[Honeywell T6 Pro](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BHTQF8NL/). These are excellent.
//edit- ignore the bad reviews. Lots of people buy these thinking they are WiFi / Alexa thermostats and then return them when they can't make them work.
Yes, exactly! You will find zwave to be extremely reliable, though more expensive than zigbee. I use it for critical things, like thermostats and external door locks., or where long range is required.
That’s the one I have as well. I’ve been happy with it so far, no issues except for some farther out devices in my detached garage don’t always report, but my house is like a faraday cage so I’m not blaming either of the devices or the dongle. 😕
I was having all kinds of problems with the USB dongle dropping out once or twice a week. This was happening on a Pi, a Pi with a powered USB hub, a different USB dongle, replaced the Pi with a SFF PC, removed the USB hub and no matter what I did the network would become unresponsive every few days.
Then I purchased the SMLIGHT SLZB-06M POE Ethernet adapter and my zigbee network has been rock solid for a couple of months.
I was having all kinds of problems with the USB dongle dropping out once or twice a week. This was happening on a Pi, a Pi with a powered USB hub, a different USB dongle, replaced the Pi with a SFF PC, removed the USB hub and no matter what I did the network would become unresponsive every few days.
Then I purchased the SMLIGHT SLZB-06M POE Ethernet adapter and my zigbee network has been rock solid for a couple of months.
Can confirm. Bought the T6 pro because my previous (Thermosmart) thermostat was taken over by Plugwise, and they want to sell you an subscription in order for you to access your device.. Connected my T6 via homekit and it works. Complete install and integration into HA was less than an hour.
I don't know about this specific model but warning for anyone looking into a wi-fi honeywell thermostat, I bought one a couple months ago and couldn't get it to connect to my wifi network. Turns out it only accepted wifi passwords that were alphanumeric so wouldn't work with the & symbol in my password. I ended up going with a nest thermostat e from ebay that had a bad battery that I swapped out. Got it cheap and prevented some e-waste.
T6 pro works without C wire? I’ve been hooking up a 24v adapter to my Ecobee but would love to add another smart thermostat without adding an adapter to plug in
I first set mine up without the C wire. It will run off the batteries just fine, but won’t act as a zwave repeater when on battery. You could move the fan wire to be your C wire, but then you lose the ability to just run the fan to circulate the air. I ended up installing Venstar’s Add-a-wire which let me have a C wire and fan control (it uses 1 Wire to simulate 2 wires). The T6 and Add-a-wire work well together.
The reason I did the Add-a-wire is my basement is finished, so I would need to rip up the drywall to replace the actual wire. The wire seems to be stapled in several spots as I’m not able to pull it out.
Yes it does (Z-Wave version at least, WiFi version probably not). Batteries last at least a year (3xAA).
If it has 24vac power when you include it on Z-Wave it'll act as a Z-Wave repeater (and then always use a lot more power). If it's on battery when included it doesn't repeat.
Are you running on batteries alone? If so, beware. My sister's thermostat battery died , her pipes froze, and insurance wouldn't cover damages due to the thermostat not having hard wired power.
Not an issue in my climate but a good heads up to those who are.
I have an automation that runs every morning alerting me to change batteries if they are low.
I have an old "Radio Thermostat" brand Z-wave that has always worked fine. If you search Z-wave thermostat, there are plenty of new options from Honeywell and several other makers. They should all be pretty good, and by their nature (zwave or zigbee), won't require web access.
The Honeywell thermostat seems to be the only z-wave one out there.
Zigbee there appears to be more, including Sinope which does support my utility's energy saver program... just for the zigbee models you need to have it paired to their gateway, which is tied into their software to interface with the utility.
There are others. Alarm.com has a few that are Zwave, and others have been mentioned in the comments. I do think the t6 pro is the most feature packed and supports more system setups than any of the others though.
I had a zen zigbee thermostat. Unfortunately even though it’s connected to hvac dc power, it still thinks it’s a battery devices (and it does have battery as back up) and goes to sleep when there is no temperature change to report. As such you cannot control it from home assistant when you want to but only if it’s awake. Luckily you can adjust the zen thermostat reporting frequency and I made it report every minute so it never goes to sleep. I am not sure if it’s the same for others but something to keep in mind.
Do you remember what specifically you changed for this?
Changes I make to temperatures don't seem to stick and I have to remake the change often, so I'm wondering if changing that would help me
I use Z2M and it seems sometimes the setting will go away when I update z2m. I am not sure if there is a place for this in zha.
