Vacation Mode options:

Pressing the Done icon on this screen returns the iPhone app’s interface to the Vacation Mode screen, where the only available option is to press OK.

Checking the web interface confirmed that the system had gone back into Vacation Mode, but also showed me that during the time I was testing, the furnace turned on Stage 1 heat for 3 minutes. Grrr! That probaby cost me a whole nickel! :)

Update: This iPhone App Bug is a Big Deal

I noticed last night (1/4/11) that an updated version (1.3) of ecobee’s iPhone app had been available in the iTunes App Store since 12/23/2010. I was surprised that ecobee hadn’t sent a notification email out to their customers about the app update (I know they have my email address because my ecobee emails me customized alerts), but that’s beside the point. Hoping the iPhone app Vacation Mode issue might be fixed, I enthusiastically updated – but the problem still remains in the updated version. On a positive note, however, the issue I reported about needing multiple presses on the the Select Thermostat screen seems to be fixed!

After updating the ecobee iPhone app last night, and thinking about its issues a bit further, I decided to add this new section to this blog post one day later because I realized something: this Vacation Mode bug is a bigger deal than I first thought, especially for those of us who own multiple ecobees. Basically, if a single thermostat in an account is in Vacation Mode, the iPhone app is essentially rendered useless. Now, before someone comments on this post to say this problem isn’t really that big a deal, and that the workaround is simply to take the ecobee out of Vacation Mode, make whatever changes I want, and then re-enable Vacation Mode (exactly as I did in the above example), let me ask you this: what happens if two or more of my ecobees are in Vacation Mode? That’s not a far-fetched scenario. My primary residence alone has three thermostats, so when I leave that house I’ll want to put all of those ecobees in Vacation Mode.

As a test, I used the web interface to put both the Cabin and Utah ecobees in Vacation Mode, then I opened the iPhone app. As expected, I got the Vacation Mode screen. However, I didn’t know if pressing OK would turn Vacation Mode off for both thermostats or just one of them, because nothing on the Vacation Mode screen displays any thermostat name.

It turns out that pressing OK must turn off Vacation Mode for whichever thermostat is set as the “default” – which happens to be my Utah thermostat. However, I couldn’t find anywhere in the web interface that allows me to choose which thermostat is the default, and therefore I can only assume that since the default isn’t chosen alphabetically (Cabin would comes before Gables), it must be whichever thermostat has the lower ID number in ecobee’s database (which would essentially be whichever one was first used to establish your ecobee.com account). My friend, business partner, and Chief Technology Officer, Steve Cook will back me up me when I say that type of “don’t worry about it – nobody will ever notice it” database sorting occurs all the time in Internet apps. But not in ours. Just ask SteveC how freakishly obsessive I am about database sorts being based on something that makes sense. It’s always extra work for him, but it keeps my OCD from flaring up. :) But I digress…

Once the Utah thermostat was out of Vacation Mode, I was able to control it as normal, and the web interface confirmed that the Cabin thermostat remained in Vacation Mode. When I used the iPhone app to click the yellow Thermostats icon and select “Cabin,” the Vacation Mode screen re-appeared (again without any thermostat name, but by process of elimination I knew it was the Cabin one, since the Utah one was still in Standard Mode). I pressed OK to disable Vacation Mode for the Cabin thermostat, and was then free to manage either thermostat using the app, as long as they were both in Standard Mode.

However, while I was able to use the iPhone app to take all thermostats out of Vacation Mode (ignoring the fact that it was impossible to know which one I was turning off until after the fact), the app only allowed me to put one of them back into Vacation Mode. Once I went through the steps in the app to enable Vacation Mode for one thermostat, the Vacation mode screen appeared and the app was useless. I was then then forced to use the web interface to re-enable Vacation Mode for any other thermostat on the account, which has to be done using a standard web browser, particularly since ecobee.com’s web interface doesn’t display properly in the iPhone’s Safari browser, and the options that are displayed are difficult to change.

Final Thoughts on this Install

Just as I did with my original review when I installed an ecobee in a newer HVAC system with a 2-stage gas furnace and an external A/C unit, I found connecting the ecobee Smart Thermostat to an older HVAC system with a heat pump and electric furnace to be very straightforward and well within the ability of the average DIY tinkerer. After a second install, I’m still a big fan of ecobee’s products, and plan to install three more of their thermostats in my primary residence.

I’m still tinkering with some of the setup options at the Cabin (how long a compressor delay to use, whether the HVAC system or the Thermostat should control the fan relay, the minimum outside temperature to allow the heat pump to turn on, etc.), but for now things seem to be working fine. I’m going to investigate whether I can wire the L wire into one of the sensor terminals on the interface unit (I believe it either alerts the system when the heat pump is in defrost, or maybe when AUX heat is in use) and I want to look into whether I could possibly connect the two electrostatic air filter wires that currently run upstairs to a separate box with LEDs for “Wash” and “Check” (it’s currently mounted next to  the thermostat, but I’d like to remove it altogether).

Once again, my verdict is that while the ecobee isn’t without its limitations and minor annoyances, I can still recommend it, with the hope that 2011 will bring some solutions to those few limitations – the big being, of course, direct remote management and a number of fixes to the iPhone app (which I’m happy to beta test for you, if anyone at ecobee is reading this).

Please feel free to leave questions or your own experiences with an ecobee Smart Thermostat in the comments. I’ll keep writing about mine, because they appear to be popular. According to my blog’s statistics, ecobee posts are the third most popular subject on my site, and are read by a few hundred people every day. Thanks, guys!

10/23/2011 Update:

Due to repeated requests about an Ecobee users discussion forum, I’ve started one myself. If you’re an Ecobee owner, enthusiast, or would just like to join the conversation, you can subscribe here:

Google Groups
Subscribe to Ecobee Users
Email:
Visit this group

Installing Ecobee Smart Thermostat #5

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I’ve already discussed most of the pros and cons of the product in my ecobee Smart Thermostat review, and detailed my experiences with installing a second ecobee unit and using the group features. I’ve also documented some of my frustrations with ecobee’s tethered device approach, especially in the rare cases when they have network issues.

But through it all, I’ve remained a staunch supporter of ecobee and their products. In fact, in addition to the thermostats I have installed in two of my vacation homes, I also had two ecobee smart thermostats in my primary residence, until last night when I finally got around to installing a third one on the upstairs HVAC unit that serves the top floor of my house. I’d been putting it off because that unit is in the attic, which involves a latter, itchy insulation, a tighter working area, and I was just too lazy to make it work. But at around 9PM last night, I got a wild hair and decided to just do it.

It had been a while since my last install, but after a few minutes of staring at the existing wiring, I was ready to go. I had the new control unit wired up in about 15 minutes, and then it took me another 10 minutes to get the old thermostat removed and the new one wired in place. By 9:40PM, the new ecobee was blowing cold air into the bedrooms.

I added the new ecobee to my ecobee.com account, and then fiddled with some of the programming settings via my iPhone. Speaking of which, ecobee’s 2011 update to their iPhone app (version 2.0) is great. The app seems much more stable, and addresses many of the issues I noted in my original review. The visual interface is very similar, with some very minor tweaks to the fonts, graphics, and shading. Here’s the new interface:

ecobee iPhone interface v2.0

ecobee iPhone interface v2.0

compared to the original interface:

ecobee iPhone AppI set the thermostat to keep the upstairs cool while I slept, and decided to mess with all the rest of the options in the morning. I did note, however, that because this ecobee had sitting in my shelf waiting to be installed for a while, it was running the older (v1.6) firmware. I hoped that it would alert itself to the ecobee.com Mothership overnight and receive the upgrade to v2.3.

This morning, I woke up and set about tinkering with the settings of my new thermostat via ecobee’s web interface. However, the firmware hadn’t been updated yet. I’m sure if I were a bit more patient, it would have happened eventually, but I’m not a patient person, so at 6:49AM Pacfic, I emailed ecobee tech support and asked if they’d manually push the upgrade. At 7:56AM, I got this email in reply:

Hello Steve, thank you for contacting ecobee support. We have looked into your account and have initiated the process of pushing a firmware upgrade to the requested Stat.

Best Regards
Customer Support  
T 1.877.932.6233 F 866.592.7344 W www.ecobee.com
ecobee | green made easy

Awesome. ecobee’s techs are on their game this morning. I keep hitting “refresh” on the web interface to see the new version number. :)

This was ecobee install #5 for me, and since I have no plans for additional real estate purchases in the near future, it’s probably my last one for a while. Unless one of my friends decides to buy one… in which case, I’ll gladly come and help you install it!

I still think it’s the best smart thermostat on the market right now.

Update 8/15/2011:

What are the chances that I’d be walking through the hallway with my cell phone at the precise moment the ecobee was upgrading itself to the latest firmware? :)

ecobee Firmware Update ScreenNow all five of my ecobees are running the latest firmware!

10/23/2011 Update:

Due to repeated requests about an Ecobee users discussion forum, I’ve started one myself. If you’re an Ecobee owner, enthusiast, or would just like to join the conversation, you can subscribe here:

Google Groups
Subscribe to Ecobee Users
Email:
Visit this group

Ecobee Discussion Forum for Owners, Installers, and Enthusiasts

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I’ve written a number of posts about the Ecobee Smart Thermostat since installing my first one in 2010. Since then, I’ve received a number of comments and emails asking if I knew of any discussion forums for Ecobee users. I didn’t, so I decided to launch my own using Google Groups.

The Ecobee Users group discussion forum is a resource to current and prospective Ecobee owners, and I’ve even been able to some of Ecobee Inc’s staff to lurk in there and help answer questions. :)

Please keep in mind, however, that this is an unofficial forum for Ecobee products (meaning we’re not affiliated with Ecobee Inc in any way). It’s just a place to discuss heir products, answer each others’ questions when possible, provide peer support, and promote the further use of these products.

If you’re an Ecobee owner, installer, employee, or enthusiast, we invite you to join the conversation!

Google Groups
Subscribe to Ecobee Users
Email:
Visit this group

DIY: Connecting a WaterBug Water Sensor to an Ecobee Smart Thermostat

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WaterBug Water SensorI’ve already written plenty of posts about my experiences with the Ecobee Smart Thermostat. To say I’m a fan would be putting it mildly. But today, I became an even bigger fan after extending the functionality of my Ecobee Smart Thermostat by connecting a water sensor to it.

My basement utility room floor has already been wet more than once. First, it was a sewer line backup (ew… I know…). Luckily, that was while the house was still under construction, and so nothing got ruined. Next, it was a leaky furnace… well, technically it was a clog in the pump that removes condensation buildup from inside the furnace, and that did ruin some carpet. I’m not going to wait around for it to get wet a third time — especially given the number of potential water hazards in that utility room: the main water inlet to the house, a hot water tank, a water softening system, a water pressure tank, and two furnaces — both with condensation pumps that could clog or fail.

For $20 or so, you can buy a battery operated water sensor that sits on the floor and beeps if it senses water. Boooooooorrrrrriiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnggggg. Readers of my blog will know that’s not how I roll. That approach is a low-tech gamble that a potential water leak will occur only when you’re home, and awake, and within hearing range of the alarm.

For just slightly more money (they’re $55 on Amazon) the WaterBug water sensor is still cheap insurance, and opens up a world of automation and alert possibilities. Here’s what it looks like:

Winland Electronics WaterBug Sensor

Winland Electronics WaterBug Sensor

It has six terminals across the front. From left to right they’re marked V+ / GND / S / S / C / NO / NC, which stand for voltage, ground, sensor, sensor, common, normally open, and normally closed. The sensor sits on the floor near where you want to check for water, with its four metal contacts touching the floor, and connects with two wires into the two “S” terminals on the unit. If water touches either set of metal connectors, it “closes” the circuit.

However, the WaterBug has no on-board alarm, so in order to alert you that it’s sensed water, you need to wire its common (C) normally open (NO) terminals into something that can accepts a dry contact input. When the unit senses water via the S terminals, it uses a relay to close those C and NO terminals, thereby “closing” the “normally open” connection. Incidentally, because the sensor is completely submersible, you could alternatively use the normally closed (NC) and common (C) terminals on the WaterBug in instances where you want water to be present, and trigger an alert if something runs dry or the water drops below a certain level. For around $50, it’s surprisingly flexible.

Most people wire water sensors to the dry contact inputs in their home alarm systems. I do intend to do that that eventually, but I first wanted to test out the dry contact inputs on my Ecobee Smart Thermostat, so I wired then into the IN1+ and IN1- terminals on my thermostat’s equipment interface (the Ecobee actually supports up to two dry contacts).

The only problem remaining was figuring out how to get power to the WaterBug, since you have to buy a power adapter separately. But like I said before, it’s extremely versatile, and can accept anywhere from 8-28 volts — either direct current (DC) or alternating current (AC). Because the Ecobee thermostat receives 24V AC power from the furnace, I simply killed the power to my furnace (thereby killing the power to the Ecobee) and piggy-backed a set of wires from the Ecobee equipment interface power and ground terminal, then connected them to the V+ and GND terminals on the WaterBug. When I turned the furnace back on, both the Ecobee and WaterBug powered up!

Configuring the Ecobee to work with the WaterBug was a snap. I simply named the input in the Ecobee’s installation menu, and left it on the default of “normally open” when prompted for the contact type.

I tested my new setup by placing the WaterBug’s sensor in a bowl of water. Because the three thermostats in this house are grouped together, all three of them (one on each floor) immediately started beeping and displaying a message that the water sensor was “closed.” I also immediately received three emails, one from each thermostat, with that same alert (I’ve already reported a feature request to Ecobee to ask if it’s possible to configure it so only one email alert gets triggered when grouped thermostats receive a contact closure).

After acknowledging the alert on one of my Ecobee’s screens, the beeping stopped, but the message “Basmnt Water sensor closed” still appeared on the screen of the thermostat connected to the WaterBug. I removed the sensor from the bowl of water and the message disappeared. Success!

So if you’re an Ecobee owner who wants to squeeze a bit more utility out of your already amazing thermostat, consider dropping another 50-or-so bucks on a device that allows you to detect water leaks. If a leak ever does occur, that $50 will be money well spent if you catch the source early.

My next project with the WaterBug will be to connect and configure it as a wireless alarm contact (it’s too far away from my DSC alarm panel to hard wire easily). That way, it will still alert my Ecobees, but my alarm monitoring company will call and text me, just in case I’m not at home or checking email when a leak happens. After that, I may look at connecting the WaterBug to an automated shut off valve that cuts water to the house automatically when it senses a leak.

If you’ve got questions, comments, or interesting ideas of how to use (or how you’ve used) a water sensor in a home automation application, I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

How to Wire a Humidifier to an Ecobee Smart Thermostat

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In my original review of my very first Ecobee Smart Thermostat, I described how I had wired my Ecobee’s equipment interface to my whole-house evaporative humidifier at the Utah house. Because my furnace’s control board had a 24V HUM connector, I used that connector to help activate the humidifier. The problem, however, is that the furnace would only energize the 24V HUM terminal when the system called for heat, meaning I couldn’t run the humidifier with A/C or with the furnace fan alone.

So my updated method wiring a whole house humidifier is as now follows:

1. Bridge the R/H terminal on the Ecobee Equipment Interface to the ACC1r terminal on the Ecobee Equipment Interface

Wiring for a humidifier on the Ecobee Equipment Interface

Wiring for a humidifier on the Ecobee Equipment Interface

The short green wire above connects the R/H terminal on the Ecobee’s EI (the lettering is hidden by the wire) down to the ACC1r terminal. This provides 24V power from the R/H terminal to the ACC1r terminal.

2. Connect the ACC1 terminal on the Ecobee Equipment Interface to one of the humidifier leads

The slightly darker red wire (on the right) in the above photo connects the Ecobee EI’s ACC1 terminal to one of the low voltage trigger leads on the humidifier (it doesn’t matter which one). I just used a wire nut to connect, and then insulated with electrical tape:

Wiring to the humidifier's low voltage trigger leads

Wiring to the humidifier’s low voltage trigger leads

3. Connect the 24V/COM terminal on the furnace’s control board to the other humidifier lead

The other low voltage trigger lead on the humidifier connects to the COM 24V terminal on the furnace’s control board. That’s a very popular terminal in my furnace, so to ensure a solid connection for all the devices that need it, I attached a single wire to the terminal, and then wire-nutted that wire to the other COM wires. The brown wire in the following photo connects to the remaining lead on the humidifier:

The humidifier's other lead connects to the COM 24V terminal on the furnace control board.

The humidifier’s other lead connects to the COM 24V terminal on the furnace control board.

4. Configure settings on the Ecobee thermostat

In addition to running the humidifier while heating, if you want your humidifier to also be allowed to run while cooling,  or simply with the fan, you need to set the “Humidify only while Heating” setting in the thermostat’s Installation Settings / Equipment section to “No.”

This setting lets your Ecobee run the humidifier during heat, cool, or with the fan only.

This setting lets your Ecobee run the humidifier during heat, cool, or with the fan only.

And that’s how I connect a whole house humidifier to my Ecobee Smart thermostat! My humidifer is powered by a standard 120V wall plug, and is triggered when the two low voltage leads are energized.

When the Ecobee wants to turn on the humidifier, it “closes” the circuit between ACC1 and ACC1r. Because the ACC1r terminal gets a constant 24V from the equipment interface’s R/H terminal, closing the circuit between ACC1 and ACC1r completes a 24V circuit on the humidifier trigger wires, which then turns on the humidifier.

Your wiring needs may be slightly different, depending on the triggering needs of your humidifier and/or whether or not your furnace board runs on 24V. If you have a 120V control board, you may need to use a 120V to 24V transformer and wire it between the control board, the Ecobee EI, and your 24V triggered humidifier.

As always, I welcome your feedback, questions, and comments below!

Installing a Water Pressure Gauge and Hot Water Feed to a Whole House Humidifier

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The climate in Utah is particularly arid, both in the summer and the winter, and so I had my builder install a Lennox whole-house humidifier as part of our HVAC system in the Utah house. It helps keep us feeling comfortable at lower temperatures, meaning we save money on heating.

The Lennox Healthy Climate HCWP3-18 humidifier we use is a “water pad” system, meaning that when our Ecobee WiFi thermostat calls for humidity, a solenoid valve on the humidifier opens and allows water to drip down through an expanded metal water pad, while a large fan blows the water droplets into the furnace duct, where the water vaporizes into the air that’s rushing up through the furnace and eventually out of the floor vents throughout the house. Here’s a photo of my humidifier with the fan housing removed:

Whole house humidifier with fan housing removed.

Whole house humidifier with fan housing removed.

This Lennox unit been a reliable and effective way of increasing the humidity throughout the house, which not only makes us feel more comfortable but also helps leather, wood, and other “soft” materials wear better because they don’t dry out.

A couple of days ago, however, I was participating in a discussion on the Ecobee thermostat mailing list, and we started discussing whether it’s more effective to use hot water or cold water in this type of humidifier. The general consensus on the mailing list is that the hot water side is more effective, since vaporizing hot water is much easier than cold. A quick web search of humidifier manufacturer instructions confirmed it: it’s almost always preferable to use hot water in a water pad system.

And as Murphy’s law would have it, the plumber (or HVAC professional) who installed my unit plumbed it to the cold side. To make matters worse, he used a saddle valve to tap into the cold line to divert water to the humidifier. Saddle valves are no longer
“up to code” in a number of countries (including Canada), as well as more and more states in this country. They can clog easily, especially in states with hard water like Utah, and they are generally more prone to leaks… which is a bad thing in a vacation house that’s not lived in all the time.

So I saw this as an opportunity to do two plumbing projects in one sitting. First, I’d remove the old saddle valve from the cold side, cut out the piece of copper pipe that the saddle valve had pierce, and put in a proper T fitting, and install a permanent pressure gauge. I’ve always wanted a pressure gauge, for not other reason than I think they look cool.

Second, I’d tap into the hot water feed coming off the 2nd water heater, also using a proper T fitting, and connect a small shut off valve that feeds the humidifier water line. That way, I can shut off the water to the humidifier without having to shut off anything else, which will come in handy when I (inevitably) need to replace the humidifiers solenoid at some point in the future.

What really excited me about this project, however, is that I’d finally found an excuse to use what I think is one of the best advances in plumbing since flushing toilets: SharkBite fittings. If you’re unfamiliar with them, check them out the next time you’re at a hardware store. They make joining copper or CPVC pipe a breeze. No solder, no threads, no tools. Just slide in the pipe, and it’s connected and sealed.

I dropped by BJ Plumbing Supply in Orem, showed the guys photos of my current setup, and started gathering all the parts I’d need. The guys there are always friendly and helpful, and their prices are no higher than the big box stores — or even online sources I’ve found. If you have a local plumbing supply store, get to know the guys there. They will save you time and money, and are happy to pass along free advice.

Getting Started

Once I got home with all the parts, I started by shutting off the main water to the house:

Main water valve shut off

Main water valve shut off

Next, I went into the utility room and snapped this “before” photo:

This is how the contractor installed the cold water feed to the humidifier

This is how the contractor installed the cold water feed to the humidifier

The pipe with the black tape wrapped around it is the cold water line. Following that pipe down in the direction of water flow, you can see the saddle valve that feeds the humidifier, followed by the shutoff valve for the inlet to the water heater, then the white expansion tank I recently replaced. The line then feeds into the first water heater (which does the majority of the heating) and then feeds warm water out of the first water heater into the the inlet on the second water heater, when then feeds hot water up through the pipe on the left side of the photo.

