My Ecobee tstat paired to the HA->HADB->HE for years. Everything is 100% local and all sensors and tstat are visible to the HE. Never had any single problem.
Right but that doesn't help with the desire to connect the Ecobee directly to the Hubitat Hub. HA shouldn't be needed now with the introduction of the "HomeKit Controller Integration" on the Hubitat hub. That statement doesn't help this discussion at all unless the conversation switches to looking for alternatives.
There is also a trade out of functionallity which depending on a person's use case may or may not be a issue. The Ecobee gear is very powerful it its own right if we let it manage itself. If i am remembering right, when i looked into the route you mentioned I was sacraficing to much functionality over Ecobee Suite. The integration with Ecobee using the Homekit Controller Integration is actually close to perfect with a few very small gaps.
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Yes, but at least there is info on how to get iEcobee integration working very reliably.
Sorry to say this, but HE HomeKit Controller "as is" is not enough useful.
OK, but HA is an Open Source. Why not to leverage the existing HA Drivers?
(Or HA architecture is very different and does not have drivers?)
In my use case HA stripped to much of what made the Ecobee, smart from it. I would of had to pull everything out of the thermostate and load it all into HA to have something with somewhat similar functions. For me I bought a smart thermostat to be smart and manage itself. I just want to send it commands occasionally to adjust predefined functions it manages. I know there are folks that don't use the Ecobee smarts and want to manage it completely locally. If that is what i wanted i wouldn't have gotten a Ecobee. This is about how i want and maybe some folks want to manage it.
It is also completely possible there have been improvements with the driver on HA i am not aware of. I have run all of the 3 options avaliable on the hubitat, and the one that by far is the most functional is Ecobeee Suites. I never did anything with the Ecobee when it was connected to HA because the functionality was so limited. I actually had rules and such configured to replace Ecobee suites when i was testing the Homekit Controller Integration, but kept having the issue with droping because of the issues mentioned earlier witht he sensors.
I would also say i have rules put in place that tell me when the controller faiiles to connect to the Ecobee Cloud. It honestly occurs very rarely. Maybe twice in a year, and it has been a long while since a issue has occured for more then a hour or so. It has actually be very reliable
I bring my 2 Ecobee thermostats and their associated sensors into Hubitat via the HomeKit Controller Integration. I can say, without any doubt, they both work perfectly and "reliably".
To take things one step further, because HomeKit only allows devices to pair to a single controller, I bring the same 2 Ecobee thermostats back into HomeKit from Hubitat via MakerApi and Homebridge with the Homebridge Hubitat Tonesto7 plugin.
Again, everything works reliably and without issue. I have full control of both thermostats via the Ecobee app, Hubitat and HomeKit.
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Good to know, thank you for the info.
Since I am using HA for bringing in a devices which are not compatible (at least was not in a past) with HE I will keep Ecobee conected to the HE via HA+HADB.
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I do that, too, and it works pretty well.
My only problem is that my HA instance is not too reliable - about once every other month it locks up and needs to be power cycled. I'm pretty sure it's because I'm running it on a Pi3 B+, which is my own fault. I have a Pi4 CM waiting to take over running HA, but I've not moved it yet.
Meanwhile, when I migrate my main HE to the C8 Pro I plan to move the Ecobee directly to HE's HomeKit emulation -- one less thing to worry about.
I still use the HADB integration with my ecobee. It was available at the time I wanted to connect it (and was actually the primary reason I spun up HA on my old Raspberry). I had seen the Ecobee suite as well, but that wasn't local (or is it?). My primary reason for local was the numerous instances of cloud outages. While some may argue that they aren't often, I suffer from Murphy Syndrome in that almost always, the outages occured when I needed remote access.
In any case, I originally bought the ecobee because of all of the promises of how it was so smart. Reality was that it frequently lost the cloud, and rarely did what I wanted it to, and the "smart" features were more annoying than useful. The humidity readings are an issue for many (for me, the error is >15% RH as compared to a calibrated hygrometer I work in a calibration facility that does much more accurate devices and have access to truly traceable measurements). The support staff at Ecobee tried to gaslight me and convince me that the pocket behind the thermostat was pushing the humidity reading until I explained that was not really possible (I had 3D printed an enclosure that isolates the thermostat AND placed a remote hygrometer sensor behind the T-Stat enclosure in the wall during my testing)
So, now, the only native ecobee process I use is the Home and Away room comfort settings.
I use rules to set home/away based on my HE presence. I also have rules to lock a hold on the setpoint in extreme temperatures (hot or cold) so that the system does not have to work so hard to recover in those situations.
I don't have a C8Pro. So, bringing it natively into HE isn't an option. However, I have more than enough control of the fans, setpoints, and access to Home/Away/Resume. The response is almost instant on the face of the T Stat when I make changes in HE.
Having local access and control through HE and HA has turned what I consider to be one of my worst smart home/automation purchases into something that is at least useable.
I REALLY don't like any cloud-based integrations. The HA addition was a primary reason for the local Ecobee integration. But once HA was up and running, I quickly realized how helpful HA could be. It instantly found all my SwitchBot Curtains and many other (mostly BT) devices I was not even thinking about.
Same. I actually use HA now for a few integrations that HE does not have (the other primary one IS cloud based - MySubaru App - no way to go local on that one.)
Also, HA enables "presence" at other locations, like work. Our Home/Away settings (thermostat) kick back over to home once one of us leaves our work location radius, using helper booleans to trigger the rule on HE.
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I have been using the HA-HE to bring Ecobees in for a while. I just got a C8 Pro about 6 weeks ago and wanted to change to the Homekit Integration. However that integration only finds one of my two Ecobees even after following the instructions in the integration page for how to fix it.
My HA instance has been on a Pi4 since I added it over a year ago. It has been 100% dependable without any issues. I've updated it a couple times, but generally I just let it ride.