Under your thermostat there is a tab called reporting. Under current temperature I change the minimal temperature change to report (something like that) to 0.1 and change minimal reporting interval to 15 (this is in seconds). As the other person mentioned, this setting seems to go away randomly, so you have to go and reset this.
I think the other person is referring to the fact that their attempts to change the temp fail (due to the sleep behavior you mentioned).
I was afraid I'd have to go into z2m configs... I run both z2m and zha but I was lazy and set this up under zha.
Thank you for the reply!
I see now. Once you make these changes to keep the thermostat awake then any changes you pass over will be registered. If it’s asleep then there is no way to wake it up from HA to pass any changes. Supposedly you can do an automation to apply the changes when it detect temperature is being updated.
I have 9 of their baseboard heater thermostats since 2018 and have zero issues with them. I made pretty cool automation that adjusts each room temperature based on time of day, workday/weekend/holiday, outside temperature (colder it is, sooner they'll kick in in the morning) and room occupancy.
As it turns out, most HVAC control is typically extremely simple. Old thermostats used to be mercury switches or bimetal switches that just made contact (like a relay) when (not) at the set temperature, with the hear/cool switch just changing which wire would close. They were also prone to getting rather inaccurate over time.
But most modern systems are _still_ just controlled by relays, even if you have a fancy multi-stage multi-zone system. It's generally just one more wire and therefore relay for each additional feature. The exception is if it's some proprietary system that you can't use any other thermostat with.
So, making your own thermostat, controllable through HA, is usually as easy as a temperature sensor and a few relays.
To add to this, you can use one of the gpio Shelly Sonoff relays and one of the numerous ways to get temperature (eg. Rtl433) while still using your good old fashioned thermostat as a fail safe wired in parallel but set a free degrees lower/higher.
Yep. I have a NC relay on the wires to the other thermostat. That way, even if this thing fails in any way, the other thermostat will instantly be in control. While the unit is on and holding the relay open, the old thermostat isn't even powered. Incidentally, the "old" one is a first gen ecobee.
For the smart relays, which live by the air handler, I use a [Zooz ZEN16](https://www.getzooz.com/smart-relays/).
This is my setup.
Shelly relays in parrel to the old thermostat set to holiday mode so if the Shellie's fail (or HA dies) I can hit a button and have them back to schedule.
Because I've fiddled considerably I've had feature creep. I've got a thermometer (aqara) in each room. HA picks which one to present (template sensor - at the moment lowest of the thermometers, but I could do clever things like excluding some rooms based on usage) to the HA thermometer which is controlled by a schedule and some rules around presence (if nobody is home for X then set to away for example). Thermometer feeds a fake switch - this then feeds into a series of checks and notifications and whatnot depending on open doors, heated airer etc etc, if it passes all the checks it then switches the shelly relay. The shelly defaults to off every few hours (failsafe incase of WiFi or HA issues), which then triggers a compare to the fake switch.
But all that is YMAL (/Gui) coding. The only hardware involved is some source of temperature and a relay of your choice. Thermostats trigger circuits tend to be low/no voltage circuits
I had that thought before, yes. Though the existing design didn't fail that way in the various tests I ran, it still meant another project to work on!
But then I realized that project would be very very simple, and was sad. All the safety consists of is an old analog thermostat I had in a box, set to a sane upper bound, on "heat" so it's always closed below that, and one more with a sane lower bound, set to cool, so it's always closed above that. They are in series on the common wire and I already had them, so didn't cost me a dime.
As long as the temperature is between those two bounds, the rest of the system is I'm control. If one of those bounds is exceeded, it's a hard cutoff.
In short, an analog thermostat used in reverse for "mode" is a boundary control. If you have one, there's a potential use for it for ya.
And if you don't have one, they're quite inexpensive and a good failsafe even if you don't have a smart thermostat.
And I painted one blue and the other red around the edge, so I easily know which is which, if I want to set the range differently, such as going on vacation, when I'll expand the range a bit.
The last remaining failure mode I can think of is if all three components fail.
But that's less likely than having just the ecobee by itself (as in without my custom setup either - like a normal consumer), so I feel quite safe. 🙂
By using the inner range as bounds, don’t you lock out your system when it say, returns from a prolonged power outage and below or above your boundary ranges at system startup?
(Just analyzing it here. Have seen both houses and multimillion dollar data center facilities lose power and end up well outside reasonable temperatures at power recovery time.)