There’s a bathroom on the other side of the utility room wall, so I turned the sink faucet on cold and the shower faucet on hot, to help bleed pressure from the system. I turned both water heaters’ gas valves to PILOT, then then shut off the yellow-handled cold water  inlet valve feeding the first water heater, and used a hose to drain some water out of each water heater. Once the shower and faucet had both stopped running, I new that both the hot and cold sides were de-pressurized.

Cold Side First

I removed the 1/8″ compression fitting that fed into the humidifier from the existing saddle valve:

Existing saddle valve with 1/8" compression fitting removed

Existing saddle valve with 1/8″ compression fitting removed

Then I used a flat head screwdriver to remove the saddle valve from the cold water pipe. I had brought a brown Tupperware container and a towel to help catch any water, nothing dripped out when the valve was completely removed:

Cold water copper pipe with saddle valve removed

Cold water copper pipe with saddle valve removed

Having never used (or removed) a saddle valve before, I was surprised at how small the hole was. I decided that it could very easily get clogged with minerals or sediment, and made a silent vow to never use a saddle valve in any future projects!

With the saddle valve removed, I used a Pasco mini pipe cutter ($5 on Amazon) to make a clean cut just “downstream” of the saddle valve’s hole:

Yes, you can use a hacksaw, but a pipe cutter is preferable.

Yes, you can use a hacksaw, but a pipe cutter is preferable.

The main advantage of a pipe cutter over a hacksaw or a Sawz-All is that the cut is always clean, and the pipe stays perfectly round:

First cut done - and clean!

First cut done – and clean!

After a short learning curve on the first cut, the second one to remove about 2″ of pipe on the other side of the saddle valve hole was a snap:

Both pipe cuts completed.

Both pipe cuts completed.

The next part was what I’d been waiting for: installing the 3/4″ Shark Bite T fitting. It really was a simple as pulling the pipes apart (I have flexible copper on the water heater side, so making room was easy), attaching the fitting in the middle, and pushing inward on both pipes. At $20 each, they’re not super cheap, but they’re totally worth it. Not only are they easy to install, but you can re-use on other projects them later by taking them apart with cheap plastic tool that looks like an orange letter C. It seriously took about 12 seconds to push this baby into place:

My first Shark Bite fitting installed easily!

My first Shark Bite fitting installed easily!

Next up was wrapping some Blue Monster Teflon tape around all the threads of the two bushings I needed to reduce the 3/4″ outlet of the Shark Bite fitting down to  1/4″ for the pressure gauge, and then screwing them all together:

Blue Monster Teflon tape is my new fav!

Blue Monster Teflon tape is my new fav!

The final step for the cold side was to screw in the gauge, tighten it down. Because I had the shut off valve closed just “downstream” of  my new gauge, I decided to turn the houses main water back on so I could see if everything worked… without leaks. I panicked when I turned the house’s main water back on, because I immediately heard water gushing!

But then I remembered that I’d left turned the bathroom’s cold faucet open. Phew! Everything was working fine. No leaks anywhere, and the gauge was showing 60 PSI of water pressure:

Pressure gauge showing pressure... with no leaks!

Pressure gauge showing pressure… with no leaks!

Now for the Hot Side

Emboldened by my early success, I moved over to the hot side. First, I used my handy dandy pipe cutter to remove a 3″ section of copper pipe:

Hot side pipe cut, ready for the T fitting.

Hot side pipe cut, ready for the T fitting.

Then I put Blue Monster Teflon tape on all the reducing bushings and the new 1/8″ stainless hot water shutoff valve threads, and assembled them all into the Shark Bite T fitting:

All hot side fittings taped and assembled.

All hot side fittings taped and assembled.

Installing this second Shark Bite fitting was just as easy as the first. Click, click, push!

Hot side fitting installed!

Hot side fitting installed!

The final step was to connect the existing compression fitting from the humidifier’s copper feed to the new hot shutoff valve:

Hot water feed to humidifier connected!

Hot water feed to humidifier connected!

I opened the inlet valve to the water heaters, crossed my fingers, and waited for a leak. It never came. Everything worked perfectly on the first try!

The "after" shot with new fittings, valve, and gauge installed.

The “after” shot with new fittings, valve, and gauge installed.

I temporarily clicked up the humidity setting on my Ecobee WiFi thermostat using my smart phone, and waited to hear the humidifier kick on. After a few moments, it did… and I heard water flowing and felt the copper feed tube warm up. My humidifier was now using hot water!

Final Thoughts

So does the hot water feed to the humidifier really make that much difference? Honestly, it’s too early for me to tell. If it does, it’s probably minor, but it is technically the preferred way to do. If the previous install hadn’t been using a saddle valve, I may have been less motivated to go through the effort. But since replacing the saddle valve required pipe cutting anyway, I figured “why not?”.

One thing I did notice, however, is that the excess water flowing from the humidifier’s drain pipe is cold. That makes sense, since the the large fan blowing on the hot water is like blowing on hot soup to cool it off, and heat is transferred into the furnace’s airflow.

In total, this project took about 20 minutes, and cost me about $70 (2 x Shark Bite T fittings @ $20 each, $12 for the pressure gauge, $8 for the stainless angle valve, and another $10 in assorted brass bushings). And even if the hot water doesn’t make that much difference in humidity, it’s still worth the expense to eliminate a potentially troublesome saddle valve from the system.

As always, I welcome your comments, questions, and feedback below.

If you liked this post, you can also check out how I wired my Ecobee WiFi thermostat to my humidifier in this post, and if you want to monitor for leaks in your utility room (if you have a faulty saddle valve, for example), then you can also check how I connected a WaterBug water sensor to my Ecobee.


Product Review: Remotely Controlling an Electric Water Heater with a Leviton Zigbee Module

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One of my favorite features of my Ecobee WiFi thermostats is the ability to heat or cool a location so that it’s nice and comfortable by the time we walk in the door. For example, our furnace and heat pump at our cabin both use electricity, so I save money on my electric bill by allowing a very wide range of internal temperatures (50F – 90F ) when we’re not there, and only using electricity to heat or cool it right before before we arrive (to make it comfortable) and while we’re there (to keep it comfortable).

Recently, by combining one of Ecobee’s $25 add-on ZigBee Modules with a Leviton 73A00-3ZB wireless load control module ($230 retail, approx $200 street price), I was able to extend that energy savings and convenience to the cabin’s electric water heater.

The Ecobee ZigBee module is primarily designed to control Ecobee’s own branded Smart Plugs, but also enables the thermostat to control a wide number of other ZigBee home automation devices:

Ecobee's ZigBee module allows you to interface with other ZigBee home automation devices

Ecobee’s ZigBee module allows you to interface with other ZigBee home automation devices

The Leviton Wireless Load Control Module (which is sold by Leviton, but the labelling seems to imply that it’s built by the highly respected home automation experts at HAI) acts as a remote-controlled switch for power-hungry electric devices… such as a 240V electric water heater.

"Leviton" Wireless Load Control Module

“Leviton” Wireless Load Control Module

Wiring the control module to the water heater was pretty straightforward. First, I flipped the water heater’s breaker to kill power to the circuit, then disconnected the hot (black) and neutral (white) wires that ran through the metal flex-conduit from the wall and were wired to the to the water heater’s hot and neutral wires.

The control module has three wires: black (hot), white (neutral), and orange (switched load). So I connected black on the Leviton to black (hot) from the panel, joined all three neutrals together (panel, control module, and water heater), then wire-nutted the the orange wire from the Leviton to the water heater’s black wire. Had there been a junction box back on the wall, I probably would have wired the box there. But since the Romex ran straight from the wall and through the conduit, I did it this way.

Wiring the Leviton Control Module

Wiring the Leviton Control Module

I put back the protective panel and cleaned everything up with the conduit, then used sheet metal screws to mounted the Leviton box to the top of the water heater, and made sure there was a drip loop:

Hardware install done

Hardware install done

Adding the device to the local ZigBee network was easy. Similar to setup of a Bluetooth device, I set the Ecobee thermostat to “find” mode, then used a magnet to activate the Leviton and make it “visible” to the ZigBee network. It took about 30 seconds, and then it was “seen” by the thermostat.

When the ZigBee module is installed, a couple new icons appear on the thermostat, including one that says “Plugs.”

New "Plugs" icon on Ecobee

New “Plugs” icon on Ecobee

Pressing the Plugs icon revealed the ZigBee plugs that the thermostat could “see:”

Available ZigBee plugs

Available ZigBee plugs

Pressing the outlet icon (I named my plug “Laundry Water Heater” because I actually have two in this house), exposed the control options for the Leviton:

Control options for the ZigBee control module

Control options for the ZigBee control module

It’s clear I could get fancy with the schedule, but for this application, I just wanted the ability to be able to remotely turn the water heater on before arrival, so we’d have hot water when we walked in the door. The Ecobee interface allows great control from the thermostat itself, but that’s not this useful in my case. Remote control is available via the Ecobee website interface, but not available from their mobile app. That’s a big black eye for the Ecobee in my book. Any device that has an app and touts remote control abilities simply must have the ability to perform those remote control options via the app.

The Ecobee allows separate Wake, Home, Away, and Sleep scheduling for each ZigBee plug, which is a great feature. Were I using a setup like this in my primary residence, I’d probably configure a schedule for the water heater so that it doesn’t heat in the middle of the night, thereby saving more energy and money.

Another drawback with this setup is that it would be nice to be able to track power usage of the switched load (the water heater in this case) via the control module. At first, I thought it might be a compatibility problem between the Ecobee and the Leviton device, but with some more research I think I’ve concluded that the Leviton doesn’t report power usage. That’s a shame — that’s very useful info.

The bottom line is that for $25 you can turn your Ecobee into a basic ZigBee control unit (that’s a great deal) but that you have to spend $200 more for the Leviton unit if you want to control a 240V high amp device like a water heater. Controlling a 120V device (such as a lamp) is a lot cheaper, and I suspect that a good chunk of the high price for the Leviton piece is due to its need to support higher than standard loads.

The power is ridiculously cheap out at the cabin (2.5 cents per kw/hour) so it will take a while for this investment to pay off vs. just leaving the water heater on all the time. Although, there’s some admittedly additional value just for the geek points of being able to remotely turn on  your water heater so you can have a hot shower upon arrival. :)

The Leviton does exactly what it should do, and does it well. The $200 price tag seems a bit cheap, but it doesn’t have much competition… so I supposed they get to control the price of admission for now. The Ecobee also performs its part in this setup reasonably well, but the absence of smartphone app control of the remote devices is a big red mark for me. If they fix that, I’ll come back and edit this post to give them full marks.

As always, I welcome your questions and comments below!

 

New ecobee3 thinks it’s time to leave the Nest

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While the Nest smart thermostat has fans of Apple-inspired designs swooning, it wasn’t the first smart thermostat. Toronto-based ecobee is actually the pioneer in this industry, and had two iterations of smart thermostats (the original “Smart” and the “Si”) on the market well before Nest (and now Honeywell) jumped into the fray. Like most pioneers, ecobee took a few arrows in its back. But now it’s firing back — and it looks like the arrows are aimed directly at Nest.

The new ecobee3

The new ecobee3

Announced this morning, the ecobee3 is a complete re-design of ecobee’s former flagship Smart thermostat, while also including some of the improvements from its baby brother the Si. Last week, I spoke with ecobee CEO Stuart Lombard and got a preview of ecobee’s new flagship product, including an overview of the four-prong design philosophy behind it.

First, the product had to be beautiful. ecobee hired San Francisco-based industrial design firm Lunar to make sure the ecobee3 is something you want to have hanging on your wall.

Second, it had to be easy to use. A 3.5″ color touch-screen will certainly help with that goal, as will the intuitive interface.

Third, it had to save energy. The ecobee3 still knows all the energy saving tricks of its predecessors, but also boasts a few new ones. Wireless sensors allow the ecobee3 to focus on reaching your desired heat or cool setpoints based on where you are in the house, and when you’re there. Their economizer feature will allow you to draw cooler air from outside the house, rather than run your air conditioning. That’s like air conditioning your house for free.

Fourth and finally, the ecobee3 needed to be reliable and easy to install. It runs on standard 24V power (just like your HVAC system) and comes with a Power Extender kit that allows it to reliably “steal” power from your furnace. Another improvement over its predecessor is the ecobee3′s ability to auto-configure based on how you wire it. I imagine that will drastically reduce the number of phone calls to ecobee’s tech support lines.

The list of features and specs goes on, and I’ll be sure to include them all in my full product review (coming later this week). But even with just the launch info on ecobee’s website, and the following new launch video, it’s clear that ecobee has decided that it’s time for customers to leave the Nest… and join the Hive.

ecobee3 First Look and Unboxing Video

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I’m still tinkering with the new ecobee3 smart thermostat, and will have a full review posted soon.

In the meantime, you can check out my initial reaction in this unboxing video (in TWO parts):

Part 1:

Part 2:

Stay tuned for the full review soon!

ecobee 3 Review

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In 2009, Toronto-based ecobee released the very first “smart” thermostat  and called it, not surprisingly, the “ecobee Smart” (see my original review of the Smart from 2010). Since then, they’ve followed up with the ecobee Si (which I call the Smart’s “little brother”), along with a handful of firmware and mobile app updates for both products.

Earlier this week, ecobee announced and started taking pre-orders for their new flagship product: the ecobee3, which starts shipping on September 29, 2014. However, calling the $249 ecobee3 a mere “upgrade” of the original Smart would be a massive understatement. The ecobee 3 feels more like a “revolution” than an “evolution.” There’s no doubt that many of the ecobee3′s new features (along with ecobee’s new marketing approach) are squarely aimed at stealing back precious market share from Google’s Nest… as well as parrying Honeywell’s recent entry into the smart thermostat space with the Lyric.

So now, after a few days of putting it through its paces, I’m proud to publish the world’s very first product review of the new ecobee3 smart thermostat.

The new ecobee3 and remote sensor

The new ecobee3 and remote sensor

In the spirit of full disclosure, you should know that I already own five of ecobee’s original Smart units. I have them deployed across three different houses (one on each of the floors of my primary residence near Seattle, one in a log home in Eastern Washington, and one in a vacation home in Utah). But before anyone accuses me of being a fanboy, I’d invite you to read my previous ecobee posts. They’re not all sugar and spice, and I’m downright critical in more than one instance. As with all my product reviews, I call ‘em like I see ‘em… and this review will be no different.

I will, however, admit that my past experience living with ecobee products does give me a slight advantage over other potential reviewers (suck it, Engadget) in that I’m intimately familiar with all of the existing features that were carried from previous models forward into the new ecobee3. This experience allows me to focus my attention on the newer features of the ecobee3, and speak not only to those who might be considering an upgrade from a traditional thermostat, but also previous ecobee customers who might be deciding whether the upgrade is worth the price of admission.

So let’s get going.

From Plain Brown Box to Sexy Black “Event”

As I hinted before, the ecobee3 represents a shift in the way ecobee has decided to market their products. Previously, their first gen units came in very plain, very brown, very boring cardboard boxes — perfect for shipping en masse to HVAC supply houses. That’s no longer the case. While ecobee certainly plans to continue supporting the HVAC contractors who were happy to sell and install their products, they’ve made the decision that in order to remain competitive, they’ve got to go direct to retail. Their new packaging (and from what I understand, their upcoming new marketing campaigns) clearly reflects that shift. Following the packaging trend that Apple began with its earliest iPods, unboxing the ecobee3 is now an “event.”

ecobee3 retail box - coming to a shelf near you!

ecobee3 retail box – coming to a shelf near you!

After being sworn to secrecy by ecobee, I got my hands on a review unit a couple of days before Tuesday’s product announcement, and filmed a two-part unboxing video (which I posted on my YouTube channel). For a quick look at what’s inside the box,  just press play:

First Impressions

From a purely visual perspective, everyone in my family that’s seen the ecobee3 has ooh’d and ahh’d over it. It looks so much better than the original ecobee Smart. With help from SFO-based industrial design rockstars Lunar, the redesigned ecobee3 is sleek, modern, pretty… and in the eyes of a geek like me, I have to declare it “downright sexy.”

Is it better looking on your wall than the Nest or Lyric? That will have to be your call. But there’s no denying it looks good. In fact, my across-the-street neighbor (who has an original ecobee Smart) saw the ecobee3 on my wall today, and begged me to call ecobee and hook him up with one, too (uh… that’s probably not gonna happen).

Installing the ecobee3

I’m happy to report that for the majority of users, installing the ecobee3 is an easy DIY project. If your existing thermostat runs on 5 wires (most likely red, white, yellow, green, and blue), then life is good — simply kill the power to your furnace, disconnect your old thermostat, and push the appropriately-colored wires into the clearly marked quick-connect wiring terminals on the ecobee3′s wiring harness, like this:

Standard 5-wire connections to the ecobee3

Standard 5-wire connections to the ecobee3

Hidden by the wires in the above photo is a level, built-in into the mounting base (just like the Nest). I opted to temporarily use the optional larger trim plate, which covers the old screw holes left by my previous thermostat. The larger trim piece is also big enough to cover the footprint of most thermostats (including the original ecobee Smart), which is handy if you had a lazy painter. My painter isn’t lazy, but my old screw holes would be visible without the trim piece, so until I get around to filling the holes and touching up the paint, the larger trim piece comes in handy.

For homeowners who may only have 4 wires running to their thermostat, the ecobee3 comes with a free Power Extender Kit (PEK), which I’m guessing “piggybacks” (the geek term is “multi-plexes”) the blue “C” wire onto one of the other wires, allowing you to reliably power the ecobee3 without having to run a fifth wire to the thermostat. Even though I had 5 wires available in my house, I temporarily wired up the PEK just to try it out.

The five wires on one side of the PEK connect to your furnace’s terminal block (where a traditional thermostat would be previously wired):

5 wires on the PEK connect to your furnace's terminal...

5 wires on the PEK connect to your furnace’s terminal…

Your existing four wires from your thermostat location just push in to the other side:

Standard 4 wire thermostat connections go in this side

Standard 4 wire thermostat connections go in this side

Press the two sides together (no tools necessary), and you’ve magically got four wires acting like five! It’s a pretty slick solution, which worked perfectly when I tested it, and I’m glad to see that ecobee3 includes the PEK this at no charge in the box, rather than as an upsell or purchased add-on.

With the wiring and wall mounting squared away (it seriously took me less than 10 minutes using only a screwdriver), I was ready to push the ecobee3 into the wiring harness and admire my handiwork:

ecobee3 wall unit installed and ready for action

ecobee3 wall unit installed and ready for action

My wife said it reminded here of the “Eve” robot from Pixar’s Wally… and I can totally see her point. :)

Eve would probably approve of the ecobee3's looks

Eve would probably approve of the ecobee3′s looks

Initial Setup of the ecobee3

With everything installed, I ran downstairs to the utility room to flip the furnace’s power switch back on, then sprinted upstairs with my fingers crossed, hoping I’d wired everything correctly. I was greeted by what I interpreted as a good sign:

ecobee3 start-up screen

ecobee3 start-up screen

A few moments later, the ecobee3 displayed the following screen, informing me it had correctly auto-detected my 5-wire connection:

The ecobee3 auto-configures based on which wiring terminals you connect

The ecobee3 auto-configures based on which wiring terminals you connect

I followed the simple prompts, answering simple “Yes/No” questions to confirm that I hadn’t wired in any additional accessories (such as a humidifier, dehumidifier, or ventilator) and that I prefer Fahrenheit over Celsius.

The next screen confirmed my “basic” equipment configuration of single stage heating, single stage cooling, and that I wanted the thermostat to control the fan (as opposed to the furnace):

The ecobee3 "guessed" my configuration correctly on the first try.

The ecobee3 “guessed” my configuration correctly on the first try.

It was at this point that I noticed a couple major improvements of the ecobee3′s touch-screen and interface vs. the first gen ecobee Smart. The 3.5″ full color 320 x 480 pixel LCD touch screen looks like it belongs on a current-gen iPhone, and the touch interface (which was a big complaint of mine on the older units) works exactly like I want it to– which is to say, it feels exactly like an iPhone. The menus and screens are subtly, but nicely, animated — a theme which also continues in the ecobee3′s normal operating mode.

As I continued, more setup screens asked me to choose a name for this ecobee3 (I chose the highly original “Main Floor” – since I am also running two original Smarts on the top floor and in the basement). Next, it asked about my ideal home temperatures during the winter and summer — presumably to select an initial set-point for the default heating and cooling programs. In an effort to maximize energy savings, the ecobee3 suggested something in the 69F – 71F range for winter, and 74F – 78F for summer… which confirmed to me that nobody at ecobee has ever met my wife. I chose values of 74F and 76F respectively — which are far more likely to ensure domestic tranquility at the Jenkins household.

Subsequent setup screens asked if I wanted to enable the “Smart Home/Away” feature (I said “yes” – but more on that later), connect to my Wi-Fi network, sign up for a free account on ecobee.com, and associate my new ecobee3 with my account (I found it easiest to do this via the updated version of the free ecobee iPhone app).

The very last setup screen prompted me to configure my time zone as Los Angeles -8 DST… which produced the sole hiccup in the entire configuration process.  Even though I’d selected the correct time zone (and confirmed it on the final screen), the clock still showed three hours fast. I was able to fix it by logging into the web interface (more on that later, too), and re-select the Pacific time zone. In fairness, this is a pre-release review unit, and so I wouldn’t be surprised to see this bug ironed out by an upcoming firmware release in time for launch.

