I have my Ecobee3 connected to my VeraEdge via the Ecobee plugin. I can see data from the Ecobee, but I can’t seem to make any changes to the set points or system heat/off/cool settings. Whenever I try to use the ecobee in a scene, the settings show up, but are all faded/greyed out and can’t be changed.
I’m trying to set it up so that the thermostat shuts off (or goes to significantly lower set point) when the front door has been open for ore than a 30 seconds. I think I’ve got everything else set up right, but the inability to change the actual settings has proven to be quite the road block!
Does anyone else use an ecobee with UI7 and/or VeraEdge? Any tips?
I can reproduce your experience using the published Ecobee plugin on UI7 1.7.1018 on a VeraEdge. I can change the mode from Off to Heat (for example) from the UI, but not when trying to define a scene, as the choices are greyed out. The plugin does not have this issue on UI5, so I would say this is a UI7 bug that Vera ought to fix.
My only advice is to report this bug to Vera and hope they fix it. If they don’t fix the bug in a reasonably short timeframe, there are other home automation products (including free and open source) that work with Ecobee that don’t have this sort of issue.
[quote=“chadsell, post:3, topic:186525”]Thanks, Watou. I’ll let the support at micasaverde know about the bug.
Do you have recommendations for other home automation platforms that might be worth looking into?[/quote]
It’s hard to recommend one over the other without knowing a lot more about your objectives, but… Ecobee can be monitored and controlled with Vera, SmartThings, IFTTT, and OpenHAB (and maybe others). I’m personally interested in OpenHAB because it’s free, open-source, very capable, runs on lots of different hardware, and is not a “black box” controlled by a private company. (I also wrote the Ecobee and Nest bindings for it.) That being said, it’s a bit technical to set up in its current form and requires more computer knowledge to get going than pre-packaged commercial products.
You still planning on supporting this at some point? I’m still waiting for Ecobee to give access to the remote sensors so ‘you’ can incorporate into the plugin ;D
I’m still hanging around, and hoping that someday the Vera developers get UI7 back to the point UI5 achieved, where a plugin author can make a thermostat plugin that works correctly (i.e., can respect the various setpoints of the actual device) and looks like the “native” thermostats (has the current temperature in the right place and other UI basics). I’m much in the same frame of mind as other plugin developers you’ve probably heard from in other threads. I worry about releasing plugin updates that only fix/improve the shrinking list of things I have control over, only to be critiqued that setpoints, scenes and UI features are still obviously broken. I continue to marvel at the state of UI7 with respect to plugins.
I hope to add support for remote sensors to the Ecobee plugin, but it’s always disappointing to see the limits in UI7 that weren’t there in UI5.
watou
[quote=“tomgru, post:5, topic:186525”]Watou,
Don’t leave us man!
You still planning on supporting this at some point? I’m still waiting for Ecobee to give access to the remote sensors so ‘you’ can incorporate into the plugin ;D[/quote]
Well, I can’t seem to create new scenes in AltUI at all, yet. Not sure it it’s my problem, or the UI’s.
However…
Back on UI7, I tried setting up my trigger/scene with PLEG. When I got to the action, I used the “Advanced” function to “SetCurrentSetpoint.” And it totally worked!
Moral of the story: Control of the ecobee3 in scenes totally works, but you have to use luup codes and/or PLEG to make it happen. No GUI buttons.
@tomgru: As long as you and other users don’t disagree with the descriptions of these changes (at github), I don’t see the need to have a beta test. I will probably feel ready to upload v1.2 later today, and then it will take the Vera people some time to review the changes.
@anhman and @NickTheGreat: The remote Ecobee sensors appear as standard motion and temperature sensors, so you ought to be able to automate with them. Please note that if your wireless remote sensor goes offline, the device will set CommFailure to 1 and CurrentTemperature to -500 (if using Fahrenheit, or equivalent in Celsius). Also, the motion sensors can take up to 3 minutes to trip (the new minimum polling cycle), and stay tripped until 30 minutes after last motion (according to Ecobee).