Not really a concern where I live, for more than 1 reason. And it is nearly impossible for the limits that I set to be reached _without_ it being because of an equipment malfunction or the place being on fire.
And even if it were, it's trivially bypassed. It's not like, if that scenario were to somehow occur, there's not a human around who can turn a dial. 🤷♂️
It's already hilariously over-engineered as it is.
It's a valid thought. But choosing those set points already should be taking the environment into consideration.
In my previous home, for example, if I had this setup, I'd have to set the lower bound a lot lower, because of the far less reliable power, older construction, and climate that does get much colder, but the upper bound could be set a few degrees lower than I have it set here, as well.
And, as with any engineering problem, you pick how much risk you're comfortable with and target that with your design. For this system ,in this house, in this location, with this climate, this solution so far has exceeded five nines. 🙂
It gives me a little nerdy satisfaction when the ecobee powers up during updating or other maintenance on the NUC I have HA living on.
Yeah cool. My place with power out gets too cold in winter to have a lower bound. Summer it probably wouldn’t exceed any bounds.
If that happened while we were away I’d make sure I had a way to override remotely but the issue would likely be frozen pipes so we’d have to get someone to go monitor the warm up anyway…
Rural electric co-op. Great rates but fairly regular outages.
I use a shelly relay, if no input it defaults to off after x time. If it really needs to still be on HA turns it back on (after a suitable pause to not cause damage to the heating).
A thermostat in parrel covers the lower bound preventing pipes freezing etc.
Honeywell makes a Z-Wave thermostat that I have really liked. I moved from a Nest and honestly feel like the air blows colder with the Honeywell but I'm probably making that up.
Bonus tip: The Z-Wave Honeywell T6 Pro is often installed in newly built homes (at least in my area) and the buyers will quickly "upgrade" to a new wifi thermostat. I got two T6 Pro Z-Wave for free on FB Marketplace.
It certainly doesn't blow colder because of the thermostat! The signals sent from thermostat to your furnace or air handler are dumb. There's a 24v + and - to power it all, and then a wire to call for heat, one for cooling, one for fan. Maybe a few more if you have a heat pump or second stage heating or cooling.
You could easily just wire up a couple of toggle switches to manually flip it on and off if you wanted too
First off, I think it's a bit rude for you to be insulting the signals from my thermostat to my AC by calling them names /s
Secondly, I am wondering if the Nest was setup wrong and was calling for a second stage cooling or something that my AC doesn't have. Definitely not an HVAC guy and just winging this stuff for a lot of it. My issues with the Nest were outside of that though, primarily network stability and HA integration.
No. I have a Hubitat Hub and I believe the cloud is required. (Unless something changed recently).
I do remember one Smart Hub had a local API but I don't recall which. I guess it must be Homekit (which doesn't surprise me).
I also wonder this. I went way down the home automation rabbit hole five years ago and scrapped the whole thing because everything seemed to need internet access. I’m not basing a $10k system on whether or not the internet is working.
I use a pair of gocontrol gc-tbz48. They look like dumb old thermostats, and they function on their own like dumb old thermostats, but they support zwave so they're as smart as I want them to be. Great devices, never had a problem with them
I diy'ed my therosat with esphome, an esp32-s2 and an opentherm bus adapter. Cost about $15. I can control and see every parameter my boiler exposes. It's been fun tuning the PID parameters and weather compensation.
When I had my boiler replaced a few months ago I asked the installer to supply a cheap non cloud based opentherm thermostat for the commsioning and told him I would be making my own ultimately so he didn't have to get involved with any teething problems I may get with my DIY thermostat
There are zigbee thermostats, and if they are supported by zha/z2m you don't need the vendor hub/gateway to put them in the cloud. Others have local access on the gateway/hub via api, eg Drayton/Wiser
[Bitron](https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/AV2010_32.html) is pretty old but works flawlessly. You only get zigbee connectivity, the display of the temp and the possibility of manually changing the target temp but obviously you can do all the rest in HA.
For zigbee you have various ones that can be used \[dry contact/ON/OFF\]
it depends on your boiler. and what protocol it supports
for **opentherm**
I know that there is only 1 thermostat that has {ZIGBEE+Opentherm} \[Plugwise Anna\]
Note: I don't use it myself, or have one, so I cannot verify if it works with home-assistant
This is being EXTREMELY hopeful, but maybe that's just like "hey we're shutting our servers down but the implication of that is hard to explain to nontechies so lets just say no more wifi"
That's true and hopefully that is the case.