The ecobee3 in Normal Operating Mode

With the setup wizard complete, my ecobee3′s home screen finally popped into view, and informed me it was calibrating itself:

ecobee3 in "calibration" mode

ecobee3 in “calibration” mode

The icons and numbers on the initial home screen informed me of the following:

  • the system was in cooling mode (hence, the snowflake)
  • the humidity was 57%
  • the cooling set-point was 76F
  • the system was currently calibrating
  • it hadn’t downloaded current weather yet (based on the “frowny” cloud)

After a few more minutes, the ecobee3 had successfully finished calibrating and downloading weather data, so my screen now looked like this, with accurate temps and no more frowny cloud:

Post-calibration ecobee3 home screen

Post-calibration ecobee3 home screen

The first button I pushed was the weather icon in the bottom middle, which produced a weather forecast for my area:

ecobee3's weather forecast data at the touch of a button

ecobee3′s weather forecast data at the touch of a button

I was glad to see the weather forecast feature carried over from the first-gen Smart thermostat, since touching the kitchen thermostat was the principal source for everyone’s weather information in our house. One thing I do miss, however, is the current outdoor temperature included as part of the weather icon (and always visible on the home screen.) The ecobee3′s interface now requires you to touch the weather icon to pop-up the current temperature and forecast. I’m hoping someone at ecobee reads this review and convinces the dev team to include the outdoor temperature as part of the home screen icon, just as it was on the older unit. Or perhaps that’s already in the works, and it just didn’t make it into this review unit (crosses fingers). Admittedly, it’s a minor annoyance, but I’d wager that other owners of the original ecobee Smart will also miss that convenient mini-feature.

Back on the home screen, sliding a finger on the set-point on the right side of the home screen had the expected effect: swiping upward raised the set-point, while swiping downward lowered it. Much like a traditional thermostat, this placed the ecobee3 in “Hold” mode indefinitely (which is the default setting for an override). However, indefinite holds are the enemy of any smart thermostat’s energy saving goals, so I quickly popped into the preferences menu to select a default “Hold” action from one of the following five options:

Changing the default Hold behavior on the ecobee3

Changing the default Hold behavior on the ecobee3

My preferred option is to decide at the time of the change, so that’s what I selected. Now, whenever I override the system, it asks what type of Hold I want. To test my new setting, at exactly 2:42PM I lowered my set-point from 76F to 73F, and then told the thermostat I wanted the “Hold” to ask for 2 hours. The home screen reflected my wishes like this:

2 hour Hold override on the ecobee3

2 hour Hold override on the ecobee3

More button mashing back on the home screen took me deeper into the bowels of the ecobee3′s menus and configuration options. But in all honesty, there was nothing I really needed to do in there for the moment. Although while poking around, I did recognize many welcome features from the original ecobee Smart such as vacation mode, reminders and alerts, editing options for Home / Away / Sleep programs, etc. More on those features later.

Using the Remote Sensor

During the entire install, setup, and tinkering phases of my evaluation, the small remote sensor (one of which is included with the ecobee3) sat impatiently on the kitchen counter… silently crying out “Pick me! Pick me! I can make it even more awesome!”

So I picked it up, turned it over (noting the letters BBPZ on the back), and pulled out the paper strip that was preventing the battery from making contact inside the unit:

ecobee Remote Sensor

ecobee Remote Sensor

Within seconds, this screen popped up on the ecobee3, prompting me to pair the sensor named “BBPZ” with my new thermostat:

Remote sensor pairing screen

Remote sensor pairing screen

Next, I was prompted to pick a name for the sensor. Since my plan was to place it in my office, that’s what I picked:

Naming the remote sensor

Naming the remote sensor

The final screen confirmed I’d done everything right:

ecobee remote sensor pairing complete

ecobee remote sensor pairing complete

I snapped the solid battery cover off the back of the remote sensor and snapped the clear stand into its place…

ecobee remote sensor stand

ecobee remote sensor stand

… and placed it on the desk in my office, facing my chair. The ecobee3 ships with one remote sensor included, and additional 2-packs are available for $80.

Follow Me Feature

As hinted at by the “success” screen while pairing the remote sensor with the ecobee3, adding a remote sensor to the system allows for a new feature — one that is unique among the current generation of smart thermostats. If you enable the “Follow Me” feature on the thermostat, the ecobee3 will average the temperature of any sensors that detect recent motion. For example, since the ecobee3 wall unit is mounted in the kitchen, its motion sensors can “see” motion the kitchen — as well as into the connected family room. And since I placed the remote sensor in my office (where it’s always a few degrees warmer than the kitchen during the summer), the remote sensor can “see” motion in my office.

With “Follow Me” enabled, here’s what would happen in the following three situations:

  1. If my wife’s in the family room, but I’m not in my office, the ecobee3 will ignore the temperature in my office and only rely on the temperature reported in the kitchen to make decisions about when to heat or cool.
  2. If I’m in my office, but nobody’s in the kitchen, the ecobee3 will ignore the temperature in the kitchen and only rely on the temperature reported in my office to make heat/cool decisions.
  3. If my wife’s in the family room while I’m also in my office, the ecobee3 will average both reported temperatures. Because it’s always 2-4 degrees hotter in my office vs. the kitchen, the ecobee3 will allow the kitchen to be cooled slightly lower than the set-point, which will allow my office to be cooled slightly higher than the set point… but my office will still be cooler (and therefore more comfortable) than it otherwise would be.

It’s been warm in Seattle today, and as I sit here in my office typing this article, I can absolutely tell that it’s cooler in here than normal, and I have to give the innovative new “Follow Me” feature the credit.

Smart Home / Away Feature

Another new feature for the ecobee3 is Smart Home / Away. Quite simply, using its built-in motion sensor, if the ecobee3 senses that you’re home during your scheduled “Away” period, or that you’re away during a scheduled “Home” period, it will automatically override the schedule to maximize comfort and savings. Also, if you have any remote sensors installed (or any additional ecobee3 thermostats in the same house), they’ll also participate in the motion sensing when determining whether you’re Home or Away.

New Smartphone App

Along with the ecobee3, ecobee’s mobile app also got a major overhaul for this latest release. Available for iPhone and Android, the new ecobee app mirrors the sleek, dark interface of the thermostat’s touch-screen, and gives you access to all the same info:

ecobee's smart phone app interface looks just like the touch-screen

ecobee’s smart phone app interface looks just like the touch-screen

The ecobee mobile app also allows access to nearly all of the features, programming, and configuration options as the touch-screen interface (with the exception of some of the equipment settings that are generally touched only when initially installed… and which would probably unsafe to “play with” remotely).

ecobee's mobile app also gives you full access to the ecobee3 menu

ecobee’s mobile app also gives you full access to the ecobee3 menu

Of my favorite features of the mobile app (and the touch interface, for that matter) is the “Quick Changes” screen, which is always accessible in the lower right corner. It allows you to quickly switch into “Home” or “Away” mode, as well as quickly see icons that tell you what equipment is running. This example shows that the AC is on, and the fan is running:

Quick Changes menu comes in handy

Quick Changes menu comes in handy

Programming the ecobee3

Right out of the box, the ecobee3 comes pre-set with three default programs: Home, Away, and Sleep. As their names would suggest, they allow you to set different set points for when you’re home, when you’re away, and when you’re asleep. You can add additional programs if you want, but I didn’t find any reason to. Programming is pretty straightforward via the touch-screen, but with the original ecobee Smart I found it fastest to program it via the web interface. And with the ecobee3, it’s even easier than before.

Programming the ecobee3 via the web interface

Programming the ecobee3 via the web interface

Because I work from home, there’s never a predictable time that I’ll be “Away.” So a few clicks was all it took to tell the ecobee3 that I like the main floor of the house to be heated to 73F (or cooled to 76F) when I wake up at 6:30AM, and that I want it heated to 66F (or cooled to 78F) at 9:30PM when everyone is usually upstairs or downstairs in their bedrooms — with the exception of Saturday and Sunday, when I like to sleep in for an extra hour. In fact, I only needed to set up Monday and Saturday, and then I told the ecobee3 to “copy” Monday’s programs to Tuesday – Friday, and Saturday’s to Sunday. The entire programming procedure took maybe 3 minutes.

More with the ecobee 3 Web Interface

While the smart phone app and touch-screen feature a dark, minimalist interface, the web interface comes alive with color… and bears a striking resemblance to Windows 8:

ecobee's colorful new web interface

ecobee’s colorful new web interface

And although changing things on the touch-screen and mobile app isn’t difficult, I’ve always found it easiest (for me) to tinker with the ecobee3′s settings with the web interface.

Changing settings is easy with the web interface

Changing settings is easy with the web interface

This is also the perfect spot in the review for me to point out that ecobee’s new web interface (and mobile app) are built entirely using HTML5 with responsive design. Plus, the new web interface is totally tablet friendly (the old one worked on my iPad, but was a bit kludgy). It’s nice to see that kind of commitment to browser and device compatibility while building on open standards. ecobee deserves big geek cred for that.

One thing I didn’t get to test (as it wasn’t available at review time) is the upgraded Home IQ functionality of the new ecobee web interface. Beyond simple reports, the idea behind Home IQ is that it can “provide more actionable insight” into your HVAC system’s performance. According to my source at ecobee, the improved Home IQ will include the following:

  • Personalized recommendations for your system, and the ability to act on them from within Home IQ — for example, if you have an “inefficient” set point given your location and/or season, Home IQ will prompt you to change the set point to gain more energy savings
  • A list of smart features available, and the ability to enable these features from within Home IQ to gain greater energy efficiency
  • Run time performance report / savings breakdown – providing insight into which features (schedule, smart features etc.) contributed to their savings and how much savings came from each
  • An idea of efficiency of their home (similar to the “star” rating system they had in the first version of Home IQ)
  • Community comparison – details on comparing your system performance & set points to peers – and prompt you to do better
  • System monitor – runtime diagnostics and detailed charts with better visualization

Once the new Home IQ is live, I’ll update this review (or perhaps do a separate one for just Home IQ).

It’s Upgradeable

Because the ecobee3 is connected to your network (and to ecobee’s servers via a secure encrypted connection), ecobee can “push” product updates out to your thermostat as they become available. The ecobee3 represents the first major hardware change for an ecobee thermostat in a few years, and I’d like to think that this hardware platform is (at least for a while) going to be pretty stable, and that additional features will primarily be the result of software upgrades and add-on products (might there be “smart” smoke detectors in ecobee’s future?).

Integration with Other Home Automation Systems

While it’s still too early to know exactly which home automation platforms will support the new ecobee3, it looks like ecobee isn’t taking any chances. Their open API will still be available for third-party integration, and all previous versions of their thermostats have enjoyed support from hubs and control systems such as SmartThings, Control4, and Vera. I’d be shocked if similar support wasn’t forthcoming with the ecobee3 (oh, and will someone please write some IFTTT recipes for this thing?).

The ecobee3 also has a mysterious empty slot inside, which I’m guessing might be used for support with ZigBee, or Z-wave, or possibly even BlueTooth… but again, those are just guesses. Heck, ecobee themselves may not even know it will be used for yet, and might just be waiting for one protocol or communication standard to take a clear lead in the home automation space. Given how rapidly things can change in this space, that might not be a dumb move.

Other ecobee3 Features of Note

Other noteable features of the ecobee3 include:

  • Robust staging options: which supports newer mutli-stage heating and cooling equipment, and works to keep your home comfortable while using the minimum amount of energy.
  • Alerts and reminders: get notified if temperature or humidity go outside pre-set ranges, and get reminders about when to change filters and service equipment.
  • Fan dissipation: Continues to run the fan at the end of a heating or cooling cycle, taking advantage of the heat or cold that’s “stored” in coils or heat exchangers.
  • Smart recovery: combines local weather information with what it’s learned about how your house heats and cools to minimize your energy useage, while still making your home comfortable exactly when you want it.
  • Optimal humidity control: uses weather information to change the humidity set point with a humidifier on the system, in order to avoid frost on the windows. I’ve used this feature with the original ecobee Smart at the Utah house… and it works great.
  • AC overcool to dehumidify: if you don’t have a dehumidifier, you can use your air conditioner to lower humidity when necessary.
  • Free cooling: if you have a whole house fan or a ventilator, the ecobee3 can recognize the temperature difference on cool summer evenings, and use outside to cool the house rather than run the AC. As someone who was begging for this feature for a while, I’m very excited to try this feature out, so look for a follow-up article from me explaining how to wire this up.
  • Vacation mode: allows you to tell your ecobee3 when you’ll be out of town, to save money while you’re gone — and have the house the perfect temperature when you come home.

It Can’t All Be Perfect, Can It?

Of course, no product is perfect. And while the ecobee3 is, in almost every way, a huge upgrade over previous versions, it’s not without some hiccups.

Its first issue, in my opinion, is the necessity to wire any accessories (such as a ventilator, or humidifier, or dehumidifier) all the way to the wall unit. Unless you’re dealing with new construction (where you can run a couple of 5- or 6-conductor wires from where your furnace lives to the wall-mounted location of your thermostat before the drywall is installed), you probably won’t have extra wires running to your thermostat. The first version of the ecobee Smart thermostat had a separate equipment interface module, which you’d install near your furnace (and therefore, probably near other things like humidifiers and de-humidifiers, too). You could easily run a dozen or so wires to the equipment interface to support various equipment, all while only needing to run 4 wires from the utility room to the thermostat location… which you probably already had with your old-school thermostat. The elimination of the equipment interface makes more complex installations… well, that much more complex to install. However, this probably won’t affect the vast majority of the smart thermostat consumer market, so I can’t accuse ecobee of being anything but smart for moving in that direction. I’d guess that 99% of potential ecobee3 customers probably won’t ever need to connect anything other than 4 or 5 wires to their thermostat. For the rest of us, we’ll just have to figure out ways to possibly push management of other systems over to other home automation platforms.

One possible solution to support more advanced setups could be a separate WiFi expansion module. It could work much like the original ecobee equipment interface in that it could be powered by 24V from the furnace (or via a separate wall-plug adapter) and offer multiple connections for auxiliary devices, but it could also communicate over the WiFi network (or maybe even via ecobee’s prioprietary 915Mhz remote sensor network) back to the ecobee3. Wiring issues solved! That idea is free, ecobee — but if you decide to use it, I propose that you call it the “Jenkins Module.” :)

I’ve already addressed the minor annoyance of not having the outside temperature visible without needing to touch the screen, but I’ll mention it here again anyway, in the hopes that the ecobee will do something about it… soon. :)

Current owners of the ecobee Smart, depending on how long ago they bought it, might be kicking themselves for not waiting until the ecobee3 came out. But that’s the nature of any tech product, and ecobee is throwing existing Smart and Si owners a bone by offering a coupon code free 2-pack of remote sensors (so they’ll end up with a total of three) if they upgrade to the ecobee3.

This next complaint is a stretch, because there’s really nothing to complain about with the ecobee’s touch-screen interface… but I’ll complain anyway. :) I kind of miss the bright colors that were in the original Smart’s interface. Any time you try to make an interface too sleek, you risk taking away some of the “fun.” Of course, mine is s a completely subjective opinion, but I’m going to cross my fingers that in a future software release, perhaps owners will have the option of incorporating some of the bright colors of of the new ecobee web interface into the touch-screen.

Finally, while this isn’t necessarily a drawback of the ecobee3 unit itself, I know that owners of the original ecobee Smart will lament the loss of ZigBee support (which was available via an add-on card on the first-gen thermostat). Again… it’s possible that the ecobee3′s mystery slot will solve that problem, but as of its launch, the ecobee3 does not support the ZigBee HA protocol. The obvious fix is to drop $99 on a SmartThings hub and control your ZigBee devices that way, but I’m certain there will be some that still complain… not to mention the fact that ecobee’s Smart Plugs (which, in their defense, never “technically” came out of beta) are being orphaned by the ecobee3.

But are any of these deal killers? No — particularly since none of these features are currently offered by the ecobee3′s major competition anyway. ecobee has added way more to the ecobee3 than they’ve taken away, and (like I said before), the vast majority of the consumer market won’t ever need what the ecobee3 doesn’t have.

Spec Rundown

Before summing up with my final thoughts, here’s a rundown of the ecobee3′s important specs:

  • MSRP: $249
  • Size: just under 4″ square (100mm to be exact)
  • Compatible with conventional heat and AC, heat pumps (including 2-stage aux heat), gas, oil, electric, dual fuel, humidifier, dehumidifier, ventilator, HRV, or ERV
  • Wire terminals supported: Rc, Rh, G, C, Y1, Y2, W1 (AUX1), W2 (AUX2), O/B, ACC+, ACC-
  • Thermostat sensors: temperature, motion, proximity, humidity
  • Remote sensor: temperature, motion
  • Power: 24 VAC (connected to Rh/Rc and C)
  • Includes: Power Extender Kit when only 4 wires are avaialble
  • Radios: Wi-Fi, 915 Mhz (for remote sensors), expansion slot for third radio
  • Network: 802.11 b/g/n @ 2.4 Ghz, supports WEP 64, WEP 128, WPA, and WPA2 encryption, DHCP or static IP addressing, 168 bit SSL encryption
  • Power consumption: less than 3.5 VA
  • Warranty: 3 years

Final Thoughts

As I do with all my product reviews, it’s at this point of the article that I try to boil everything down to the bottom line: is the ecobee3 worth purchasing?

My answer depends on who you are.

If you’re an existing ecobee customer (with a Smart or Si), the answer is “probably.”

You already appreciate all the benefits of a smart thermostat, but you’ll likely want the new features like Follow Me, Smart Home / Away, and maybe even free cooling. And you’ll probably be able to sell your old thermostat on eBay, or maybe to one of your neighbors (especially if you offer to install it for them). :)

If you currently own a Nest, the answer is “maybe.”

Whether or not you move from the Nest to the ecobee ecosystem will depend on whether you a) feel the Nest is currently meeting your needs, b) whether or not you feel the Nest’s learning algorithms are working for you, and c) whether you have a significant additional investment in the Nest ecosystem with their smoke detectors.

There’s no denying that the ecobee3 is a direct shot across Nest’s bow, and while the ecobee3 and Nest are pretty much stride for stride with most major product features, the fundamental difference between how the two units operate boils down to whether or not you want (or trust) your thermostat to always be watching and “learning” (Nest), or whether you prefer a predictable schedule right out of the box that’s easy to control, while still being smart enough to make energy-saving choices for you when it knows you’re out of the house (ecobee3).

ecobee is in a position to make a convincing argument that their ecobee3 thermostat is superior to the Nest in a number of important ways, and if anybody out there can successfully crash the Google-owned juggernaut’s party, ecobee looks like they’re dressed up and ready to dance.

If you don’t have any sort of smart thermostat in your house, the answer is “duh.”

If you’re still rocking an old school thermostat (and yes, even an LCD Honeywell qualifies as an old-school thermostat), the ecobee3 is a no-brainer. At $249, the unit will likely pay for itself within the first few years of ownership — and that doesn’t take into account the massive big boost in convenience and comfort that only a smart thermostat can bring.

As for where to buy one, the only place right now is ecobee’s website (they’re taking pre-orders now, and units will start shipping September 29th). You’ll also be able to purchase them through select HVAC contractors, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them on big-box retail store shelves very soon.

As always, I welcome your questions, comments, and feedback below!

The new ecobee3

The new ecobee3 and remote sensor

UPDATE: For details on installing the ecobee3, please check out my How to Install an ecobee3 Smart Thermostat post.

How to Install an ecobee3 Smart Thermostat

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ecobee3 retail box - coming to a shelf near you!

So you got your hands on an ecobee3 smart thermostat, and instead of reading through the installation manual (which is actually pretty good), you came to the Internet to figure out how to install your ecobee3.

OK, fine… I’ll help you. :)

This how-to guide for installing your ecobee3 covers a few different basic install options. Depending on  what type of thermostat you’re replacing, and how many wires are available to your old thermostat, there’s a good chance that following these steps will get you up and running quickly with your new ecobee3.

However, I want to be clear that this how-to only discusses the most common install scenarios, which should cover the vast majority of homeowners’ needs. However, if your install is more complex, or you run into any trouble along the way, I recommend you contact ecobee’s tech support, or stop by the SmartHomeHub community forums and get some peer support in the ecobee section.

Finally, if you’re upgrading from an original ecobee Smart Thermostat, I’m writing a separate installation post just for you. Stay tuned. :)

Before you Start

Before you start, you’ll definitely need a Phillips head screwdriver. You might need a small flat head screwdriver, depending on how your old thermostat is connected. You’ll probably also need a drill to help install drywall wall anchors when it comes time to attach your ecobee3 to the wall.

This might also be the perfect time for me to inform you that by doing this project yourself, you assume all risks associated with it. I think that pretty much anyone can install one of these bad-boys themselves… even if they’ve never done anything like it before. But if, after reading through this how-to, it still sounds like something too far out of your comfort zone, any half-decent HVAC professional should be able to get this installed for you in well under an hour. Seriously,  don’t try to let them convince you it’s a major job… it’s really not — and you can tell them I said so. :)

Step 1: Kill the Power to your HVAC

The first step in any DIY project that involves any sort of power (even a “relatively” low voltage such as 24V), is to kill the power. If your furnace has a light switch nearby that doesn’t actually turn off any lights, that’s probably the power switch for your furnace. If you don’t have a switch, just throw the breaker (or breakers, if there’s more than one) that power your system.

