medium-smart thermostat needed

[roger wiegand]

Alan-- no need to feel any responsibility! I read about it pretty thoroughly before ordering and the information wasn't very obvious. After reading their literature on the smart features it never occurred to me that none of the parameters would be programmable. Things like the details of how the "smart" features work are just a matter of what the programmer decided to implement; apparently no one with my set of needs was in the requirements meeting! I'll be sending them a list of new feature requests.

Thanks, Steven, I'll have a look at Homeseer

[Tom Bender]

How about a second t-stat wired thru a switch by the light switches, you flip it on and off as you come in and go out. No need for the heat to come on when you are just there to get a screwdriver.

[Brandon Thill]

If you use any of the factory schedules, it will not necessarily turn on and off at certain times. It will optimize so that if it "expects" you at 8am, it will turn on the heating prior to that to get to temp when you arrive. It takes some time to learn how your HVAC responds so it might seem like it is running when it shouldn't, or not running when it should be.

Still, IMO none of the smart thermostats factory schedules are useful for anyone other than a single person that lives alone and works a normal 40 hr workweek. Everyone else will have to use occupancy or geolocation. You could use the Ecobee sensors (the thermostat has a motion sensor, I would have thought you could use this). Or any other device that senses your presence or GPS location and either: 1) uses that sensor to tell a smart hub to tell the Ecobee if you are home/away, or 2) can work with IFTTT and tells that service the state and IFTTT then tells your Ecobee whatever command you want it to take according to the rules you've built. This requires an internet connection and local network all devices are connected to so that IFTTT can talk to them all. This last is what I do for system. My Abode security system uses my phone location to tell if I'm home/away, whenever this state changes it communicates with the IFTTT service via internet, then in IFTTT I've built rules (super easy) that says if Abode says Away, tell Ecobee to turn off HVAC. The rule building in IFTTT is pretty straighforward and a ton of smart devices are capable of using this service.

[Brandon Thill]

Basically take Tom's idea above and instead of thinking in hardwired terms, think in smart connected terms. You will need something that senses your presence, you will need IFTTT app to be the "brain", you will need compatible smart devices, and you will need a local network and internet so they can call communicate. From there you can build all sorts of rules that can command certain actions to the devices based on the input states of any of those devices. It's really wide open what you can do, and IFTTT makes it simple to set up those rules.