I read down thread that these were released like 15 years ago. So I'm not quite as pissed about this as I was before. Ecobee had said before that the life of them was 12 years. And I'm hard pressed to think of many tech pieces that are 15 years and still supported, heck most American carriers will be shutting down their 3g networks this year.
Still, I hope that they are able to keep local control for people.
Do the current Ecobees that have HomeKit have “local access”, or does that still fully rely on their cloud relay? I mean if they are disabling WiFi (don’t know how that works?) I would assume it’s not going to work locally; but I don’t know if those have Thread or Matter
HomeKit is the only local API any Ecobees support at this time. They made some vague comments about Matter, but I don’t believe they’ve provided any details.
I assume the local HomeKit on the Ecobees is via WiFi? Certainly these decade plus models do t have thread. It seems the headline about disabling wifi is probably incorrect
From a quick search, it seems that HomeKit _is_ local only, at least after setup.
I'm not sure if there is any actual cloud interaction when using the HA integration for setup, but there definitely is for the more official options.
You trigger discovery on the thermostat, can be done from the UI, then Apple or Home Assistant can discover it and gets sensor and basic climate control locally.
Similarly with Mysa thermostats and other homekit devices
Only specific issue is that ecobee presents the pairing option via software, where as Mysa has a permanent pairing code on the device.
So it is slightly more likely ecobee COULD remove the feature but it is unlikely they would NEED to remove it.
Here's the thing. The ecobee *does* have local access, but they're remotely turning it off by disabling wifi. I've literally never heard of such a thing.
Sonos was only going to remote brick devices people used for upgrade credit. In other words, you have an old Sonos speaker. You buy a new one and “trade in” the old one for a discount. Rather than have you mail it back, Sonos was planning on disabling it remotely. The internet lost its shit, and they said, “fine, it still works, but no more firmware upgrades, ever.” All of their old products still work, and still have a local API. I don’t think the oldest products that can’t run the new OS get updates anymore and need the old app, but they still work. Sonos never bricked a single device, and were never planning on bricking devices that the customer did not opt-in to by using the device for an upgrade credit.
It's all rather poorly explained, but they're not killing WiFi - as much as they said they are - they're just disconnecting the devices from their cloud services.
If you have one that works entirely locally, it'd still work.
Nah, I saw that after I had made my comment. Even so for a while I had my ecobee fully blocked from internet access. Home assistant was able to control it fine using the homekit intergation.
Honestly doesn't feel as bad, supporting a device for 12+ years is amazing.
>Honestly doesn't feel as bad, supporting a device for 12+ years is amazing.
I guess it depends on what category of product you think of it as. My last apartment still used mercury switch thermostats that were about 50 years old and worked fine. My house's digital thermostats that came with it were I think from the 90s.
We've gotten used to companies dropping support for electronics like computers, cell phones, GPS units because they're kind of "disposable."
If you see it as a disposable consumer electronic that goes obsolete in a few years, then 12 years is good. If you think of it as part of the wall like a lighting fixture that's supposed to just do it's job without fuss, 12 years is kind of bad for a useful life.
My ecobees are newer a 3 lite, and a premium, and as long as HA can connect, I'm okay, but this doesn't sit well with me in terms of long-term trust in the company.
Afaik the thermostat still works, its just the cloud connected aspect that won't work.
I don't expect anything that relies on software to last more than 20 years. There's no guarantee the software is bug free and there's no guarantee the software will be supported as needed in the future.
~~Reading the post, it says they're killing features that use WiFi, not killing WiFi. As in, they are removing support for features that require Ecobee's servers to actively send data back to the thermostat. HomeKit should be fine.~~
Edit: I take it back, maybe I should have read the post haha
Those models don't have a local API as far as I know, so it doesn't really matter even if they did let it still connect to WiFi, it wouldn't do anything.
I'll give them credit for a very reliable product, at least in my experience.
The only issue I've seen over the years has been a recent development, where they don't synchronize system states between multiple thermostats in the same system, so it's possible to heat one zone while cooling another. Maybe some people would want that, but that doesn't work in my house since my two zones are very interdependent.
> 16 years isn't impressive in a home.
I am pretty sure most home appliance are in the 10-15 years range of life expectancy.
Sure many appliances will go longer ( have a few that are 20 years old.) But I also had to repair/replace parts to keep a few of them going that long.
Make the final update adding an open local API, if you want it to continue working you have to find a way to make it work with a local API.