Step 2: Understand A Little About Thermostat Wiring

Even if you don’t know anything about thermostat wiring, you can learn pretty much everything you need to know in the next 30 seconds. Your thermostat is basically a fancy “switch” that tells your furnace, heat pump, or A/C (I’ll refer to all of those as simply your “HVAC system” from now on) when to turn stuff on and off. Different wires from the thermostat control the different functions (heat, cool, fan) of your HVAC. The most common wires are:

  • R (Red) = Main Power. Technically, it connects to the “hot” (as in “powered”) side of your system’s transformer.
  • W (White or Orange) = Heat. This switches on the gas, oil, or electric heat. Sometimes, you might also see numbers with it (such as W1 and W2), which is HVAC units with more than one heating “stage.”
  • G (Green) = Fan. This controls the blower that forces air through your system.
  • Y (Yellow) = Compressor. If you have an air conditioner or a heat pump, this switches the compressor on that unit on and off.
  • C (Blue) = Common. This connects to the “common” side of your transformer (in four-wire systems, the blue common wire will not be connected).

Ideally, the HVAC professional that installed your system used standard colored thermostat wire, and connected the wires to the terminals that match the wires’ color. But that’s not always the case. Throughout this guide, the actual color of the wire is not what’s important. What’s important is what terminal that wire is (and was) connected to on both ends of the wire. So keep that in mind as you read, and don’t forget to snap photos and label things as you go.

Step 3: Remove Your Old Thermostat

Carefully remove your old thermostat from your wall, but don’t unhook any wires yet. Depending on what type of old thermostat you have, you might need to pop off a cover to access the mounting screws underneath. Be patient, and if needed, search online for instructions on removing your particular model. Before you start disconnecting any wires, however, snap some photos showing how the existing wires are connected to your old thermostat. If anything goes wrong, and you want to hook it back up, you can refer to the photo later (this is a good idea to do before disconnecting anything).

As you first inspect your old thermostat’s wiring, be on the lookout for the “C” wire. In order to install an ecobee3, you’ll need a “C” wire — either an actual one, or a “virtual” one (more on that later).

When you’ve exposed your thermostat’s wiring, if your original installer did things right, the color of the wires will match the letters on the wiring terminals. If done ideally, a 4-wire install would look something like this:

4 Wire Thermostat Wiring

4 Wire Thermostat Wiring

Notice that the terminals I talked about earlier are connected to wires that match the color: red to R, green to G, yellow to Y, and white to W. That makes things easy, but that might not be the case with your thermostat. If the colors of your wires don’t match the letters on the wiring terminals, don’t worry. In your ecobee3′s box, there’s a sheet of stickers for labeling your existing wiring. Before you disconnect any wires from your old thermostat, label all the wires (based on the terminal to which it’s connected, not the actual wire color) using the stickers on that sheet. Double check to make sure everything is labelled correctly before disconnecting any wires.

Once you’re certain, go ahead and disconnect your old wires and put your old thermostat aside. The wires coming out of the wall should look something like this:

Do you have four thermostat wires or five?

Do you have four thermostat wires or five?

Notice in the above picture that I have five wires available: red, blue, yellow, green, and white (although it’s not uncommon to sometimes see an orange wire instead of a white one). However, I actually only had four wires connected to my old thermostat. The blue one was just coiled up and unused (which isn’t that rare), and my old thermostat didn’t need a “C’” wire to operate. However, the ecobee3 requires a “C” wire to be powered properly, so even though I didn’t have a “C” wire connected to my old thermostat, I do have a spare wire that I can use a the “C” wire for installing my ecobee3. So if you also have four wires connected to your old thermostat, but have a spare wire in the wall, label everything and skip down to Step 4-and-a-half.

It’s possible that when you pull the cover off your old thermostat, it could look this one from my Utah house:

Existing Thermostat

Notice that this example has six wires connected: the blue wire is connected to W2 (because I have a 2 stage furnace there) and the orange wire is being used as the “C” wire. That’s fine — as long as all the wires are properly labelled based on the terminals they’re connected to before you disconnect them. If yours looks like this, label them and skip to Step 5.

Basically, if your old thermostat has a wire connected to its “C” terminal, label all the wires, disconnect everything, and skip to Step 5.

If your old thermostat didn’t have a “C” wire connected, but you have an unused wire in the wall that you could use as a “C” wire, label everything and skip to Step 4-and-a-half.

Finally, if you have only four wires coming out of your wall, and none of them were the “C” wire, don’t worry! Your ecobee3 comes with a Power Extender Kit (PEK) included, which creates a “virtual” C wire using your existing wiring. Follow Step 4 to install the PEK before moving on.

Step 4: Install the ecobee Power Extender Kit (PEK)

You should follow this step only if you don’t have a “C” wire connected to your old thermostat, and also don’t have a “spare” wire available to use as the “C” wire. The most common example of this would be if you only had R, G, Y, and W wires at your thermostat.

This step also requires you to crack open your HVAC system and connect something to its main control board. Relax, it sounds way scarier than it actually is. As long as you’ve killed the power to your HVAC, you’ll be fine. However, if the thought of that still freaks you out, contact ecobee’s support crew, or hire a professional to install your ecobee3 for you. The PEK section in the installation manual that came with your ecobee3 also does a great job of explaining how to do this step.

In cases where you only have four wires available, the PEK (which is included with your ecobee3) will create a “virtual” C wire to help reliably power your ecobee3 thermostat. The ecobee3′s PEK looks like this:

ecobee Power Extender Kit

ecobee Power Extender Kit

Those five white wires in the above photo (labelled R, C, G, W, Y) connect to your furnace’s control board, and the four wires coming from your thermostat location connect to the other end of the PEK.

To wire it up, remove the cover from the PEK, and look inside:

Inside the ecobee PEK

Inside the ecobee PEK

I recommend checking to make sure the five wires on the top are screwed in snugly (but don’t over-tighten them).

Next, go to wherever your HVAC system is located in your house (probably the basement, garage, or a utility room) and double-check to make sure your furnace is powered off. Then remove whatever panels you need to in order to access the control board (you might have to search online or check your owner’s manual to find out how).

The control board should look something like this (this is at my Seattle house):

HVAC control board

or this (this is at my Utah house):

Existing Furnace Wires

of maybe this (this is the furnace at my cabin):

Cabin Furnace Wiring 1
Don’t worry if your wire colors don’t match exactly, or if there are maybe more wires than you were expecting. Other components (such as fan timers, or wires that run to a condensate pump. etc.) might also be wired here (which is the case in all of the above photos). Focus on locating the four wires that are currently running to your thermostat location. They’ll almost certainly be attached to the R, Y, G, and W terminals on the control board. They’ll eventually group together and head off toward your thermostat location.

Loosen the terminals for those four thermostat wires, then disconnect the wires. If there are other wires attached to the same terminals on the control board, leave those other wires connected. You should only remove the four wires that run to your thermostat location.

Next, connect the five white wires (with the colored labels) from the PEK to your HVAC’s control board terminal that matches each wire’s label (R, W, Y, G, C). Again, if there are other components already connected to those terminals, make sure they also stay connected, so that whatever they’re controlling will continue to work. Be careful when tightening down the terminals. You want them snug enough to hold the wires in place (gently tug on the wires to make sure they won’t come loose easily), but don’t over-tighten them and break something.

With one side of the PEK wired to your control board, connect the four wires coming from your thermostat location to the appropriate terminals in the PEK’s cover, like this:

Standard 4 wire thermostat connections go in this side

Standard 4 wire thermostat connections go in this side

Make sure you connect the four thermostat wires so that they match your labels back at the wall… even if the wire colors don’t match (in the above example, the wire colors do happen to match).

When you’re done connecting all the wires, snap the lid back on the PEK, then mount the PEK somewhere “safe” inside your HVAC unit (there should be some double-stick tape in your ecobee3 box). Make sure it’s mounted somewhere dry, and where the cords aren’t being strained or at risk of getting caught in a fan or any other moving part. Once your PEK is wired and mounted, go ahead and close up your HVAC unit, then move on to Step 5.

Step 4-and-a-Half: Connect the Unused “C” Wire  to your HVAC Control Board

You only need to follow this step if your old thermostat didn’t have a “C” wire connected to it, but you were lucky enough not to have to use the PEK because you have a “spare” wire available in your wall. Chances are that if the spare wire wasn’t connected at the thermostat end, it’s probably not connected on the other end (at your HVAC control board) either. So I called this Step 4-and-a-half because it’s kind of like Step 4 in that you need to remove the panel(s) on your HVAC system and access your control board, but you won’t need to do anything else except locate and connect your “spare” wire to the “C” terminal on the control board.

So skim through Step 4, open your HVAC unit, locate the wires coming from the direction of your thermostat location, trace them to the control board (the other wires in that bundle will already be connected to the control board), then connect the “spare” wire (mine happened to be blue, but yours could be any color) to the “C” terminal on your control board. You may have to strip the end of the wire to expose the copper inside before you attach it. If something else is already connected to the “C” terminal, keep it there and wire your spare to it as well.

When you’re done, close up your HVAC unit and head back to your thermostat location. You might also have to strip that end of the spare wire, too. Now that you have five wires connected to your HVAC system, you’re ready to move to Step 5.

Step 5: Install the ecobee3 Back Plate

Depending on how ugly your wall looked when you removed your old thermostat, you’ll need to decide whether to use the standard trim plate when mounting your ecobee3 to the wall, or the larger trim plate — to hide holes, missing paint, or other hideous things. I decided to use the larger plate on my first install, until I can get around to filling the old thermostat’s mounting holes and touching up the paint.

Connect your trim plate of choice to the ecobee3 back plate (the back place is the piece with the wiring terminals on it), thread your thermostat wires through the round hole in the middle, then press the whole thing up against your wall. Use the built-in level to make sure it’s straight, then mark the two mounting screw locations.

If you need to use drywall anchors for your install (and you probably will), remove the back plate and install them now on your marked locations. Then re-thread the wires through the hole in the mounting plate, line up the back plate on the wall, and attach the top screw, like this:

ecobee3 top mounting screw attached

ecobee3 top mounting screw attached

With the top screw attached, you can swivel the unit to line up the level bubble between the markings, and then attach the bottom screw.

Step 6: Connect the Wires

If you installed the Power Extension Kit (PEK), you need to connect your four wires to the ecobee3 back plate like this:

  • R wire to Rc terminal (PEK installs must use the Rc terminal)
  • G wire to G terminal
  • Y wire to Y1 terminal
  • W wire to W1 (Aux1) terminal

Again, my wire colors in this photo happen to match up, but make sure to attach the appropriately labeled wire, even if it’s not the matching color. When wired properly with a PEK, your ecobee3 back plate should look something like this:

Proper ecobee3 wiring for PEK users

Proper ecobee3 wiring for PEK users

If you didn’t need the PEK, then simply connect all your labelled wires (including the “C” wire) to the matching terminals on the ecobee3 back plate. Your “R” wire can connect to either the Rc or the Rh terminal, because the ecobee3 will automatically “bridge” these two terminals (unless you used the PEK, in which case you must use the Rc terminal).

My standard 5-wire installation looks like this:

Standard 5-wire connections to the ecobee3

Standard 5-wire connections to the ecobee3

You might have even more wires, such as Y2 or W2 or O/B. As long as you connect them up to the same terminals as your old thermostat, you’ll be good to go. Your ecobee3 installation guide has diagrams of some of the more advanced wiring options, if needed.

Step 7: Plug In and Power your ecobee3

It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for! Time to see if you get to victoriously thrust your hands in the air… or if you’re running for the fire extinguisher to put out the flames. I kid! I kid! There probably won’t be any flames.

Carefully slide the main ecobee3 unit into the back plate, until it “clicks” into place. You shouldn’t have to force it, so if it’s not going easily, check to make sure you don’t have wires sticking too far forward (you can just press them down a bit, if needed).

Now go turn on the power switch or breaker for your HVAC unit… and sprint back to your ecobee3′s wall location. Mostly likely, you’ll be greeted by something awesome that looks like this:

ecobee3 start-up screen

ecobee3 start-up screen

If this is what you see, it’s time for that victorious arm thrust! BOOYAH!

If you see nothing, don’t worry — go back through and re-check all your connections. It’s possible a wire came loose, or maybe you accidentally swapped a couple of wires. There’s also a troubleshooting section in the installation guide, and you can always call ecobee’s tech support and they’ll help you out. I don’t get paid by ecobee, however, so posting install problems in the comments below won’t help you much. :) I do, however, recommend you stop by the SmartHomeHub discussion forums and check out the ecobee3 Install Help thread for community-based help from other ecobee users.

Step 8: Initial Configuration

Once your ecobee3 fires up for the first time, it will auto-magically detect which wires are connected, and show you a screen like this to confirm:

The ecobee3 auto-configures based on which wiring terminals you connect

The ecobee3 auto-configures based on which wiring terminals you connect

If everything is correct, continue on with the rest of the ecobee3 setup wizard. It will walk you through configuring your equipment (and any accessories), setting your preferences, connecting the ecobee3 to your wireless network, and registering your ecobee3 so you can access it through ecobee’s web portal.

Step 9: Install Your Remote Sensor(s)

Resist the urge to tinker with your new ecobee3 just long enough to also install your remote sensor. Your ecobee3 comes with one remote sensor included, but if you purchased more, just follow these same steps to install them.

While standing in front of your thermostat (it senses your presence and will “wake up” if it was “asleep), pull the tab on the back of the remote sensor to connect its internal battery. The ecobee3 should detect the sensor within seconds:

Remote sensor pairing screen

Remote sensor pairing screen

Just follow the on-screen prompts to finish pairing, then place the remote sensor somewhere else in your house that you’d like to monitor. Check the ecobee3 installation guide for specific tips on where to locate it, but I recommend anywhere in the house where the temperature differs greatly from your thermostat location (my office, for example, is always a few degrees hotter in the summer, and cooler in the winter, than the kitchen where my ecobee3 is installed). Make sure the sensor is around 5 feet off the ground.

After your remote sensor is installed, I recommend enabling both the “Smart Home / Away” and “Follow Me” features of the ecobee3, as these will permit your smart thermostat to be as “smart” as it can. You can access these settings from the ecobee3′s “Sensors” menu.

Step 10: Install the Mobile App and Access the Web Interface

To truly get the most out of the ecobee3, I highly recommend installing the new ecobee3 smart phone app (available on iOS and Android), as well as spending some time in the web interface, accessible by logging in at ecobee.com. The web interface also works great with iPads and other tablets.

Step 11: Join the ecobee Conversation

Congratulations!

Now that you’re “part of The Hive,” I invite you to come join the ecobee user discussions happening at SmartHomeHub. It’s a user-driven discussion forum focused on all things home automation, with a lot of ecobee owners taking part. Though not an official ecobee company resource, you’ll also find that a number of prominent ecobee staffers hang out there, and they are always happy to hear user feedback and suggestions for tweaks, fixes, and new features.

As always, I welcome your comments and feedback below. But remember: as I mentioned earlier, I won’t be answering any ecobee3 tech support questions here. I’ll answer general questions, but for support I recommend contacting ecobee support directly, or asking your questions at SmartHomeHub for unofficial community-based support (where I do take part in the support conversations).

Welcome to The Hive!

Upgrade Install Guide: ecobee original Smart Thermostat to ecobee3

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ecobee3 Upgrade GuideWhen I first received an ecobee3 smart thermostat for review, I wrote a guide to installing an ecobee3 for first-time ecobee users. This post, by contrast, is for ecobee old-timers. I’ll walk through how to replace your original ecobee “Smart” unit and upgrade to the ecobee3, while re-using your existing in-wall wiring (if you’re replacing a regular thermostat, I recommend reading my standard install guide instead).

The instructions in this guide are based on the two (so far) ecobee Smart to ecobee3 upgrades I’ve done at our main Seattle house and our vacation place in Utah. I’ll be using photos from both upgrades throughout.

Before You Start

This is a bit of a repeat of what I said in my main install guide, but the only two thing you’ll probably need are:

  • A Phillips screwdriver to mount your ecobee3 to the wall
  • A small flat head screwdriver to remove the existing wires from your ecobee Smart wall unit and the Equipment Interface (EI)
  • You might also need a drill to make some holes to install the included drywall anchors when securing your ecobee3 to the wall

Important tip: I highly recommend that before doing anything, you login to your account on ecobee.com, open up the web interface for your existing ecobee Smart thermostat, and take a screen shot of your existing programming schedule. It will come in very handy when re-creating your schedule on the ecobee3. You could also take some screen shots of any settings accessible via the web interface. But it’s also important to take some photos (using your mobile phone is easiest) of all the configuration screens in your ecobee Smart, so that you can set up your ecobee3 with the same settings (such as window efficiency, or AUX temperature cut-off, etc.)

Finally, make sure you’re aware of the limitations of the ecobee3 vs. the older ecobee Smart that might affect your system. The ecobee3 is an upgrade in nearly every way, and for most homeowners, there won’t be any issue. However, the ecobee3 only allows you to control one external accessory (such as a humidifier, de-humidifier, or ventilator), so if you have more than one of these currently being controlled by your EI, you’ll have to choose which one you want the ecobee3 to manage.

Step 1: Kill the Power to your HVAC

The first step in any DIY project that involves any sort of power (even a “relatively” low voltage such as 24V), is to kill the power. If your furnace has a light switch nearby that doesn’t actually turn off any lights, that’s probably the power switch for your furnace. If you don’t have a switch, just throw the breaker (or breakers, if there’s more than one) that power your system.

Step 2: Photograph your Existing Installation

You’re going to be swapping around your existing wiring, and probably even simplifying it a bit, so before you start, it’s a great idea to snap some photos of where all the existing wires go… just in case something goes wrong and you have to put everything back. If you have to go back to your original setup, you’ll want to be able to do so quickly enough that your spouse doesn’t notice the temperature drop (or spike) in the house. :)

Step 3: Unwire the Existing Equipment Interface (EI)

The ecobee3 doesn’t use an Equipment Interface (EI) like the older Smart, so let’s start by disconnecting all its wiring. Locate your EI:

Original ecobee Smart Equipment Interface
Original ecobee Smart Equipment Interface

then gently remove the top cover by pulling from the sides:

Inside the Equipment Interface
Inside the Equipment Interface

In the above photo, you can see three sets of wires connecting to the EI:

  1. On the far left, there’s a dark brown 6-strand wire bundle with White, Blue, Red, and Green wires (the other two are clipped) connecting to a wiring block on the lower left portion of the circuit board. This wire bundle runs from your EI to your wall-mounted thermostat location.
  2. To the right of that first wire is a lighter brown 8-strand wire bundle that connects from your EI to your furnace’s terminal block. The Orange (24V) and Black (COM) ones are powering the EI, the Yellow (Y), White (W O/B), Green (G), Blue (W2 AUX), and Red (R/H) ones connect to the corresponding terminals in your furnace, and the final Brown wire (COM) is wire-nutted to the White wire in the grey-covered bundle.
  3. The grey-covered bundle on the right has only two wires hooked up: the Red one’s getting 24V power from the ACC1 terminal on the EI and delivering it to one side of a 24V solenoid on a humidifier, and the White one connects the COM from the furnace to the other side of the humidifier’s solenoid (if you don’t have a humidifier or other external accessory, you won’t have to worry about this).

Unwire everything, remove any screws used to mount your EI, and set it aside.

Step 4: Check How Many Wires You Need, and How Many You Have

Remove whatever panels you need to from your furnace to expose the control board. My Bryant furnace at the Utah house has a main panel I can pop off without tools:

Main panel removed
Main panel removed

and a smaller panel below with two screws holding it in place. Removing the smaller panel reveals the location of my control board:

My furnace's control board
My furnace’s control board

Take note of which terminals are in use on your control board — which will depend on how many heating stages your furnace supports, whether you have an external A/C unit, whether you have a heat pump, etc. Mine is a standard two-stage gas furnace with an external A/C condenser, meaning the following terminals were in use for my setup:

  • W2
  • G
  • COM/24V (also called a “C” wire)
  • W/W1
  • Y/Y2
  • R

That means I needed 6 wires from my furnace to the wall location of my thermostat. The good news is that in most setups, you probably replaced your older original thermostat with your ecobee Smart (like I did), and probably already have the correct number of wires in the wall from your original thermostat (like I do). Here’s a photo of the original wall-mounted wiring harness before I replaced it with my ecobee Smart — with all six of those wires connected to the appropriate terminals:

Existing Thermostat

The bottom line is that if you have at least as many wires at your wall location as you have terminals connected at your furnace, your ecobee3 can be wired to control everything you’ve got. If that’s the case for you, go ahead and skip down to the next step.

However, that wasn’t the case for me. Because a few months after installing my ecobee Smart at the Utah house, I purchased a humidifier. Wiring it to the ecobee Smart wasn’t a big deal, because I could just wire it directly to the ecobee EI, and didn’t need any additional wires in the wall.

But ecobee3 doesn’t have an EI, and since I’d need all six wires in the wall to connect from the ecobee3 to the six terminals on my furnace, I’d be two wires short: the two wires that connect to the 24V solenoid on my humidifier.

But that wasn’t going to stop me. In actuality, I could wire one side of my humidifier’s solenoid directly to the COM terminal of my furnace, which is where I already had it wired when using the ecobee EI. So now I was only one wire short.

I solved the second half of my problem using a nifty little device called the Power Extender Kit (PEK), which is included free with every ecobee3. Because the ecobee3 requires a C wire to operate, the PEK is designed to be used in installations where the wall-mounted thermostat location has no C (COM) wire, and essentially creates a “virtual” C wire using the R,  G, Y, and W wires (check Step 4 of my ecobee3 install guide to see more about how the PEK works). The PEK has five wires coming out one side (that connect to the furnace board) and four terminals on the other side (for connecting four wires to your wall-mounted thermostat location).

