I have 2 of the Ecobee 4s, I went with them primarily for the remote sensors --which I hoped would take care of 2 minor cold spots. The remote sensors do work most of the time, though they have a tendency to not detect presence every now and then. Like oglewon, I wanted to keep the hvac system stand-alone. Cloud access has been convenient and the WAF is generally high for these t/stats, though I do occasionally hear some rants about "having a mind of its own" regarding Away settings. Having Alexa on board hasn't been the nuisance I thought it'd be. I have not integrated the Ecobees with HE. One PITA has been the inability of the E4s to hold a specific temperature setting for an extended period.
THAT SAID, if it wasn't for the WAF, I'd toss these and give zigbee t/stats a try. I think that I could accomplish the remote monitoring better with an assortment of temp/humidity and motion detectors.
And I have 1 Ecobee 3 that I also have to get onto eBay.
I got rid of mine for the same reasons that @Ryan780 got rid of his - up, down, the Ecobee cloud was always in a state of flux.
I replaced it with a Honeywell T6 Pro (Zwave Plus) thermostat recently, and it seems to work well.
(I use the generic zwave thermostat driver, not the community version for the T6 Pro).
I have Ecobee 3's in two locations that I personally use and they have been solid, one has 7 sensors and the other has 4. Their sensors are "occupancy" sensors not motion sensors and the report back though the thermostat to the cloud. The thermostat and sensors once configured can operate if the connection to the internet goes down since most of the processing is done locally with assistance from the cloud. But the hubitat cannot interact directly with the thermostat only the cloud services.
Two years ago there was a lot of issues when I had a few clients of mine on Vera and the "authentication" failed and they had to be re-registered but on the Hubitat patform using the Ecobee Suite everything has been rock solid:
Picking a thermostat is dependent on what you plan to do with it. In my case and many of my clients you buy a smart thermostat to be smart and leverage it's ability to use schedules and home/away automation and push those states into the automation hub to help with decision making in rules. If you plan to negate the smart capabilities with your hubs functions there is nothing wrong going with a plan "connected" thermostat and driving the mode changes.
Just remember if you do live in a area where temperature can damage your home if something doesn't work (freezing pipes, high temperatures) what process would you trust to control the a/c or heater, the physical thermostat or a connected hub telling the thermostat what to do?
The native Hubitat support for Ecobee is atrocious - they have implemented barely half of the standard commands, they don't recover transparently from Ecobee Cloud outages, they only poll for data every 5 minutes, and when they do they poll very inefficiently. I have offered a tune-up for their support, but so far they aren't interested.
My Ecobee Suite is perhaps overkill, since it allows you to see/touch/change pretty much everything the Ecobee's can do. But it also polls wisely and efficiently, as frequently as every minute, so that automating fans like you describe is almost seamless. More importantly, you will likely never notice that the Ecobee Cloud is down, as the Suite recovers automatically (and silently) to all but the worst Ecobee outages (none in the past 2 years, at least for my 5 Ecobee's).
The suite includes a variety of Helper apps that don't override the operation of the Thermostat itself, but make it simple to set up rather complex automations (like turn on this fan when the AC goes on, but only if somebody is home, change the thermostat to Home/Away/Sleep when the Location Mode changes, etc.).
For a lot of Hubitat homes, Ecobee Suite makes Ecobee automation work.
Ecobee Suite is free on both the SmartThings and the Hubitat platforms (although I do accept contributions). And I also happily accept both enhancement requests and criticisms..
But if the cloud is down you still have zero remote control. And summer before last it was down more than it was up. That's a deal breaker for me. I have to have the remote control as I travel for work and don't want to come home to an uncomfortable house if my schedule changes and I want to heat it up/cool it down before the schedule that's been pre-programmed.
Its fine as a Thermostat, but it's a Zwave+ hub itself, and while it joins as a secondary controller (as far as I can tell), Nexia wants $ to make it useful.
Sadly, as a hub, it appears to pass no data back to the network that Hubitat can use...like temperature or system state.
Some time back I did a lot of research on Zwave / Zigbee thermostat to use. My particular goal was the use of a remote temperature sensor. I ended up with a ecobee 3 lite for this reason. With the remote sensor averaging it and the main sensor I'm happier than I have ever been.
During my research I found that many of the thermostats have no anticipator or equivalent. Some I've asked the mfg support on how the temp is controlled only some answered.
I have a Pearl thermostat and an Honeywell TH8320ZW1000.
The Honeywell uses a "proportional" control and it works very well. Basically the same as all the non Radio thermostats I've used. It cycles heat 3 or 4 or 5 ( you select) an hour. The "ON" time for each cycle is set by the temperature.
