I've been reading several posts on leveraging the newly available Homekit Controller with Ecobee. I'm presently utilizing the Ecobee Suite Manager app, which has done a great job for me, although, admittedly, I'm not doing anything very complex. I only utilize the Mode Change feature with geofencing to switch Ecobee from Home/Away, and I utilize the Contacts & Switches feature to switch Ecobee Off/On if any of my windows are opened (using Zooz sensors, not Ecobee sensors). So, I'm not doing anything that's being driven by Ecobee - everything I'm doing is is one-way control of Ecobee, not the other way around, if that makes sense.
In stumbling around the logs to solve another issue, I came across the App Stats page and noticed that Ecobee Suite Manager was at the top of list at 83% busy with a State Size of something like 16,000, dwarfing every other item on the list. That alarmed me (perhaps it shouldn't).
Question...given my relatively limited use of the Ecobee Suite Manager's features, would I be better off pairing my Ecobee to Hubitat via the Homekit Controller and just controlling it directly?
I have seen a couple posts indicating that the "Away" and "Resume Program" controls would not be available (at least currently) through the Homekit Controller, assuming I interpreted that correctly. I suspect that would create a problem for me re-creating the simple home/away geofence events I currently have setup with the Ecobee Suite Manager as that is all they do...set to "Away" (indefinite hold) when I leave, and then "Resume Program" when I return. But I wanted to double-check my thinking on this.
Am I better off sticking with Ecobee Suite Manager, at least for now? Is Ecobee Suite Manager doing stuff in the cloud I simply don't need and would local control eliminate excess load on my hub? Or would I lose the basic functions I'm currently leveraging with local control?
I use the built in Ecobee Integration app with success. I currently uses 2,571 and it DOES support the Away and Resume commands. FWIW I use it with two thermostats and two remote sensors.
There is no doubt lt the Ecobee Suite can be a heavy hitter on the hub. The problem is most of the time the stats look worse then they are because they are normally a % of the total time. So 83% of 1% of the total actual time is still pretty small.
The best way to mininize the time has been to set the polling interval low. Like 1 min. Apparently the biggest impact is when you set the interval long and the suite has to do allot of changes at once. I know it seems counter intuitive but that is what has been found to work the best.
Now as far as the question of if you should use the new built in Home Kit Controller or not is all about your use case. Keep in mind it is limited to standard thermostat functionality. This means you could potentially loose acces to some advanced functions of the hub. In my case that is calling a specific program when i put the house to sleep at night. I haven't seen any option other then Ecobee Suites that can do that. Just look at what you do do and if your use cases can all be meet by the Homekit integration. If so then I would go that route.
Are you sure you're talking about the homekit ecobee integration? I'm using that and I don't see any support for remote temp and occupancy sensors in that integration yet. I think they were specifically called out as not yet supported. Has that changed? Or are you talking about a different ecobee integration?
Thanks, since the topic title was regarding Suite Manger vs. HomeKit, I got confused (and temporarily all happy) thinking the HomeKit integration had been updated to support the remote sensors. I jumped the gun a bit...
Thanks for the replies. As I am a believer in "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", and introducing another protocol (Homekit) into my environment is not something I'm interested in for only a single device (my thermostat), I'm going to continue utilizing the Ecobee Suite Manager for now. @mavrrick58 - I do have, as recommended, the polling interval set to 1 minute. So, assuming Ecobee Suite Manager isn't over-tasking my hub, I think I'll be fine.