Inside the ecobee PEK
Inside the ecobee PEK
Standard 4 wire thermostat connections go in this side
Standard 4 wire thermostat connections go in this side

So my plan was to use four of the six existing in-wall wires with the PEK to take care of my R, G, Y, W, and C wires, leaving one wire for my W2 terminal and the last wire for the 24V+ side of my humidifier’s solenoid. That’s six wires for the price of four!

When I was done wiring it up on the furnace side, it looked like this (don’t worry – I prettied it up before I was finished):

ecobee's PEK turning four wires into five
ecobee’s PEK turning four wires into five

As promised, here it is all prettied up:

Cleaned up install of PEK and wiring
Cleaned up install of PEK and wiring

Step 5: Remove the ecobee Smart Wall Unit and Install the ecobee3 Wiring Harness

With everything finished down in the furnace room, you’re now ready to focus on the wall-mounted location for your ecobee3.

Gently remove the main portion of your ecobee Smart thermostat (a small screwdriver in the side indentations can help), and set it aside. Then disconnect the four wires from the wiring harness, unscrew the wiring harness from the wall and set it aside, too. You should now just have your thermostat wire bundle sticking out of the wall, like this:

Six-strand bundle of thermostat wire
Six-strand bundle of thermostat wire

You can see where I put some drywall filler putty in the two outside holes (created by my ecobee Smart), but I didn’t need to fill any of the others because they’d be covered by the ecobee3. I also discovered a full Cat5e cable in the wall behind my thermostat location. That might be interesting for future reference, but the other end of that Cat5e actually went to my network punch-down block, and not to my furnace.

Now you’re ready to mounted your ecobee3 wiring harness to the wall (I got super lucky – the mounting holes lined up with the holes from the old original thermostat I’d removed when installing the ecobee Smart) and connect all the wires to their appropriate terminals:

ecobee3 wiring harness mounted
ecobee3 wiring harness mounted

Note that if you’re using the PEK, you have to install your R wire to the Rc location on the wiring harness. If you’re not using the PEK, then you can use either the Rc or the Rh.

Use the built-in level to make sure it’s mounted properly before tightening the screws, then press the main ecobee3 unit gently into place. It should make a quiet “click.” when it seats properly.

ecobee3 wired up and installed on the wall
ecobee3 wired up and installed on the wall

Step 6: Power It Up… and Cross Your Fingers

Go back down to your furnace location, power it up, and then run back upstairs or inside to the ecobee3’s wall location. If all went well, you’ll be greeted with the ecobee logo on your screen as the unit boots up.

If you see nothing, don’t worry — go back through and re-check all your connections. It’s possible a wire came loose, or maybe you accidentally swapped a couple of wires. There’s also a troubleshooting section in the ecobee3’s installation guide, and you can always call ecobee’s tech support and they’ll help you out. I don’t get paid by ecobee, however, so posting install problems in the comments below won’t help you much. :) I do, however, recommend you stop by the SmartHomeHub discussion forums and check out the ecobee3 Install Help thread for community-based support from other ecobee3 users.

Step 7: Configure and Tinker

At this point, you’re ready to walk through the start-up configuration wizard on the ecobee3 and set everything up — including your remote sensors, which is probably what convinced you to ditch your ecobee Smart for an ecobee3. For configuration tips, you can jump directly to Step 8 of my regular install guide and follow along from there!

Step 8: Join the ecobee Conversation at SmartHomeHub.net

Congratulations on a successful upgrade!

If you’re already an ecobee user, then there’s a good chance you’re already participating in the ecobee user discussions over on SmartHomeHub.net. If you’re not, consider yourself invited! It’s a user-driven discussion forum (founded by yours truly) focused on all things home automation, with a lot of ecobee owners taking part. Though not an official ecobee company resource, you’ll also find that a number of prominent ecobee staffers hang out there, and they are always happy to hear user feedback and suggestions for tweaks, fixes, and new features.

As always, I welcome your comments and feedback below. But remember: as I mentioned earlier, I won’t be answering any ecobee3 tech support questions here. I’ll answer general questions, but for support I recommend contacting ecobee support directly, or asking your questions at SmartHomeHub.net for unofficial community-based support (where I do take part in the support conversations).

The post Upgrade Install Guide: ecobee original Smart Thermostat to ecobee3 appeared first on Steve Jenkins' Blog.

First Look: ecobee3 Web-based Home IQ Charts

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Sir Francis Bacon is commonly credited for coining the phrase “scientia potentia est” — Latin for “knowledge is power.” Though one might argue that, instead,  control is power, particularly in the world of smart home devices, such as WiFi thermostats.

The new ecobee3 smart thermostat does indeed give you greater control over your home’s comfort, while simultaneously saving you energy (and therefore money). But in the spirit of Francis Bacon, ever since shipping their original Smart flagship thermostat in 2009, ecobee has “empowered” its customers with deeper knowledge and insight into their ecobee thermostats’ activities via a feature called Home IQ – a web based historial reporting and analysis tool of their home’s heating and cooling activities.

The original Home IQ allowed homeowners to scroll through minute-by-minute snapshots of exactly what their system was doing in relation to outside and inside temperatures and humidity. With that data, Home IQ provided automated graphs of energy savings over time (how much your A/C run last month vs. the same month last year, for example) and could even anonymously compare your energy usage to other customers. As a geek, my favorite part of the original Home IQ interface was the scrolling activity reports. Here’s what the original Home IQ charts looked like (this is my Utah house’s data from November 16 – 18, 2014):

ecobee's original Home IQ chart
ecobee’s original Home IQ chart

The red and blue dotted lines on the top 2/3 of the chart show the desired heating and/or cooling set points for a given point in time, while the solid green, pale blue, and black lines show actual measured data (indoor temp, indoor humidity, and outside temp, respectively).

The bars on the bottom third of the chart show what was running on my HVAC system at any given point along the timeline. Light red means Stage 1 Heat was running, dark red is Stage 2 Heat, grey is the system fan, green is the humidifier. By looking at both sections together, you can see that my heating set point was about to jump up on the afternoon of November 17th because the system had been in vacation mode. You can see the heat fire up in anticipation of my arrival, driving the internal temperature up, and the internal humidity down. And for the next 24+ hours, you can see the system periodically fire the heat to keep the internal temperature at my desired set points. Data could also be downloaded in CSV format for separate archival and analysis. Having access to this level of data powerful when it comes to optimizing your system to look for potential energy savings, as well as troubleshooting your system if things aren’t happening like you think they should. Home IQ is one of the “killer apps” for the original ecobee Smart thermostat.

Fast forward to September 2014, when ecobee launched their updated flagship smart thermostat, the ecobee3. ecobee announced that Home IQ (which was also receiving an update) wasn’t quite ready for launch… though they promised customers it would be ready before the end of the year. Last week, ecobee kept that the first part of that promise by releasing their updated version of Home IQ charts (the updated usage comparisons and other system “insights” are still in the works). Here’s a peek at the updated interface:

Updated Home IQ Activity and Temperature
Updated Home IQ Activity and Temperature
Updated Home IQ Activity and Humidity
Updated Home IQ Activity and Humidity

System activity is now located at the top part of the chart, while the measured data is down bottom. Heat stages are shown in two tones of orange (I assume cool would be shown in some sort of blue). Fan activity is white, and the humidifier is purple.

It’s essentially the same data available in the old interface, with a facelift. With this new interface, I get the sense that ecobee is trying to make the data a little less overwhelming and intimidating by presenting it in this format. Truth be told, I had no problem with the old format, but really I don’t have any problem with the new one, either. The data makes sense, and is easy to scroll through (and zoom in and out) to see what’s going on. I do miss the ability to manually select a specific date range as I could in the old interface, and I’d like to see the ability to zoom “out” more, but perhaps those are features ecobee will add later. Being that Home IQ is a web-based tool, pushing new features to users should be no problem at all.

Downloading the raw data (on which ecobee’s Home IQ charts are based) is still an option, and the download screen also got a major facelift in this new version:

ecobee Home IQ data download options
ecobee Home IQ data download options

All the data that was available for download from the original Home IQ is still available, along with additional data from wall-mounted and remote temperature and motion sensors (as of the date of this article, one of the users in SmartHomeHub.net ecobee forums noticed that some of the remote sensor data was truncated, but I have it on good authority that the ecobee crew is addressing the issue). Data geeks, knock yourselves out!

One of the things I love about the downloadable data is the ability to see under what circumstances my system went into “Away” mode, based on the motion sensors. Analyzing this data is a great way to figuring out exactly many sensors you need, and to test their ideal location(s) in your house for your “perfect” setup. I’d imagine that further iterations of Home IQ will involve more obvious insight into the remote sensors’ activities. Although, I don’t actually have to imagine it, as it’s already been confirmed by ecobee. Speaking on this initial push of the updated Home IQ, Muhammed Saleem (ecobee’s Sr. Manager of Advocacy) has assured ecobee3 users:

This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as Home IQ features are concerned. We are continuing to work on making additional features available on a rolling basis. We are starting with exposing raw data and as next steps will be layering it with insights and recommendations.

We are working on making wireless remote sensor data visible in the web portal as well as the mobile apps. In the meantime, you can still download wireless remote sensor data (you will get temperature and occupancy information on 5-minute interval basis).

To get a taste of this geeky goodness, I’ve shared a Google Sheet of some of the data from my Utah house. You can launch the spreadsheet directly here, or view it embedded below:

I must admit that I missed this type of data for the couple of months between installing my ecobee3 and ecobee’s release of the updated Home IQ charts, and I’m glad to have it back. I look forward to ecobee adding more functionality to Home IQ as time goes on, and to the additional “power” over my system (and ultimately, savings in my wallet) that comes with such knowledge.

ecobee scientia potentia est” indeed. :)

As always, I welcome your comments and feedback below. I also invite you to join the ecobee conversation over on SmartHomeHub.net, a community-driven forum for discussion and support of ecobee (and other “smart home”) devices.

The post First Look: ecobee3 Web-based Home IQ Charts appeared first on Steve Jenkins' Blog.


ecobee3 Review Followup: Two Month Update

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ecobee3 says "hi"My original ecobee3 review is now two months old, so I decided a “here’s how things are going two months later” post might be in order. Over the past two months, I’ve received numerous questions (both in my blog comments and over in the ecobee discussion forum at SmartHomeHub.net), and I’ve also come up with a few of my own. In preparation for this review update, I emailed those questions to my PR contact at ecobee, who was kind enough to answer them.

But before getting to those questions and answers, it’s worth pointing out that the ecobee crew have been busy little bees during these first two months since the launch of the ecobee3. They pushed at least two new firmware updates, that I know of, to address a few issues discovered by early users. They fixed some server issues that were causing their iOS app to sometimes timeout. They placed the ecobee3 on retail shelves in Best Buy and Apple Stores. They released the first “phase” of their web-based reporting and insight tool called Home IQ (see my “first look” review of Home IQ here). And they’ve also racked up an impressive pile of positive product reviews (mine happened to be the first, but I knew it wouldn’t be the last). If you read through the comments section of those reviews, you might see a recurring theme: disgruntled Nest users are flocking to the ecobee3.

I’ve also kept busy during the ecobee3’s first two months. Based on my experience installing an ecobee3 in my Seattle home, I wrote an ecobee3 install guide for new users. I also upgraded from an original ecobee Smart to an ecobee3 at my vacation home in Utah, and wrote an upgrade guide for those following that same path. Finally, I bought an extra 2-pack of remote sensors, so now I’m running two remote sensors in both locations and experimenting with there I like them best.

Overall, it’s been a great two months with this device. The remote sensors really do make a huge difference in how comfortable we feel in different parts of the house, and I love seeing the new Home IQ charts that prove that the auto-away feature really is saving me money. Both of my ecobee3 units have performed flawlessly, and I have no reservations recommending that all my friends ask Santa to drop one in their Christmas stocking this year.

I do, however, still have a handful of feature request that I think could make the ecobee3 even better, and since I’ve already got your attention (and hopefully that of the head bees @ ecobee), I’ll take advantage of this opportunity to pitch them one more time. :) Keep in mind that a few of these “wish list” items are features that were available on the original ecobee Smart, which I grew to love and now miss in this current iteration.

Please bring back the visible clock on the home screen. The older ecobee Smart had this visible at all times, and I really miss it on my ecobee3. I totally get that you don’t want to clutter the “minimalist” design of the slick interface, but I know I’m not the only user who would at least like the option of displaying a small clock on both the “sleep” and “wake” versions of the home screen. It would fit nicely centered at the top, like the clock in iOS devices.

Please bring back the current outdoor temperature to the home screen (both sleep and awake versions). Again, this is a feature that I miss from the original Smart. The weather forecast icon on the ecobee3 is awesome. The actual outside temperature displayed inside that icon would be awesomer!

Please bring back “Update Program” as a Hold option. Both the older ecobee Smart and the newer ecobee3 have the ability to manually override the current set point (from the touchscreen, web, or mobile app). Whenever you did, both units can be configured to ask how long you want that override to last. On the Smart, you get five options: Hold 2 hours, Hold 4 hours, Indefinite, Until Next Transition, and Update Program:

Original ecobee Smart override options
Original ecobee Smart override options

On the newer ecobee3, you only get four options:

ecobee3 override options
ecobee3 override options

The “Update Program” override is missing on the ecobee3. This option is particularly useful for new users who are still tinkering with what feels comfortable at any point in their schedule, as well as users who like to tinker with different set points around the times of year when the seasons change. Please bring it back! :)

Please give me an easier way to see the target humidity. On the original Smart, pressing the “Details” button on the touch-screen or the mobile app displayed “Current Humidity” and “Set Humidity” — even when the Humidifier is set to “Frost Control” (which is one of my favorite features, by the way). That let me quickly see how far away my system was from its target (set) humidity. However, on the ecobee3 interface, the current humidity is displayed above the current temp on the home screen, but to see the target humidity, I have to press Main Menu, then System. If the Humidifier option is set to “On,” then the target humidity is displayed. However, if the Humidifier option is set to “Frost Control” (as mine always is), there’s no way to display the target at all.

Please make a few minor tweaks to the interface’s Heat, Cool, and Humidity icons. I love that the touch-screen, mobile app, and web app show the same basic interface. In “Heat” mode, the UI shows the outline of a flame icon. In “Cool” mode, it’s an outlined snowflake icon. When the system is actually heating or cooling, the outlines of those icons change color (orange for heat, blue for cool). But only the outline changes, and I think it would look better if the entire icon were filled solid with their respective colors, rather than just their outline.

How did I get that idea? Because there’s a UI inconsistency that’s giving me major OCD flare-ups. :) On the wall unit touch screen as well as the web app, the the small water droplet (next to the 35%) for humidity is always outlined:

Web interface with outlined water droplet icon.
Web interface with outlined water droplet icon.

But on the mobile app, the humidity icon is always solid:

Mobile app interface with solid droplet icon.
Mobile app interface with solid droplet icon.

At first, I wondered whether the solid droplet was an indicator that the system was calling for humidity. It’s not… but it could be! Having all three icons outlined and white when off, and colored and solid when on, is more intuitive.

Please give me the ability to see remote sensor data from the mobile and web apps. The ecobee3 wall unit has a “Sensors” sub-menu which allows you to see the current temperature, occupancy status, and connection status of each of the remote sensors thermostat’s remote sensors. This is missing from both the mobile app and the web interface, as well as from the Home IQ charts (it is, however, included in the downloadable raw data from Home IQ).

Please steal my idea from my original review about a Wireless Accessory Module. In my original ecobee3 review, I suggested a wireless module for owners who might only have four wires available but want to add an accessory (like a humidifier), or maybe have five or six wires available but want to add more than one accessory (ventilator + humidifier and/or dehumidifier), or interface with a dry contact (to do stuff like this), or use an external thermometer (in locations where the local weather data is questionable). The module would function much like the older ecobee Equipment Interface (EI), still be powered by 24V + COM leads from the furnace, but not need any wires to connect to the main wall unit. Instead, it would have its own WiFi antenna, get its own internal IP address, and then communicate on the local network with the wall unit for status and control (I imagine it would also securely tunnel out like the wall unit for firmware updates and possible data dumping to Home IQ). Plus, I think WAM is an awesome acronym. You can steal this idea for free — all I ask is that you send me one of the first units for testing. :)

OK. Enough soapbox ranting. Although I happen to have it on good authority that ecobee is working on at least a few of my feature requests, so once the holiday rush is over, I’m hoping to see some of these requests become reality.

Now for the questions I promised earlier. Some of these questions are mine, some are from my readers, and some were posted at SmartHomeHub. I emailed them all to Tenille Kennedy, ecobee’s Director of Communications, who was kind enough to provide the following answers:

Q: Can remote sensors (as well as the motion sensor / heat sensor in the wall unit) be “ignored” based on schedule? For example, if I had a remote sensor in the bedroom, and I got up in the middle of the night to go to the kitchen, I wouldn’t want the kitchen sensor to act as if I were awake and occupying the kitchen, and then include the kitchen’s current temp in the “comfort decision.” I’d want all sensors except the bedroom one to be ignored during a Sleep program.”

A: We are exploring adding the capability on selecting sensors based on schedule periods. We’ll keep you posted on any developments.

Oooohh… everyone cross your fingers. Schedule-based selection of remote sensors would be fantastic. :)

Q: When a remote sensor detects motion, does it immediately consider that area “occupied” or does it need to sense motion for a certain period of time?”

A: The sensors are weighted by activity average, so if you walk into a room where there is a sensor, it will immediately recognize occupancy but not 100% of that sensor temperature will be used in temperature averaging immediately. Over time, if there is consistent motion, it will eventually become more weighted in the average.

I found this reply fascinating. It’s not just on/off… it’s more of a gradual effect. Interesting.

Q: Once a sensor determines that an area is occupied, how long after it stops sensing motion does it consider the area unoccupied?”

A: If no motion is detected within 30 minutes, the weighting of that sensor starts to reduce and the sensor is considered unoccupied until it sees motion again.

That’s better than I thought. There had been some discussion in the ecobee users community about how long this actually took, and the answers ranged all over the place. Now that Home IQ allows data download, I’m going to do some testing of my own to see how long the weighting decay lasts.

Q: From a reader: My question is why no outdoor temp sensor, as in my area the weather is not accurate and I had to install the remote out door sensor.”

A: This isn’t a high request item as the vast majority of our customers are happy with the weather service we’re currently using. We’ll continue to monitor to ensure that our customers receive reliable weather information on their ecobee thermostat.

Translation: Don’t hold your breath. :)

Q: From a reader: Can the ACC contacts in the ecobee3 be used as a dry contact for a water sensor alarm in a condensate drip pan?”

A: No. The ACC relay is an output. To connect a water sensor we would need an input (which we don’t have).

I knew the answer to this one already, but it’s a bummer because this is exactly the setup I had with my old ecobee Smart and a Waterbug sensor. I’ve since moved that sensor over to be a dry contact on my alarm system, but I really liked having it connected to my older ecobee, with the ability to get alerts via text, and have the thermostat beep and display the problem (the “WAM” would bring this functionality back, ecobee!).

Big thanks to Tenille @ ecobee for getting back to me so quickly with those answers!

So, to wrap up, at two months into the ecobee3’s life, I’m still a fan and I’m still happy to recommend it. And, not surprisingly, I’m not alone. Just last week, Adam Miarka posted a great review of the ecobee3 calling it a “solid Nest challenger.” More and more new owners post in the ecobee3 Install Help thread on SmartHomeHub every day. When visited the Apple Store in Salt Lake City, Utah, last week, they only had one ecobee3 left on the shelf.

Is the ecobee3 perfect? No, but no product is. But it’s still better than the Nest, still better than the Honeywell Lyric, and still better than anything else out there. In fact, thanks to a handful of firmware updates and the recent release of Home IQ, it’s even better today than it was two months ago. So feel free to jump on the bandwagon. There’s still plenty of room!

As always, I welcome your questions, comments, and feedback below, and I invite you to participate in the ecobee discussion over on SmartHomeHub.

 

The post ecobee3 Review Followup: Two Month Update appeared first on Steve Jenkins' Blog.

Review: ecobee3 HomeKit-enabled Thermostat

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Last year, when the ecobee3 smart thermostat was announced, I published a preview, then a “first look” and unboxing video, followed soon after by the very first review of the ecobee3. I followed those up with an ecobee3 installation guide for new users, along with an ecobee Smart to ecobee3 upgrade guide for owners migrating from the original ecobee Smart units. A few months later, I posted articles about ecobee’s new HomeIQ charts, as well as a two-month followup of the ecobee3. So when ecobee offered me a chance to get my hands on the newly released HomeKit-enabled version of the ecobee3, I giggled and clapped.

No, that doesn’t make me an ecobee fanboy.

It just makes me a fan.

I mean, what geek wouldn’t giggle and clap when his Star Trek-fueled dreams of saying to a replicator “Tea, Earl Grey, Hot” are one step closer… and I don’t even drink tea! Using our voice to interact with the devices that control our environment have been sci-fi’s depiction of home automation since before home automation was feasible. Now, Apple’s HomeKit and Siri are taking that extra step along with ecobee, as the ecobee3 is now officially the world’s first HomeKit-enabled thermostat.

That said, I take journalistic integrity seriously, and even with products I really like, I always call it like I see it. That won’t be any different in this review.