The docs have a quick screen shot of some sensor devices in UI5.
Hopefully v1.2 will be made available soon. Once it installs, it will take one or two 3-minute polls before your sensors start to show up, and then you will probably have to refresh your browser.
Please let me know detailed problem reports in case I missed something.
Thank you very much Watou for your efforts and contributions! I removed the original plugin after the polling issue you posted recently just to insure I was contributing to the Ecobee spamming issue. As such I am looking forward to getting it installed and actually being able to take advantage of my new Ecobee3 in conjunction with my Vera and new Econet vents.
[quote=“slief, post:16, topic:186525”]Thank you very much Watou for your efforts and contributions! I removed the original plugin after the polling issue you posted recently just to insure I was contributing to the Ecobee spamming issue. As such I am looking forward to getting it installed and actually being able to take advantage of my new Ecobee3 in conjunction with my Vera and new Econet vents.
Thanks again for your hard work![/quote]
You’re welcome! Please let me know if there are plugin problems once you have it installed and running.
[quote=“watou, post:17, topic:186525”][quote=“slief, post:16, topic:186525”]Thank you very much Watou for your efforts and contributions! I removed the original plugin after the polling issue you posted recently just to insure I was contributing to the Ecobee spamming issue. As such I am looking forward to getting it installed and actually being able to take advantage of my new Ecobee3 in conjunction with my Vera and new Econet vents.
Thanks again for your hard work![/quote]
You’re welcome! Please let me know if there are plugin problems once you have it installed and running.[/quote]
Will do. I will be keeping an eye out on the App interface and here for news on the new Apps release. As soon as it’s available, I will install it. Thanks again!
@watou - through trial and error, I’ve figured out (I think) that the plugin (or rather Ecobee) will only support one instance of the plugin for a single Ecobee account, meaning, in my case, I have two thermostats (two homes) that I have setup through a single Ecobee account, and when I authorize one Vera to control Ecobee by securing a PIN and putting it into the Ecobee interface, it knocks my other Vera off. So it seems that in order to control both thermostats through Vera, I would need to have both thermostat controls exist in only one of my Vera instances (i.e. primary home + vacation home both on my primary home’s dashboard), because Ecobee is only maintaining one PIN code to allow Vera control. Not ideal, but doable.
Question: Have I reached the correct conclusion, or is something else going on and should I be able to control each thermostat in each of my two separate Vera instances? Extending that, do I need to decide if I want to control my Ecobee thermostats in a single Ecobee account, or a single Vera dashboard, but cannot do both?
Also, I’m now contemplating an upgrade to UI7. Is the plugin working in UI7 these days?
[quote=“Sig, post:19, topic:186525”]Bumping this thread…
@watou - through trial and error, I’ve figured out (I think) that the plugin (or rather Ecobee) will only support one instance of the plugin for a single Ecobee account, meaning, in my case, I have two thermostats (two homes) that I have setup through a single Ecobee account, and when I authorize one Vera to control Ecobee by securing a PIN and putting it into the Ecobee interface, it knocks my other Vera off.[/quote]
It’s not supposed to work that way. The OAuth flow is confusing and hidden from users, but a PIN is “exchanged” for a unique auth token, from which are produced refresh and access tokens which are rotated once an hour. You don’t want to copy any of those three tokens to other plugin instances, because one instance will rotate the tokens, pulling the rug out from the other instance. So pressing “Get PIN” on one Vera, entering the PIN at ecobee.com, and then doing those same steps on the other Vera, should not cause any conflict.
No; you should be able to use any number of Veras to control any number of Ecobee thermostats through any number of Ecobee accounts (subject to Ecobee’s limits of registering a thermostat with only one ecobee.com account, and whatever limit they have for number of thermostats per account).
It works, but the UI is wrong because of the incompatible change to setpoints in UI7, and a lack of documentation on how to update a working UI5 thermostat plugin for UI7 (unless it’s quietly appeared in the meantime and I’m not going to go hunt for it).