The Pearl uses a "simple" (aka dumb) control. You set a temperature band and the heat follows the temperature. i.e. you set 69 °F with a deadband of 1 degree. Here the heat goes on at 70 and goes off at 68. Far to wide a band for me.
I have an oil boiler and hot water baseboard heat. I asked ZEN how their thermostat controlled temperature. Their response was:
Based upon information you provided it has been determined that the system type is not compatible with the Zen Thermostat. Zen is not compatible with Multi-Zone nor Baseboard systems.
Asked Sinope the same question, they replied:
we are using fixed Cycle (15sec to 30min) with a period depending of the temperature of the room and the required setpoint.
As for connectivity the Pearl and Honeywell have given me no issues many many months. The ecobee is not connected to Hubitat and I rarely use the ecobee website.
As for aesthetic design I think most designers are holdovers from the 50's. I like the Nest the best but won't own one, the ecobee isn't too bad. The Honeywell I have is oversized and ugly! Especially since it uses a CR2032 battery for its RTC, AND they will not let you read the RTC! Being able to read the RTC would be great if I was running my Hubitat off line.
Any z-wave or zigbee should work fine.. I still use a ct-101.. If you are like me, thermostat features don’t do much because it is all controlled by my rules... I would actually prefer one that is just a sensor/blank box with no physical control...
I have this one as well. It has been pretty solid. Everything controlled by rules as well. I hardly touch the thermostat itself.
What I like and use are different than my home automation desires for a thermostat.
I have a Honeywell Prestige IAQ thermostat. It is an excellent thermostat, it has tons of inputs and outputs so you can utilize water sensors, indoor/outdoor temp sensors, duct dampers, humidifiers, dehumidifiers, dry contacts, and more. It does heating and cooling run time tracking, as well as delta-T tracking. I got it primarily because I needed a 4 stage heating, 2 stage cooling thermostat, and it is one of the few on the market. Even better is the control relays aren't in the 'stat, they are in the equipment module at the furnace so I don't have to listen to the click of relays all night long. So far so good.
It has remote control through Honeywell Total Comfort Connect app, and that app works fairly reliably, but is very basic. I had to use the Redlink gateway to get remote control. It works, but I wish Honeywell exposed the sensors, diagnostics, and more via the app. Could be better, but still OK.
It isn't all that great integrating with -any- home automation system, Hubitat included. I have used it with Wink, IFTTT, and Stringify and as mentioned above, Hubitat. It just doesn't work consistently with home automation. There isn't enough exposed via the app to do any real cool tricks either.
On the other hand, where are the Z-wave or Zigbee thermostats that can do a fraction of what my thermostat does? None of the ones that are or have ever been available can even work with my system. I don't even have a huge complicated house either, just a 1300 sf ranch with basement. I just wanted a high-end (for a middle class family anyway) HVAC system that controlled all aspects of HVAC without 5 different controls or standalone systems.
Yup, Same as when the Internet to your house is down.
Things have gotten much better since then, especially if you use something other than the native Hubitat integration. Ecobee outages are infrequent and brief these days, much more reliable than a year ago.
Understood. But people should know that the thermostat continues to function even when the cloud is down - scheduled Climate/Program changes continue to change.
And for the Apple users out there, Apple HomeKit has (the only) direct local API support for the Ecobees - you can monitor and change setpoints remotely even if the Apple, Ecobee and/or Hubitat Cloud services are unavailable. And you can enable HomeKit<-->Hubitat integration with a simple (and free) Homebridge setup running on a $40 Raspberry pi...
I totally understand your needs and frustrations @Ryan780; I just wanted to let people know that the experience can be different these days...
I sold my Nest and bought a used GoControl for like $25. Nests and Ecobees on eBay sell like hotcakes for top dollar, so if you need to do it I wouldn't hesitate.
I like the GoControl. Lots of features, lots of functionality. It seems a little rough with the starts and stops compared to the Nest - almost like Nest had finer control over the fan speeds and ramping ups/downs. I don't know if that's possible with a simple W/Y wire, but maybe they figured something out.
It's somewhat nondescript in terms of design, but makes up for it with control. I dislike that I can hear relays clicking inside when it changes states. It doesn't have humidifier control, but I have a separate automatic humidistat for that.
I'm back to using my 2 3rd generation Nest thermostats. I tried the Centralite Pearl for a few days, but just didn't like the overall look, feel and operation of them. Compared to the Nest, they look and feel cheap. I know others say they look good, but they just aren't for me and my family. In addition, I found that I missed being able to easily see my daily usage within the Nest app. Yes, I know I can check logs in Hubitat, but it's much easier to get a visual representation in the Nest app. Lastly, I realized that I wanted to maintain a system separate from Hubitat for my HVAC controls.