This review will focus solely on the new features of the HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 thermostat (currently $249 on Amazon), without delving into the messy discussion of why existing ecobee3 units won’t work with HomeKit, or why they can’t be upgraded. There’s a decent piece in Fortune with an interview of ecobee CEO Stuart Lombard, so head over there if you want to light your torches and wave your pitchforks. Or feel free to visit the SmartHomeHub.net forums and vent your frustrations there. :)

Because the only difference between the  HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 and the original ecobee3 is the addition of HomeKit support, my original ecobee3 review (which details all of the ecobee3’s features) still applies to this version. That frees me to focus solely on the new HomeKit-specific features of the HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 in this article.

What is HomeKit?

In the words of Apple, “HomeKit is a framework for communicating with and controlling connected accessories in a user’s home. You can enable users to discover HomeKit accessories in their home and configure them, or you can create actions to control those devices. Users can group actions together and trigger them using Siri.” In shorter terms, it’s Apple’s foray into home automation, using iOS and OS X devices as the primary controllers. Between my wife and our four kids, we have 5 iPhones, one iPod, and three iPads — so HomeKit-enabled devices will fit right in at our house. If you don’t have Apple mobile devices, and have no plans to get any, HomeKit-enabled products won’t be of much interest to you. So save yourself some money and buy one of the very slightly-used original ecobee3 units on eBay which are being sold by users looking to migrate to the HomeKit-enabled ecobee3.

But if you are an Apple mobile device user, and you like the idea of being able to say to Siri “Set my thermostat to 73 degrees,” then the HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 is for you.

Getting Some Naming and Model Number Confusion Out of the Way

When the original ecobee3 units hit the market, their original model numbers were EB-STATe3-01 or EB-STATZe3-01, depending on how early in the run you bought yours. With this HomeKit-enabled version, ecobee decided not to jump directly to the ecobee4 designation, and so the official product name is simply “HomeKit-enabled ecobee3.” The model numbers for the HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 are EB-STATe3-02 for the US version, and EB-STATe3c-02 for the Canadian one. Though I think it would have been awesome to make the Candian one the EB-STATe3eh-02.

So in the interest of brevity, throughout this review I’ll refer to the “HomeKit-enabled ecobee3” and my own made up designations of ecobee3-02, e3-02, and HK-e3 interchangeably.

Finally, as a very small FYI, I recently discovered that a small batch of the very first HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 units left production with the older EB-STATZe3-01 model number printed on the rear of the wall units — while the model number on the packaging was correct. If you received one of these units, don’t worry. Just like the famous Inverted Jenny postage stamp, these thermostats are now collector’s items (cough, cough) and do indeed have the same internals as all the other HomeKit-enabled units. :)

Installing the HomeKit-enabled ecobee3

If you’re replacing an old-school thermostat in favor of a HomeKit-enabled ecobee3, you can follow the same steps in my detailed How to Install an ecobee3 Smart Thermostat Guide. Likewise, if you’re upgrading to an HK-e3 from an original ecobee Smart (ecobee’s very first thermostat), you can use my ecobee Smart to ecobee3 Upgrade Guide. But if you’re upgrading from an ecobee3-01 to an ecobee3-02, your hardware installation is as simple as firmly grabbing your ecobee3-01 wall unit, pulling it off the wall, and plugging in the ecobee3-02. Here’s my existing e3-01 and e3-02 side-by-side. From they outside, they look identical.

ecobee3 and HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 side-by-side

ecobee3 and HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 side-by-side

Once it powers up, you’ll see the standard request to let it “stretch my wings” as it continues through its boot process:

HK-ecobee3 booting up

HK-ecobee3 booting up

The HK-ecobee3’s setup wizard runs very much like the original ecobee3’s setup wizard, with one very interesting and welcome addition. Because this is the HomeKit-enabled version, ecobee knows there’s a pretty decent chance that you probably have an Apple mobile device (iPhone, iPod, or iPad) handy. So at the point of the setup wizard where you’d normally use the ecobee3’s touch screen to locate and authenticate on your local wireless network, the HK-e3 gives you the option to use your mobile device to configure its WiFi settings using Apple’s Wireless Accessory Configuration (WAC) instead:

HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 WiFi configuration prompt.

HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 WiFi configuration prompt.

Those who don’t have an iOS device can proceed via the touch-screen. But I whipped out my iPhone, selected the “Use iPhone, iPad or iPod” option, and followed the prompts (my serial number is blocked out in the following photos):

HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 WiFi instructions.

HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 WiFi instructions.

On my iPhone, the WiFi Settings screen showed the HK-e3 as a new device:

ecobee3 shows up as a new network device.

ecobee3 shows up as a new network device.

I selected the new device and got the Accessory Setup screen:

Accessory Setup screen

Accessory Setup screen

After pressing Next to confirm I wanted it on my Jenkins network, my phone “thought” for a moment:

ecobee3 Accessory Setup continues...

ecobee3 Accessory Setup continues…

and then showed Setup Complete:

ecobee3 WiFi setup complete

ecobee3 WiFi setup complete

My ecobee3-02 wall unit also rewarded me with a “Connection completed” message, confirming that it could now communicate with ecobee’s cloud-based servers:

ecobee3 connection completed.

ecobee3 connection completed.

This new iOS-based WiFi setup wizard is exclusive to the HomeKit-enabled version of the ecobee3, due to its updated on-board WiFi authentication chip. It was a welcome new feature I hadn’t experienced wile setting up previous ecobee3 units.

Enabling Remote Sensors

The ecobee3’s remote sensors certainly aren’t the only difference between the ecobee3 and its competition, but there’s not doubt they’re its most touted… and with good reason. Nobody else offers anything like them (yet?). They allow comfortable temperatures to “follow” homeowners around their house, and help trigger the thermostat’s “Home” and “Away” modes to maximize both comfort and savings. If you replaced an ecobee3-01 with an ecobee3-02, you simply need to gather up any existing remote sensors, remove their batteries, count to 10, re-install the batteries (one at a time), follow the prompts on the ecobee3’s touch-screen to pair them with the new thermostat, then put them back in their respective rooms. I had one sensor in my office (named “Office”) and another in my wife’s office (using the ecobee default name of “Lil’bee” — which will be important to remember later on). You should have also received at least one additional remote sensor with your new ecobee3-02, so pull the battery strip, pair it, and place it somewhere that you’d like to monitor.

Remove and re-insert the batteries in your remote sensors to pair them with your HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 thermostat.

Remove and re-insert the batteries in your remote sensors to pair them with your HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 thermostat.

Enabling HomeKit Features

With the physical connections, network connections, and remote sensors configured, it was now time to enable the HomeKit features of the ecobee3. From the ecobee3 app on my iPhone, I pressed the + sign in the top left corner to add a new thermostat to my account, then selected the Add HomeKit Compatible option:

Adding a HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 to my account via the ecobee3 app.

Adding a HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 to my account via the ecobee3 app.

Because this was the first HomeKit device I’d ever added, my phone prompted me to add a new home to my HomeKit hierarchy:

Prompted to Add Home to the hierarchy.

Prompted to Add Home to the hierarchy.

I created a new home called “Maple Valley” as set it as the default home:

Adding a new  home to my hierarchy.

Adding a new home to my hierarchy.

With my “Maple Valley” home now added to my HomeKit hierarchy, the ecobee3 app prompted me to select the home to which I wanted my new thermostat added:

Adding the ecobee3 as a HomeKit thermostat to my home.

Adding the ecobee3 as a HomeKit thermostat to my home.

Then the app confirmed that it had found a HomeKit-enabled thermostat named “MV-Main” on the network:

HomeKit-enabled thermostat found!

HomeKit-enabled thermostat found!

Pressing the Say Hello button briefly displayed a HomeKit Identification message on the ecobee3-02’s screen (I presume to allow users to confirm the correct device if multiple devices were available):

HomeKit Identification message on the ecobee3

HomeKit Identification message on the ecobee3

Pressing the Add button in the app caused a grey box with a number to appear on the ecobee3-02’s screen and prompted me to enter the code in my app to connect the “MV Main” thermostat it to my “Maple Valley” home:

Entering the code to connect my HomeKit-enabled thermostat to my default home.

Entering the code to connect my HomeKit-enabled thermostat to my default home.

Next, the app prompted me to assign the MV Main to a Default Room:

Assigning the HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 to a default room.

Assigning the HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 to a default room.

Then finally a congratulatory message confirming that “MV Main” had been successfully added to my HomeKit, along with the three HomeKit “scenes” currently supported. Those are the three scenes (as you’ll see in a moment) than can be enabled via voice prompts to Siri:

HomeKit success and a list of available HomeKit scenes.

HomeKit success and a list of available HomeKit scenes.

Simultaneously, I received a message on my ecobee3-02’s touch-screen that it had been successfully paired with HomeKit:

ecobee3 on-sreen HomeKit pairing success message.

ecobee3 on-sreen HomeKit pairing success message.

Trying out Siri’s Voice Commands with HomeKit-Enabled ecobee3

Using the list from the What voice commands can I use to control my HomeKit-enabled ecobee3? FAQ on ecobee.com, I pressed my iPhone’s home button, waited for Siri’s “beep beep,” then said “Set my thermostat to 74.” Technically, the FAQ says I’m supposed to say “74 degrees,” but I was curious about whether or not Siri would catch my drift. She did:

Siri setting my thermostat to 74F.

Siri setting my thermostat to 74F.

My wife was sitting in her office on her computer, and my son was sitting in the living room watching Netflix — both of them within earshot. Up to this point, neither of them had been paying any attention to my tinkerings with the thermostat (seeing me tinker with something in the house is nothing new to them), but upon hearing my command and Siri’s response, both of them walked into the kitchen, iPhones outstretched, demanding that I make their phones “do that, too.” Score one for the wife “does it just work?” test and another for the teenager “that’s cool” test.

Not to nitpick, but I did notice that although I’d asked for 74, Siri replied that the thermostat had been set for 73.9. My guess is that being from a Canadian-based company, the ecobee3’s “native” temperature scale is Celsius, and so my request probably got converted into Celsius to perform the change, then re-converted back to Fahrenheit for the confirmation message. This is a very minor issue, and probably the result of rushing (and pressure from Apple) to be the first HomeKit-enabled thermostat on the market (which the ecobee3-02 is). I’m certain this minor annoyance will be fixed in a future firmware update.

I continued down the commands list:

Asking Siri about the current indoor humidity.

Asking Siri about the current indoor humidity.

Now for the first real test: during the setup wizard, I’d told my ecobee3-02 that I didn’t have a ventilator, humidifier, or dehumidifer attached to the thermostat. Therefore, I shouldn’t be able to set the humidity. I was curious to see what Siri’s error response would be:

Setting the ecobee3's humidity... problem is, I don't have a humidifier!

Setting the ecobee3’s humidity… problem is, I don’t have a humidifier!

Strangely, I didn’t get an error response at all. Siri responded that she’d “set the thermostat to 50,” which made me immediately wonder if perhaps she’d set the temperature to 50F or possibly 50C (aka 122F) — both of which would be expensive and uncomfortable. Peeking at the touch-screen, I confirmed that she hadn’t changed my temperature set point at all, so I chalked this up to another minor “rush it out the door” HomeKit bug that I hope gets fixed shortly. It seems the internal logic to manage the humidity set-point via HomeKit is still accessible, even when the equipment isn’t.

If any ecobee techs are reading this, while you’re working on fixing these HomeKit results messages, may I suggest that the humidity results also contain units (such as %) just as the temperatures always do? If I did have a humidifier connected to my system, I would have wanted Siri’s reply to be “OK Steve, I set the thermostat to 50%.” Wait, actually, I’d want her to say: “OK Steve, I set the humidity to 50%,” though if the HomeKit limitations (and I realize that Apple controls a lot of this) require her response to use the word “thermostat,” maybe she could say something like “OK Steve, I set the thermostat humidity to 50%.” Cool? Cool.

I decided to try setting the “scenes” that the HomeKit confirmation screens had promised:

Enabling the "Home" scene.

Enabling the “Home” scene.

In HomeKit, scenes can incorporate multiple devices, so it’s conceivable that if I had more devices, this command could set the thermostat to “Home” mode, turn on some lights, deactivate my alarm, and stream my “Welcome Home, Steve!” playlist from my Apple TV over my whole-house speakers! But for now, Siri just put my thermostat into its “Home” mode. The “Enable MV Main Away” and “Enable MV Main Resume Schedule” commands both also worked fine, though I found that last one to be a mouthful, so I tried simply saying “Enable MV Main Resume.” Siri auto-completed the command, and even though I didn’t say the word “Schedule,” that’s exactly how the command appeared — and Siri replied “OK, your humble abode is ready for MV Main Resume Schedule.” Rock on!

My last test was to query my remote sensor’s temperature readings. I started with my office:

Requesting a remote sensor's temperature via HomeKit.

Requesting a remote sensor’s temperature via HomeKit.

So far, so good. I’d used an extra “my” in the command, but it didn’t seem to matter. But when it came time to ask about my sensor named “Lil’bee” — which is the default name for the first remote sensor on every ecobee3 thermostat, I ran into a little trouble:

Siri doesn't recognize Lil'bee. :(

Siri doesn’t recognize Lil’bee. :(

No matter how I phrased it, I couldn’t get Siri to understand “Lil’bee.” I decided to rename both sensors (which is accomplished easily via the web or touch-screen interface) to “Steve Office” and “Keri Office.” I gave Siri another crack at it. She had no trouble understanding me and reporting the temperature for “Steve Office,” but when I told her “List Keri Office temperature,” the command appeared on-screen as “List Carrie office temperature,” which then got auto-corrected to “List Cary office temperature.” I tried all the Siri-hacks I knew: adding phonetic spelling in Keri’s contact entry, telling Siri “That’s not how you pronounce Keri” and had her try to re-learn, and creating keyboard shortcuts that would auto-correct both “Carrie” and “Cary” to “Keri” in text apps. None of those worked. So for now, my advice is to name your remote sensors something that Siri can’t confuse with something else… something boring… like Office 1 and Office 2.

I have a few other minor gripes about the restrictive language Siri requires me to use, but no real deal-killers. I’m glad I can ask something as naturally as “What’s my thermostat temperature?” and get a reply of “The thermostat is at 79.9F,” but then it’s confusing to immediately say “List my thermostat temperature” and get a reply of “The thermostat is at 74.8F.” Geeks like me will understand that the first is the set-point and the second is the actual temperature reading. However, I can ask “What’s my thermostat’s set point?” and get the correct response, but when I ask “What’s my current indoor temperature?” I get “Interesting question, Steve.”

You need to be careful and specific when dealing with Siri (naturally, there’s a learning curve). If I ask “What’s my current humidity?” I get a weather forecast with a response that tells me the outdoor humidity index based on Internet data. What I should have asked was “What’s my thermostat current humidity?” to which she replied “The thermostat is at 41.” Interestingly, that question also worked when phrased “What’s my current thermostat humidity?” — so it seems the word “thermostat” helps put her on the right track when dealing with the HomeKit-enabled ecobee3.

The biggest mistake I could cause Siri to make was when I tried setting the thermostat in relative terms, instead of a specific temperature. First, I asked her to “Lower my thermostat by 2 degrees.” She didn’t understand. So I tried “Lower my thermostat by 2.” That she did understand… but her response was “OK, I’ve set the thermostat to 50F” — even though my current set point was 76F. In response, my thermostat posted a warning message on its touch-screen, and sent me an alert email, saying “A desired temperature of 50 will cause your equipment to run excessively and may damage it. To protect your equipment, we have changed the desired temperature to 70. To change the permissible range, tap menu > settings > preferences > cooling range.” Thank goodness for smart thermostats that are actually smart!

Again, none of these “launch issues” with Siri are deal killers, and I imagine that as time goes on, ecobee and Apple will work to make the interaction between me, Siri, and my ecobee3-02 more and more smooth, natural, and predictable.

Interactivity with Other Apps and Devices

It seems that the really big question is “How does the HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 interact with other HomeKit-enabled apps and devices?” I asked Siri that question, but she wasn’t much help. The truth is that it’s too early to tell. I currently don’t have any other HomeKit enabled devices to test with the ecobee3, but I plan to change that soon. As far as other apps, I tried installing the iHome Control app on my iPhone, but it was unable to “see” my ecobee3-02. The Elgato Eve app seems promising, however — it allows me see and control all the HomeKit-enabled elements of the ecobee3-02, including the occupancy and temperature readings of my remote sensors.

Elgato's Eve app lets me see and control HomeKit devices, including the ecobee3.

Elgato’s Eve app lets me see and control HomeKit devices, including the ecobee3.

I’m guessing (and hoping) that once iOS 9 (which is currently in beta) gets released, more opportunities for HomeKit integration across multiple devices and applications will arrive. For now, we’ll have to satisfy ourselves with verbal commands to query values and override certain ecobee3 settings and programs, which isn’t a bad start.

Final Thoughts

So is the ecobee3 worth the upgrade? As one of my college professors used to say, “Where you stand depends upon where you sit.”

If you don’t have (and don’t plan to have) any Apple mobile devices in your home, then you don’t need the HomeKit-enabled version of the ecobee3. An ecobee3-01 (currently $222 on Amazon) will be fine for you.

If you’re an Apple device user who’s upgrading from a “dumb” thermostat, the HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 is the device you want.

If you’re an Apple device user who’s upgrading from a first-generation ecobee Smart or another smart thermostat like the Lyric or Nest, then I also believe the HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 is the right move.

But if you’re an Apple device who bought an ecobee3 just a few months ago, prior to the HomeKit announcement, only to learn you can’t simply add HomeKit functionality to your existing ecobee3… you’re probably feeling a little bit of a sting right now. ecobee offered an upgrade window for existing ecobee users, but that window closed on July 6th, and I don’t know if they have any plans to re-open it. If you just simply have to have the HomeKit integration (and I won’t lie… it’s pretty darn cool), then I recommend biting the bullet, buying the HomeKit-enabled ecobee3, then listing your e3-01 on Craigslist, eBay, or sell it to a neighbor (and sweeten the deal by offering to install it yourself).

But if the thought of huddling under your covers on a cold winter night with the ability to nudge up the temperature two degrees without needing to find your reading glasses on your nightstand simply by pressing your home button and whispering “Siri, set my thermostat to 68 degrees” makes you quiver with “just-gotta-have-it-itis,” you simply can’t put a price on that.

Wait… yes you can. It’s $249 on Amazon. :)

As always, I welcome your questions, comments, and feedback below. I also invite you to join the HomeKit and ecobee conversations over on SmartHomeHub.net.

 

The post Review: ecobee3 HomeKit-enabled Thermostat appeared first on SteveJenkins.com.

Review: Lux GEO WiFi Thermostat

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Thermostats have come a long way since the days of the gold-colored round Honeywell dial thermostats at your grandma’s house. Ecobee launched the first “smart” thermostat in 2007, but others like Google’s Nest and Honeywell’s Lyric weren’t far behind. But now even those manufacturers are shipping 2nd or 3rd generation hardware… meaning that in “tech years,’ even smart thermostats have come a long way.

Meet the Lux GEO

It’s no secret I’ve been an ecobee fanboy since my first ecobee product review over 5 years ago. Which is exactly why the fine folks at Lux Products contacted me and asked me to put their newest offering, the GEO WiFi Thermostat, through its paces. In fact, they fully acknowledged that I’m an ecobee fanboy, but had zero fear about handing over one of their products, with no conditions, and asking for an honest review. I appreciate that kind of confidence.

Lux GEO WiFi Thermost

Lux GEO WiFi Thermost

Price and Options

The Lux GEO WiFi Thermostat has an MSRP of $255, with a street price closer to $150 on places like Amazon. That’s around $100 cheaper than either the $244 street price of the current-gen ecobee3 or the 3rd gen Google Nest. Admittedly, you’re going to give up some features for that $100… but whether or not those features are worth the extra $100 is up to you, and this review will hopefully help you make an informed decision. But the Lux GEO has a few tricks up its sleeve, and actually has some functionality that both the ecobee and Nest lack. And as much as it pains me as an ecobee fanboy to say so, it’s the type of functionality that just might make you choose the Lux GEO over the ecobee3 or Nest… even if they cost the same amount!

You can get the Lux GEO in Stormtrooper white or Darth Vader black, (ok, those aren’t the “official” colors… they call them “black-piano” and “pearl white”) and because I planned to install it on a wall near light-almond colored switches, I chose black so as not to clash:

Unboxing my Lux GEO WiFi Thermostat

Unboxing my Lux GEO WiFi Thermostat

Here’s a peek at the back:

Lux GEO rear view

Lux GEO rear view

In addition to the thermostat, the box contains stickers for identifying thermostat wires, screws and molly bolts for installation into drywall, and a rectangular-shaped piece of trim that matches the thermostat color for hiding old screw holes and/or paint color variances. They also included a well-designed fold-out installation booket (in both English and Spanish)… which I immediately put aside because I wanted to see how intuitive the setup would be without any help.

Other stuff in the Lux GEO box

Other stuff in the Lux GEO box

Batteries… Included?

Oh, one more important thing came in the Lux GEO’s box that you won’t find in the box of an ecobee3, Nest, Lyric, or most other smart thermostats: a pair of AA Energizer Ultimate Lithium batteries. First, hats off to Lux for including the expensive AA lithium batteries over the cheaper “Advanced” lithiums or alkalines. But what’s truly remarkable about the Lux GEO is that it can actually run on batteries, much like the digital Honeywell thermostats from the 80s and 90s. The “leading” smart thermostats all need to “steal” power (usually 24 volts) from your furnace via the R and C wires. With other smart thermostats, if your wiring doesn’t include a C-wire, you have to piggyback the C wire using a separate device (such as ecobee’s PEK), or in the most extreme cases, abandon hope of using a smart thermostat altogether. If you do have a C-wire available, the Lux GEO will steal power from your furnace like any other smart thermostat, or you can even power it with a mini-USB adapter, if you happen to have a use-case that requires it. But the fact that the Lux GEO can power itself completely on batteries, and is smart enough to allow you to select from one of three power profiles (High Performance, Balanced, or Optimized) while on battery may be the smartest feature of this smart thermostat. I’d recommend using the batteries as a backup power source, even if you do have a C-wire available. When the power flickers at my house, my ecobee3 always needs to reboot. That won’t happen with the Lux GEO.

Not only can the Lux GEO run on batteries, it comes with a set of nice ones included.

Not only can the Lux GEO run on batteries, it comes with a set of nice ones included.

Getting Set Up

Like many thermostats, the Lux GEO comes in two pieces: a “base” unit that screws into the wall and connects to your thermostat wiring, and a “main” unit that contains all the high tech stuff:

Lux GEO's mounting base and main unit

Lux GEO’s mounting base and main unit

The jumper switches you see let you bridge your furnace’s Y1 and W1 and/or RC and RH terminals if needed, but in my case, I didn’t need to touch anything. My test environment was the HVAC system at my Utah house, which is a pretty average setup: a 2 stage gas furnace with a single stage outside A/C unit. And even though I do have enough wires in my wall to connect the R and C wires to steal power, I decided to use the batteries for this test. One of the huge benefits of going that route for this review was that I could sit down to configure and program the Lux GEO before having anything wired at the wall. I popped in the batteries and the Lux GEO’s LCD screen sprung to life:

Lux GEO's first setup screen

Lux GEO’s first setup screen

One of the reason’s the Lux GEO can get away with battery power is that it’s not powering a high-resolution touch-screen. It’s a simple backlit LCD screen (and the backlight turns off after 10 seconds, though that’s user-definable). User input is done entirely though a large round knob which produces a surprisingly satisfying “click” when turned (there’s something nice about having a tactile response in a smart device) and that accepts a “push” on either side: one with a blue play symbol and the other with a red X. The dial interface is simple and intuitive, and your first setup task forces you to use it right away. You can operate the Lux GEO in what I’d call “landscape” mode (wide than it is tall) or “portrait” mode (taller than it is wide). Since the default orientation was landscape, I changed it to see the difference:

Portrait orientation

Portrait orientation

The Lux GEO then asked me a series of questions about my system. Clicking through the setup wizard without any help from the instructions was a breeze:

Lux GEO system setup screen

Lux GEO system setup screen

I won’t bore you with endless photos, but I clicked through and told the GEO that my furnace was a 2-stage gas unit, and that I wanted stage 2 to kick in only if the set point was 3.0F above the current temperature (what Lux calls the “offset”).

I was then presented with the screen that makes this smart thermostat “smart,” the network connection wizard:

Lux GEO network setup wizard

Lux GEO network setup wizard

After choosing “Yes,” the thermostat put itself into “access point mode” and prompted me to download the Lux app for my mobile device to continue setup.

Lux GEO AP Mode

Lux GEO AP Mode

Lux has an app for both iOS and Android devices, so searching for “lux thermostat” in the Apple App Store did the trick:

Download the Lux app from the App Store or Google Play

Download the Lux app from the App Store or Google Play

Connecting the Lux GEO to your local WiFi is a similar process to connecting a Belkin WeMo smart switch. You “join” the device’s mini WiFi network, use the app to tell the device about your home WiFi network (including your home WiFi password), switch your mobile device back to your home WiFi network, cross your fingers, and hope everything connected properly.

Thankfully, the process worked great with the Lux GEO:

Lux GEO waiting for app to connect

Lux GEO waiting for app to connect

 

Lux app ready to connect

Lux app ready to connect to the GEO

 

Fill out your local WiFi info

Fill out your local WiFi info

 

Locate the Lux GEO's local WiFi network on your mobile device

Locate the Lux GEO’s local WiFi network on your mobile device

 

 

Choose your home WiFi network

Choose your home WiFi network

 

Put in your home WiFi password

Put in your home WiFi password

 

The Lux GEO thinks for a while...

The Lux GEO thinks for a while…

 

And... BOOM! You're connected!

And… BOOM! You’re connected!

After naming the thermostat, the app walks you through the rest of the process. Again, keep in mind I did all this before even starting to wire the thermostat to my furnace. But now that things were getting serious, it was time to wire in the wall-mounted base unit. I connected the R, Y, G, and W wires. My system also has a humidifier (which is the brown wire I didn’t connect), but the Lux GEO doesn’t support additional accessories like the ecobee3 does (that’s at least one thing you get for the extra $100). If you want to run a humidifier with a Lux GEO you can, but you’ll need a separate humidistat on your system.

UPDATE: Lux informed me in a follow-up email that they plan to release another model in the near future with humidity control, and promised to send that unit for testing and review.

Wall base all wired up

Wall base all wired up

I switched back to the app, named my thermostat “Main Floor,” and then got the Schedule Setup screens. The interface is extremely intuitive, and guesses that your Mon-Fri settings might be different than your Sat-Sun settings:

Tell the Lux GEO about your week

Tell the Lux GEO about your week

It also lets you set a general efficiency, so it can take a stab at the ideal set points for how efficient you want to be (all of which are modifiable, of course):

Setting efficiency preferences on the Lux GEO app

Setting efficiency preferences on the Lux GEO app

My favorite part was the slider for setting “home” and “away” times:

Using a slider in the app to set program times

Using a slider in the app to set program times

Of course, all these same options are available for setting your cooling, too, and you can simply copy over the heat program times to the cool program times, or run completely separate ones (you can’t do that with the Nest or ecobee):

Setting the cooling settings, which are copied from the heat settings

Setting the cooling settings, which are copied from the heat settings

The final step is to select the set points for when you’re away:

Setting the Lux GEO's away temps

Setting the Lux GEO’s away temps

I was thrilled to see that the Lux GEO uses your mobile device and geo-fencing to automatically set itself to “away” mode when you leave your house. You can enable or disable this feature, as well as set the size of the geo-fence as a radius around your house (I’d show you the screen shot, but I don’t want you knowing where I live!). This is something I wish the ecobee3 supported, and I’m still surprised that it doesn’t, since no changes to the hardware would be required. All the logic for “geo-fence away” would be done in the mobile app and cloud-based back end. Correction: The ecobee3 added geo-fencing to their HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 in October 2015.

Geo-fence radius can be set by the user

Geo-fence radius can be set by the user

Once everything’s set, the app’s main screen looks like this:

Lux GEO app with thermostat connected

Lux GEO app with thermostat connected

Control and Function

You can control basic functions of the thermostat from the app, as well as see runtime settings (the ecobee3 makes you go to the website to see runtime info).

I did notice a bit of a lag between changes on the app being reflected on the thermostat. I don’t know how often they “poll” for changes, but I’d like it to be faster. Of course, this might have been a function of me running battery mode, and it might poll more often if the power were hard-wired. But in my testing, this lag was the only real annoyance with the Lux GEO. I like devices to respond near instantaneously to app inputs.

UPDATE: A follow-up email from Lux confirms that the slower polling rate on the GEO only occurs when running on battery power, so that it conserves energy. If you connect with C-wire or the additional USB port, then you will have a near instantaneous response from the app.

Of course, all the features are also accessible from the thermostat itself. I went to test the manual override feature by turning the dial up a few clicks, but before I could… the unit launched an automatic firmware update! So I guess that answers that question. Yes, the Lux GEO automatically updates its own firmware:

Firmware updates are automatic

Firmware updates are automatic

Once the update finished (it didn’t take long at all), The screen returned to normal:

Lux GEO's normal home screen

Lux GEO’s normal home screen

It wasn’t really 80F in my house, I think the Lux GEO was self-calibrated, and within 15 minutes the temp read normally. I tested overriding the temperature manually by rotating the dial, and noticed you can choose override times in 15 min increments (the ecobee makes you choose between 2 and 4 hours):

Override lets you choose 15 minute increments

Override lets you choose 15 minute increments

With an override in place, the home screen shows the set point it’s trying to reach, and the “flame” icon shows that the heat is on (that solid flame means Stage 2 heat):

Home screen with override

Home screen with override

Cancelling the override is as simple as clicking the X side of the knob, or using the app.

I went in and tinkered with some of the settings:

Lux GEO settings screen

Lux GEO settings screen

…but truthfully, I didn’t need to change anything. For me, the Lux GEO worked right out of the box.

A Very Quick Call to Tech Support

Though during my testing, I wondered how things would be had things not worked so well. The box touted live phone support, so at 2:23 PM Mountain Time, I dialed the support phone number (which wasn’t in the instructions… I had to Google for it).

Calling Lux GEO tech support at 2:23PM Mountain

Calling Lux GEO tech support at 2:23 PM Mountain

The automated attendant thanked me for calling, informed me that customer service was available Mon – Fri,  8:00 AM to 4:30 PM Eastern time (they’re in Philly). With 7 minutes to spare, I figured I’d ask tech support a simple question, just to see how they did.

I pressed “3” when prompted because I was a “consumer.” I remained on hold for a couple of minutes, the phone rang again as I connected… and then it hung up on me.

I dialed back at 2:26 PM Mountain / 4:26 PM Eastern. The automated message said something like “Due to high call volume, we won’t be able to answer to your call before our phone support hours end. Please call back during normal business hours.” Hmm… that’s no bueno. First, if I’m connected and on hold before your support hours end, I should get support.

Second, “normal business hours” have changed in the global economy age. Being an East Coast company and ending your support hours at 4:30 PM local seems sub-optimal for me. I happened to be in Utah when I called, but had I been in Seattle, I’d have needed to call tech support before 1:30 PM… when many people are just getting done with lunch. That’s definitely something I’d like to see Lux change, though I suppose you could include that in the “what do you give up for $100” list.

UPDATE: I received the following in an email from Lux: “We apologize for the poor service on our customer support line. When you do get through to our team we have a friendly and knowledgeable team! The first weeks of winter increase our call volume a huge amount so we do struggle to speak with all customers at this time of year. We recognize that the service hours are not acceptable for customers in the west of the country and we will look to improve on that before the start of the new year. We really appreciate your honest feedback on this.”

Lux Web GUI

Lux also lets you access and control your thermostat thought their web interface, which also gives you insight into runtime and how your house compared to other houses in your area (like ecobee does with HomeIQ). I found myself opting for the app over the web interface, as the app gave me everything I wanted. But for those who don’t have mobile smart devices (like my parents), or who simply prefer a web browser to an app, Lux’s web GUI is just as slick, colorful, and pretty as their app interface.

Final Thoughts

Except for the glitch with phone support, my overall impression of the Lux GEO is extremely positive. And with a street price of $150, it’s almost 40% cheaper than the ecobee3 or the Google Nest. Is the ecobee or the Nest worth the premium?

If you can’t get a C-wire to your thermostat location, then the Lux GEO is a no-brainer. It’s currently the only WiFi thermostat that can run on batteries. I didn’t test the unit until the batteries ran out, but there is a “low battery warning” so you’ll have time to replace the batteries before it goes dead. Lux confirmed to me in a follow-up email that you should expect anywhere between 6-12 months of battery life, depending on the profile selected (High Performance, Balanced, or Optimized) and your home’s WiFi conditions.

If you’re highly price sensitive, then choosing the Lux GEO is probably the right move. You get nearly all of the operational features of the more expensive smart thermostats, an app that’s just as good (or maybe even better) than the competition, and all you have to give up is the flashy color screen.

If you’re hooked on the ecobee’s remote sensor and motion sensing features, and/or not as price sensitive, then the price difference to go for the more expensive option might be worth it to you. So head to head against my beloved ecobee3, it’s a “maybe.” But even a “maybe” from me is a pretty big deal, given how much I love my ecobee3.

Against the Nest, however, I think the Lux GEO wins hands down. The Nest doesn’t have remote sensors, and I’ve never been crazy about the “learning” approach, and the GEO’s much cheaper. Unless you really want to be a part of the Nest eco-system with its smoke detector integration, save your money and buy a Lux GEO.

The Lux GEO offers entry-level pricing into the smart thermostat world, with much better than entry-level features and a mobile app that’s gorgeous, intuitive, and simple.

And that makes it a bargain.

There’s still time to put one under someone’s Christmas tree… even if that someone is yourself. :)

Still want more info? Check out Lux’s YouTube channel for product overviews, install, and how-to videos.

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Review: ecobee3 Lite

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Are you wanting to get on the smart thermostat bandwagon, but aren’t sure if it’s worth the $249 price tag of the full-featured models like the ecobee3 and Nest? Then has ecobee got a deal for you. They recently added the ecobee3 Lite to their line-up with a very tempting MSRP of $169. If you’re wondering what features you have to give up for that $80 savings, ecobee answers that question in their FAQ:

The ecobee3 lite is very similar to the ecobee3, but does not include support for Wireless Room Sensors, Occupancy Detection, Smart Home/Away features, and Accessories (HRVs, Ventilators, Humidifiers, Dehumidifiers). But you still get all the other smart functions offered by the ecobee3; Smart Recovery, Schedule and Vacation settings, Home IQ, connection to Homekit/Amazon Echo/IFTTT and SmartThings, Alerts and Reminders and our Web Portal and Mobile App.

The majority of smart thermostat users probably won’t need to hook up an an accessory like a humidifier to their system, so the loss of that feature doesn’t feel like that big a deal. The wireless room sensors, however, are what really set the flagship ecobee3 apart from the competition, so that’s where the $80 in savings should really be measured for the average homeowner. If the additional features that come by virtue of the built-in and remote occupancy sensors (Smart Home/Away, Follow Me, and occupancy detection) aren’t worth $80 to you, then the ecobee3 lite is the ideal way for the budget conscious buyer to make their home a little smarter while making their energy bill a whole lot smaller.

I was an early adopter of the original ecobee Smart Thermostat since its launch, and then I upgraded to multiple ecobee3 units at our main home in Seattle, Washington in September 2014. In November 2014, I documented how to upgrade from an original ecobee Smart to an ecobee3 at our place in Utah. The only place I was still using an original ecobee Smart was at our Cabin near Wenatchee, Washington. I was primarily using it for its remote management capabilities, so we could turn on the heat or AC before the 2.5 hour drive and the place would be (mostly) heated or cooled by the time we walked in the door. I didn’t see much of a need to upgrade the original ecobee because the electricity in Wenatchee is the cheapest in the country at 2.5 cents per Kwh, compared to 10 cents per Kwh in Seattle. But when the ecobee3 Lite came out, I decided it was the perfect opportunity to try it out. I have to shamefully admit that when I replaced the old-school Honeywell thermostat that used to be at the cabin, it left a large mismatched paint spot on the wall. I always swore I’d fix it… but never got around to it. So here’s what I was starting with at the cabin, prior to upgrading to the ecobee3 Lite:

Original ecobee Smart Thermostat at the Cabin

Original ecobee Smart Thermostat at the Cabin

Yes, I know, hideous.

What’s in the Box?

I’d previously made an ecobee3 unboxing video, and the unboxing of the ecobee3 Lite was pretty similar, though it’s clear ecobee has made an effort to make things even more sleek and modern. At first glance, the ecobee3 Lite looks a like like its older brother:

ecobee 3 Lite unboxing

ecobee 3 Lite unboxing

There was nothing wrong with the ecobee3 manual, but the ecobee3 Lite manual received a total redesign and is very easy to follow:

ecobee3 Lite manual

ecobee3 Lite manual

Underneath the manual was the mounting plate / wiring harness, mounting hardware, and the updated Power Extender Kit (PEK), which allows you to install the ecobee3 Lite even if you only have 4 thermostat wires available at the thermostat location on your wall.

ecobee3 Lite mounting plate, hardware, and PEK

ecobee3 Lite mounting plate, hardware, and PEK

The new PEK works just like the original PEK, in that it lets you connect to the most common 5 terminals on your furnace’s control board: Yellow (AC), White (Heat), Green (Fan), Common (Ground), and Red (Power).

Five wires coming out of the ecobee3 Lite PEK

Five wires coming out of the ecobee3 Lite PEK

The big improvements in the PEK are the push-button quick connectors for the wire coming from the wall location:

ecobee3 Lite PEK push-button connectors

ecobee3 Lite PEK push-button connectors

…and a magnetic pad on the rear of the new PEK, which makes it easy to mount to nearby metal surfaces such as a furnace panel or sheet metal ducting:

Rear of the ecobee3 lite PEK has a magnetic mounting pad

Rear of the ecobee3 lite PEK has a magnetic mounting pad

Fortunately, I had plenty of wires available at the cabin, so I didn’t need to use the PEK. I just thought there were enough improvements in the new PEK that I still felt it worthwhile to share them.

The ecobee3 Lite’s mounting plate looks very much that of the ecobee3, just a bit smaller and with fewer connectors, but still comes with the bubble level to make OCD wall-mounters happy:

ecobee3 Lite wall mount

ecobee3 Lite wall mount

The box also contains a larger plate to cover up any holes or paint mismatch from previous installs:

Larger plate for covering up old thermostat locations

Larger plate for covering up old thermostat locations

Out with the Old, In with the New

Because I was upgrading from an original ecobee Smart, I went through all of my settings screens and took photos. This makes configuring the replacement a lot easier. Taking a photo of the old thermostat’s wiring diagram is always helpful:

ecobee Smart's wiring diagram

ecobee Smart’s wiring diagram

But even if you’re starting from scratch and not replacing an older ecobee with an ecobee3 Lite, the easy-to-follow instructions in the manual will get you up and running quickly.

After snapping photos of my settings, I shut off the power to the furnace (very important) then disconnected my old thermostat (ignore the additional wires to the left, which are from a Honeywell air filter).

Removing the old thermostat

Removing the old thermostat

Then I went downstairs where the old ecobee’s equipment interface was located, disconnected it, and connected the wires from the upstairs thermostat location directly to my furnace’s wiring terminal. If you’re replacing a traditional thermostat, you won’t need to do that step. The newer ecobee3 and ecobee3 Lite no longer require an equipment interface, so most homeowners will only have to re-wire things at the thermostat wall location (but read the manual for your particular setup).

My old thermostat was not centered on the wall, and it didn’t have enough slack for me to center my ecobee3 lite, so I decided to wire-nut a couple feet of thermostat wire to the existing wires so I had more flexibility in my install. I also decided to cover up that ghastly unpainted spot once and for all, so I hit the local Hobby Lobby and spent $20 on a rustic wood panel wall-hanging. It was a bit too wide, so I used a saw to chop down the sides to the width I needed, wiped some wood stain on cut ends with some stain, drilled a hole in the middle for my extended thermostat wire, mounted the ecobee3 lite mounting plate directly to the wood, then screwed the wood panel into a wall stud (thank goodness it was centered):

ecobee3 wall plate mounted to wood panel

ecobee3 wall plate mounted to wood panel

With plenty of slack, I was able to easily connect the appropriately-colored wires to the ecobee3 Lite mounting plate, then tuck the slack behind the wood panel:

ecobee3 Lite mounting plate installed

ecobee3 Lite mounting plate installed

Finally, I gently pressed the ecobee3 Lite into the mounting bracket and turned on my furnace. After a few seconds, the unit sprang to life!

Getting Set Up

Registering the ecobee3 Lite was easy with an iPhone. When I opened my iPhone’s WiFi screen, the ecobee3 Lite as there waiting to be set up:

iPhone setup of ecobee3 Lite

iPhone setup of ecobee3 Lite

It was as simple as typing in a code that appeared on the ecobee3 Lite’s screen to sync it with my ecobee account so I could manage it remotely:

Connecting the ecobee3 Lite to an ecobee account

Connecting the ecobee3 Lite to an ecobee account

Once everything was set up, my ecobee3 Lite was happy, and went into its automatic temperature calibration mode:

ecobee3 Lite calibration mode

ecobee3 Lite calibration mode

While it calibrated, I used my app to check the differences between the ecobee3 and ecobee3 Lite’s app menu options. As expected, they looked very similar. The ecobee3 at my Seattle house menu looks like this:

ecobee3 mobile app main menu

ecobee3 mobile app main menu

And the ecobee3 Lite looks the same, without the Sensors menu item:

ecobee3 Lite mobile app main menu

ecobee3 Lite mobile app main menu

Finishing Touches

After setting up my heating and cooling preferences (some via the ecobee3 Lite’s screen and some via the app), I decided to dress up the install a bit. I took the antlers that had been on the wall above the old thermostat and mounted them to the wood panel:

Antlers added to punch up the rustic vibe

Antlers added to punch up the rustic vibe

When everything was done, the finished product looked like the perfect mix of modern and rustic:

Install complete!

Install complete!

Making Your Smart Home Smarter

If you’re into more extensive home automation, I run a SmartThings hub at the cabin, as well as an Amazon Echo Dot, both of which integrate wonderfully with the ecobee3 and ecobee3 Lite. I can control the ecobee3 Lite using the ecobee app, or I can trigger thermostat events based on any SmartThings sensor or input (like automatically lowering the temperature when my SmartThings hub senses my phone has left the cabin for the afternoon), or I can say “Alexa, turn the Cabin thermostat up 2 degrees.” With an MSRP of $169, the ecobee3 Lite is an unbeatable choice for those looking to connect a smart thermostat to a more widely integrated smart home.

Final Thoughts

So is the ecobee3 Lite right for you? If the price of the flagship ecobee3 is out of your budget, then the less expensive ecobee3 Lite is a great way to get the basic features of the more expensive model without breaking the bank. If you’ve got a home that wouldn’t benefit from remote sensors, the ecobee3 Lite is a better choice than anything else on the market. It’s just as easy to install, set up, and use as its slightly older brother. And it looks just as good on your wall, too… just make sure it’s centered. 🙂

If you’re looking for a more in-depth review of the ecobee3 Lite, check out my original ecobee3 review, my ecobee3 two month follow-up, and my HomeKit-enabled ecobee3 review. The ecobee3 Lite shares the majority of the ecobee3’s features, is HomeKit-enabled, and uses the exact same app and web interface as the ecobee3. The only difference is the absence of remote sensors and occupancy detection (meaning Smart Home/Away and Follow Me features aren’t available), and the ability to add accessories like a humidifier. Apart from that, the ecobee3 Lite looks and acts exactly like a HomeKit-enabled ecobee3.

I welcome your questions, comments, and feedback below! But if you’ve got an ecobee3 or ecobee3 Lite technical question, you’re better off contacting ecobee support or joining the conversation at SmartHomeHub.

 

 

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ecobee4 Smart Thermostat Review

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Today is the official launch of the ecobee4 smart thermostat: the latest in what’s now a long(ish) line of WiFi thermostats from the eponymous Toronto-based ecobee Inc. Whenever ecobee releases an even “smarter” version of their smart thermostat, you can pretty much guarantee I’m gonna be all over that product review. I reviewed the original ecobee Smart way back in 2010, and a peek at all my posts tagged “ecobee” since then will reveal that I’ve been an unabashed early adopter of their products. I’ve also used and reviewed other WiFi thermostats in a variety of test environments, but I still always end up using ecobees in my own residential and work spaces. But that’s not to say I’m a fan-boy. I’ll be as objective in this review as I am in all my others, and tell it like it is. So let’s take a peek at the new ecobee4!

ecobee4 with Amazon Alexa Voice Service

ecobee4 with Amazon Alexa Voice Service

What’s in the Box?

ecobee4 Smart Thermostat unboxed

ecobee4 Smart Thermostat unboxed

The first thing I noticed is that ecobee continues to demonstrate their understanding of the importance of a well laid-out box opening “experience.” It feels downright iPhone-ish (that’s a good thing). DIY geeks like me get warm fuzzies due to the attention to detail, while those who might otherwise feel a bit intimidated about installing a smart thermostat for the first time get a “Well this isn’t so bad!” vibe.

The next thing I noticed was Amazon’s Alexa circular logo proudly displayed on the front of the box. The official phrasing from ecobee is that the new ecobee4 features “built-in Amazon Alexa Voice Service.” But that’s just a fancy way of saying that for almost all intents and purposes, the ecobee4 is an Amazon Echo Dot and an ecobee smart thermostat mashed up into one device that sits on your wall — and in addition to SmartThings and IFTTT, also supports Apple HomeKit. As far as I know, it’s the only device currently on the market that combines Amazon Alexa and Apple HomeKit technologies in the same unit. I shudder when I think of the machinations ecobee CEO Stuart Lombard and his executive team had to go through to negotiate that type of licensing… while still keeping the ecobee4’s price point competitive with other industry players. But that’s not my job, it’s theirs! Mine is to play with stuff and see if I can break it talk about the experience.

Compared to its older sister, the ecobee4 (shown on the right below) is slightly larger and somewhat “rounder.” I didn’t measure them, but the touchscreen looks about the same size… or maybe even a touch bigger on the ecobee4:

ecobee3 (left) and ecobee4 (right)

ecobee3 (left) and ecobee4 (right)

The ecobee4 is also slightly thicker than the ecobee3, probably to make room for all that Amazon juiciness:

The ecobee4 is slightly thicker than the ecobee3

The ecobee4 is slightly thicker than the ecobee3

The rear of the ecobee4 reveals a number of vents, which I’m guessing are for ventilation (up top) as well as microphone (lower right) and speakers (bottom center):

Rear view of the ecobee4 smart thermostat

Rear view of the ecobee4 smart thermostat

The ecobee4 mounts to the wall in a similar fashion as did the ecobee3, but the two wiring harnesses aren’t identical, so while it’s not quite as simple as unplugging the old unit and snapping in the new one, migration from an ecobee3 to an ecobee4 is as simple as migration from pretty much any other thermostat: disconnect the old wires, mount and connect the new wiring harness, plug in the ecobee4. Yes, friends, it’s really that simple. Here’s the ecobee4 with its wiring harness and optional cosmetic wall plate (top) compared to the ecobee3 (bottom):

ecobee4 and wiring harness compared to the ecobee3

ecobee4 and wiring harness compared to the ecobee3

You don’t need to install the trim ring, and the install looks much prettier if you don’t. But I have holes in my wall where an old-school thermostat was mounted and I haven’t gotten around to repairing those holes, so I opted to use the trim ring for this install.

Installing the ecobee4

As I mentioned above, whether you’re coming from an ecobee3, another type of smart thermostat, or even an old-school “dumb” thermostat, installation of the ecobee4 is a snap. The instruction guide provided by ecobee will walk you through everything, and their tech support will help in the unlikely event you get stuck. For me, installation took about 5 minutes.

First, I turned off the power switch at my furnace.

Next, I took a picture of how my previous thermostat was wired. My wires’ colors happen to correspond to the letters on the old wiring harness, but don’t assume that’s the case for your thermostat. The ecobee install guide will explain how to identify the proper wires on your HVAC unit to make sure you’re wiring things up properly. However, if your colors do match up like mine, you can proceed with ease. Here’s my old harness:

Old ecobee3 wiring harness

Old ecobee3 wiring harness

Note that on the ecobee3, I connected the single red wire to the Rh terminal. That’s different on the ecobee4, however, and if you have a single red wire, it must be connected to the Rc terminal. There’s a small blue insert in the ecobee4’s box that makes this clear.

Third, I removed the old thermostat and its harness:

Wall ready for install

Wall ready for install

Because I have screw holes in the wall from a previously installed Honeywell, I opted to use the trim ring that comes with the ecobee4 to hide the holes. It’s a cleaner look to mount the ecobee4 without the ring, so if I ever get around to filling in the holes and repainting, I’ll remove the ring. For now, the ring works fine. I’ve also been told that the trim ring takes paint well, so that’s another option worth considering.

New ecobee4 wiring harness and optional trim ring

New ecobee4 wiring harness and optional trim ring

All that was left was to slide the correct wires into the quick-connect terminals:

ecobee4 wiring harness connected

ecobee4 wiring harness connected

Finally, I clicked the ecobee4 into place and turned on the power at my furnace. My new ecobee4 sprung to life!

My ecobee4 is alive!

My ecobee4 is alive!

ecobee4 Setup and Configuration

An automated setup wizard walked me through getting my ecobee4 up and running. It correctly sensed the terminals I had connected, which gives the ecobee4 a pretty good (well, perfect actually) guess at my setup, which is a standard single-stage furnace with an external A/C unit:

Wiring terminals auto-detected

Wiring terminals auto-detected

After a couple standard questions, the setup wizard then asked how I wanted to configure my WiFi network settings:

ecobee4 setup wizard asking who I want to configure my WiFi settings

ecobee4 setup wizard asking who I want to configure my WiFi settings

Because I have an iPhone, I chose the “Use iPhone, iPad, or iPod” option, which utilizes the HomeKit setup wizard on iOS devices for painless WiFi configuration. I could have also opted for the traditional “select the network, type in the WiFi password” option. Both will result in the ecobee4 displaying a happy screen like this one:

ecobee4 WiFi connected

ecobee4 WiFi connected

The next step was to link my ecobee4 with my ecobee account using the ecobee app on my iPhone (naturally, there’s also one for Android devices). If you don’t have an ecobee account yet, the app lets you set one up. Once the account is set up, the ecobee4 generated a registration code which I typed into my app:

Registration of ecobee4 via iPhone app

Registration of ecobee4 via iPhone app

Once the ecobee4 was linked to my ecobee account, the mobile app prompted me to set up the Amazon Alexa Voice Control:

ecobee4 Amazon Alexa Voice Control setup

ecobee4 Amazon Alexa Voice Control setup

All I needed was my standard Amazon.com username and password. An Amazon screen popped up in the app to confirm I wanted to link the ecobee4 with my account:

Amazon Alexa link confirmation

Amazon Alexa link confirmation

Once I agreed to the terms, the ecobee app confirmed that the Alexa Voice Control service was now linked to my ecobee4:

Alexa link to ecobee4 confirmed

Alexa link to ecobee4 confirmed

Testing Alexa Voice Control with the ecobee4

With the ecobee4 installed, configured, and linked to my ecobee and Amazon accounts, I was ready to test things out. I started with a simple “Alexa, hello!” The ecobee4 lit up the blue indicator on top and replied “Hello!” Success!

The ecobee4 lights up in blue when Alexa listens or speaks

The ecobee4 lights up in blue when Alexa listens or speaks

I then tried “Alexa, good morning,” to which she responded with an interesting fact about the day, and having a “case of the Mondays.” The reply took about 30 seconds, which allowed me to tinker with the volume settings to my liking. Because of the speaker location against the wall, or perhaps because I used the optional trim ring, Alexa’s voice quality isn’t quite as clear as she sounds when coming from a full-sized Echo or the smaller Echo dot. Still, it was easy enough to understand and interact with her.

I logged into my Alexa mobile app and saw that my ecobee4, which I’d named “Maple Kitchen” (we live in Maple Valley, WA and this unit is in the kitchen) appeared there alongside all my other Alexa devices:

ecobee4 appears as an Alexa device in the Amazon Alexa mobile app

ecobee4 appears as an Alexa device in the Amazon Alexa mobile app

It was at this point of my testing that I bumped into my first minor snag. By default, the wake word for every Amazon Alexa-driven device is “Alexa.” It’s the word she listens for, and then “wakes” to interpret the next words you say. For most users, the default is fine. But for users with family members whose names sound very similar to “Alexa,” it makes sense that you’d want to change that. On Amazon Echo devices, you can select between “Alexa,” “Amazon,” “Echo,” or “Computer” as possible wake words. Star Trek fans will, naturally, select the latter.

We chose “Echo,” because we have a teenager at home whose name sounds a lot like “Alexa,” and any time anyone said her name, our Echo would wake and complain about not understanding the command. I also have a friend who works on Amazon’s Echo team who has a daughter named “Alyssa,” so he also changes his wake word from the default. So when I selected “Maple Kitchen” in my Alexa app and tried to change its default wake word, there was no “Wake Word” option for the ecobee4. I’m certain this is a fix that ecobee will eventually push via firmware, and I suspect that there’s a natural lag between when Amazon releases an Alexa feature directly to its own devices vs. when it releases them to third-party partners like ecobee. So for now, we’re forced to call our ecobee4 “Alexa” when we want to talk to her, but she’s already been waking up multiple times a day when we’re not actually trying to talk to her, and I’m sure that families with an Alexis, Melissa, Alyssa, Alex, or similar names will also bump into this issue. I’ll update this review if/when that gets addressed. Update: ecobee has confirmed that this issue will be addressed via firmware update.

Next, I tried to control the ecobee4 temperature settings via voice command. I said “Alexa, set Maple Kitchen to 73.” But Alexa complained that there was no device named “Maple Kitchen.” I realized that was likely being caused by the fact that I hadn’t re-run Alexa’s discovery of smart devices, which you can do with a button press in the Alexa app or via voice command. I chose voice command and said “Alexa, discover devices.” The ecobee4 responded “Starting discovery. This can take up to 20 seconds.” A few seconds later, she responded “Discovery is complete.” I tried the original command again: “Alexa, set Maple Kitchen to 73.” But again, she complained that there was no device named “Maple Kitchen,” and while I could see the ecobee4 in the list of Alexa devices in my Alexa app, it did not appear on my list of Smart Home devices (which is in a different section of the app). I verified that the ecobee skill was enabled in the Alexa app, but decided to also try disabling and then re-enabling the ecobee skill in the Alexa app, then re-running Alexa discovery. That did the trick! The “Maple Kitchen” device showed up as an “ecobee thermostat” device in my list of smart devices:

ecobee4 shows up as a smart home device in the Alexa app

ecobee4 shows up as a smart home device in the Alexa app

When I once again said “Alexa, set Maple Kitchen to 73,” she replied “Setting Maple Kitchen thermostat heat to 73.” Success!

For those adding their first ecobee thermostat, I doubt this will be an issue. But if you’re adding an ecobee4 to a setup where you already have the Alexa ecobee skill enabled in the Alexa app, I recommend disabling and re-enabling the skill (it’s literally two button presses) to make sure Alexa’s Smart Home discovery can “see” your new ecobee4.

For the most part, the Alexa Voice Service seems to be able to do most of what an Amazon Echo can do, with a few exceptions. Messaging doesn’t work yet, but that’s a very new Alexa feature that was released by Amazon last week, and I have no doubt it will eventually show up on the ecobee4. The ecobee4 did let me stream Amazon music and my Audible playlist to the ecobee4’s internal speaker, but didn’t support (yet?) Pandora, Spotify, or some of the other third-party services music I attempted from my Alexa app.

The ecobee4 gladly streamed my Audible books and Amazon music via the Alexa app, but doesn't (yet?) support Pandora or Spotify

The ecobee4 gladly streamed my Audible books and Amazon music via the Alexa app, but doesn’t (yet?) support Pandora or Spotify

I was also able to freak my wife out when I launched American Gods from my Audible playlist to the Maple Kitchen ecobee4 while I was away from the house:

Alexa app lets you stream to the ecobee4 even when you're not home

Alexa app lets you stream to the ecobee4 even when you’re not home

Remember, the ecobee4’s internal speaker isn’t really designed for audiophiles, so your music is going to sound as if it’s streaming from a small speaker in a thermostat on your wall. The real power of the ecobee4’s Alexa integration is as a home automation interface rather than a streaming audio device.

ecobee4 Integration with Smart Home Technologies

While the ecobee4’s Amazon Alexa integration is touted on the front of the box, the ecobee4 also works with the most popular home automation ecosystems such as Samsung SmartThings, Apple HomeKit, and IFTTT. It took me less than 3 minutes to configure the ecobee4 to work with my SmartThings Hub, which allowed me to I was able to control the ecobee4’s functions through my SmartThings mobile app as well as via voice control through Alexa to SmartThings (which works very much like Alexa’s direct control of an ecobee thermostat via the Alexa ecobee skill).

The ecobee4 integrates easily with Samsung SmartThings

The ecobee4 integrates easily with Samsung SmartThings

I was also able to use the ecobee4’s Alexa service to trigger other SmartThings events throughout the house that were completely unrelated to the thermostat. I also connected my ecobee4 to my IFTTT account, and configured a geo-fence so that my ecobee4 would automatically kick into “Home” mode as I approach the house, rather than wait for one of the motion sensors to determine I was in the house:

ecobee4 integrates easily with IFTTT

ecobee4 integrates easily with IFTTT

In each case, integrating the ecobee4 with these third-party automation protocols was as simple as a few clicks. The ecobee4 is without question the “most open” smart thermostat on the market, supporting multiple methods of monitoring and control — whether via Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Samsung SmartThings, IFTTT, or other home automation protocols still on the horizon.

ecobee4 Thermostat Functions

Of course, this wouldn’t be a thermostat review if I didn’t stop geeking out long enough to test the actual thermostat functions of the ecobee4. Quite simply, these work exactly as they do in the ecobee3. The included remote sensor is the same as those that ship with the ecobee3. The interface is the same. The programming is the same. The reports are the same. The ecobee3’s smart thermostat functions are excellent, so I appreciate ecobee’s “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach. Those familiar with the ecobee3 functions and interface will feel right at home with the ecobee4.

Like its predecessor, the ecobee4 supports a wide array of heating and cooling setups, and also supports one auxiliary device, such as a humidifier or dehumidifier. Again, none of this was broken on the ecobee3, so it was nice to see ecobee not trying to “fix” it for the latest model. There are a lot of ecobee3 users out there whose input drives development, so I predict that anything that does pop up on the ecobee3 that requires fixing will be pushed out via firmware to both the ecobee3 and ecobee4. Basically, the the ecobee4 does everything the ecobee3 can do, plus HomeKit support (which showed up part-way through the ecobee3’s run) plus the ecobee4-exclusive Amazon Alexa service.

Remote Sensors with the ecobee4

The remote sensors work with the ecobee4 exactly as they did with the ecobee3. Again, not broken, so no need to fix. The remote sensors are, for me, one of the biggest advantages the ecobee line of thermostats has over competitors like Nest and Honeywell. They help save money while keeping the parts of the house currently occupied more comfortable.

I was using two remote sensors with my ecobee3, but I forgot to remove them via the touch-screen interface before replacing my ecobee3 with the ecobee4. I had to remove the battery from the sensors for 5 minutes to reset them, then pair them with the ecobee4. The next time I upgrade one of my ecobee3 units to an ecobee4, I’ll try to remember to remove the sensors via the ecobee3’s touch-screen interface prior to unplugging it. But even if I forget again, it was a simple enough process to re-pair the sensors with the ecobee4.

Room for Minor Improvements

This is the part of the review where I try to be as brutally honest as I can and point out the things I’d like to see changed on the ecobee4. The most pressing, for me at least, is the ability to change the wake word to something other than “Alexa.” I haven’t received any official word from ecobee, but my guess is that this is a temporary limitation driven by Amazon, and that ecobee will push a firmware fix for this soon. Update: My initial guess was right, and ecobee has confirmed to me that this is on the way. I’ve also mentioned that Alexa messaging doesn’t work as of this review, but again, I’m confident that’s an Amazon issue and that a future firmware push will support it. The lack of full compatibility with music streaming services via the Alexa app isn’t that big of a deal for me, especially since the ecobee4’s speaker is too small to sound great with streaming music. Alexa’s voice quality from the ecobee4’s speaker is just “OK.” It works fine, but sounds a bit garbled if you turn the volume up too high, and doesn’t match the voice quality of a standalone Echo or Echo Dot unit. I doubt that’s something that can be addressed via firmware, but if it is, that’s something else worth a few moments of brainstorming at ecobee headquarters.

Oh, also… can we please, please, pretty please get the clock back on the main display? You know, the one that appeared on the original first-gen ecobee Smart? The one I’ve been begging for since the ecobee3 first launched? Thanks, guys. That would be awesome. 🙂

Final Thoughts

So is the ecobee4 right for you? If you don’t already have an ecobee and have been considering a smart thermostat, it’s a no-brainer. The ecobee4 keeps all the functionality of the ecobee3, adds the majority of the functionality of an Amazon Echo Dot (and I suspect most of what’s missing isn’t far behind), and still comes in at the same MSRP as the previous model of $249.I still prefer ecobee’s schedule-based approach to heating and cooling over the Nest’s method of overly optimizing, and the remote sensors extend that advantage. The addition of Alexa Voice Control to what was arguably already the smartest smart thermostat on the market makes calling the ecobee4 a “smart thermostat” feel insufficient. There are plenty of “smart thermostats” out there. The ecobee4 is the world’s first “genius thermostat.”

Even if you have another brand of smart thermostat, I’d still suggest considering a switch to the ecobee4. No other thermostat has its features or supports as many methods of home automation integration. If you were an early adopter of smart thermostats and your first-gen T-stat is getting a bit long in the tooth, the ecobee4 is a perfect upgrade.

I could only think of two groups who might want to think twice about whether or not the ecobee4 is the right choice. The first group is ecobee3 owners who already have an Amazon Echo device. They already have the same functionality, albeit shared between two devices, but if they really want the latest and greatest and have a good “hand-me-down” destination for their ecobee3 (or can sell it on eBay), they may want to upgrade anyway.

The other group where it might not make sense is homeowners whose thermostat location wouldn’t work well as an Amazon Alexa microphone location. For them, the ecobee3 (which now has a lower price) might be a better choice. Our kitchen is a perfect place for an ecobee4, because it’s an area where we spend a lot of time, and where we already use an Amazon Echo (which I plan to move downstairs to the gym now that the ecobee4 can handle its workload). But our upstairs level where three bedrooms are located (and which has its own HVAC system) has an ecobee3 mounted in the hallway. Anyone wanting to interact with Alexa would have to yell into that hallway. We’ve got an Echo Dot in the bedroom, where we don’t have to shout at it to get weather updates, control lights, or play music. But if your thermostat is located in a high-traffic area of your house, the ecobee4 is the perfect device for you.

If the ecobee4 is right for you, you can pick one up right now on Amazon.com. The ecobee4 ships with one remote sensor, but you can purchase additional sensors for maximum coverage and flexibility.

ecobee4 Launch Giveaway

To celebrate the launch of the ecobee4, ecobee was generous enough to provide four units to give away to my blog readers! If you’d like a chance at winning one, just do the following three things:

1. Subscribe to my blog by putting your email address here (don’t worry, I won’t spam you).

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

2. Follow me on Twitter: @sjjenkins.

3. Tweet a link to this review and and tell me why you should win a free ecobee4 using the hashtag #ecobee4giveaway. Be sure to include @sjjenkins and @ecobee at the end of your tweet with the hashtag.

Winners will be chosen at random and must live in the continental US to be eligible (yes, I’ll check to make sure you met all three conditions). I’ll announce the winners on my Twitter feed when I make the random selection at the end of the month. Good luck!

Join the Conversation

As always, I welcome your questions, comments, and feedback via the comments below, on my Twitter feed, or share your own rating of the ecobee4 Smart Thermostat below!

The post ecobee4 Smart Thermostat Review appeared first on Steve Jenkins.

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