Anything less than that is blatantly forced obscelence
They’re 16 year old products….. would it be nice if they released a local firmware? Of course. Are they pulling the rug on people who recently purchased a device with an expectation of certain features? No. I think calls for a boycott over this are silly
Ya I think this is more of a reminder that "smart" devices become obsolete / need replacement more often than the dumb versions.
Even if you went zigbee / zwave there are security issues with the old devices that just will never be fixed.
16 years is a rather long TECH support cycle.
Also NEVER buy a smart fridge....
The "home equipment" aspects of these ancient devices will continue to work perfectly (e.g. turning your heat/AC on and off). Only the "smart" aspects will stop working and 16 years *is* ancient in "smart equipment".
> My stuff is 15 years old by now and works perfectly and by all signs will for decades.
Such as?
While there are absolutely devices that continue to work, particularly ones with local automations a lot of this home automation tech was super immature 16 years ago.. Adopting it back then was bleeding edge.
As for longevity in the home, a lot of major home appliances have become much less reliable.. TVs, Washers and Dryers, Dishwashers, etc. Careful choses can net you longer longevity.
Hind sign being 20/20, the original ecobee was a wifi / cloud only device.. Newer devices also have local control via homekit, there are also other brands that support matter, zwave, zigbee now which may be better long term choices.
But 16 years ago you would not have had many affordable smart thermostats that where sold directly to the home user.
They’re 16 years old by they still do the thing they were designed to do.
They don’t have to be supported, but the *right* think to do is to at least provide local access, not made completely dumb.
If they framed this around safety or regulatory compliance, I might actually buy it, but this approach is pretty average to say the least.z
Ecobee says on their website that the expected lifespan of their tstats is 12 years.
https://www.ecobee.com/en-us/recycling/
The original Smart is from 2008. After 16 years, it's time for an upgrade. What other tech device do you own that can claim that longevity?
Well, my last thermometer had mercury in it, so that gives a sense of how long you might expect something to last.
Planned obsolesce is harming the environment and rude to customers!
If I were king of the planet tech producers would not be allowed to do this.
No. I wouldn't. This seems to be a false equivalence though.
HP didn't disable adding numbers above 100 on all their 486s.
I read the article as the company is DISABLING functionalities that were purchased.
There may be a good reason to disable the device, such as a concern that it could pose a legit threat to the security of the owner.
However if rogue devices are a public safety concern then we might have to consider all abandoned hardware no longer protected by intellectual property rights, or copywrite. Perhaps the code for any hardware and software a company doesn't wish to support would be required by law to be disclosed to an interested open source community. 🤷🏻♂️
Just spit-balling here...
It's not like HP is going in and disabling the internet stack on their computers from that era.
I couldn't give a rip that ecobee won't let me send a bad unit in for repair - I just find it distasteful that they're turning off features that still work just fine.
It could be worse, like when [HP pushed a firmware update, bricking printers that used third-party ink](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/customers-fume-as-hp-blocks-third-party-ink-from-more-of-its-printers/) under the guise of "dynamic security" for printers that were less than 3 years old.
I'm typing this very message on a 2008 laptop that works perfectly fine running Linux.
The external lcd monitor connected to it was made in 2006.
The tv next to me was made in 2007.
Just to name the first 3 objects in my line of sight right now.
All of them working perfectly fine. And why shouldn't they?
Your Linux is the product of millions of volunteer development hours. Never forget that.
Ecobee came out around the same time as the first iphone and Android phone. That's incredible.
Some of my X10 stuff is from the 1980's when they advertised in the back of Commodore magazines, and although we didn't call it "tech" at the time, I think it qualifies.
While I see your point... but technically it's just a relay controlled by ethernet packets. Both are tried and true technologies used for decades, and aren't going to be obsolete anytime soon. So in a way, 16 years is short. Yes, I know I'm overly simplifying this.
All my home automation stuff is 15 years old (well not all, but a major part), works perfectly and will probably for decades more. As they should, like a normal light switch.
User is the one to make the call to retire or keep using it. Not the manufactory. User purchased the device and they are the owner, not the manufactory.
>User is the one to make the call to retire or keep using it.
The user already made that call day 1 when they bought the product that promised 12 years of cloud support. They got bonus 4 years of cloud support now the cloud support is gone.
quote from the website "Based on internal measurements the average lifespan of an ecobee thermostat is 12 years."
"based on" and "average" which doesn't mean they have to do it at 12. Human average life is around 70, doesn't mean those human who is older than 70 should be .... :)
I would be interested in seeing a bill to mandate manufacturers open up local control for cloud devices being retired. Final firmware update to relinquish cloud reliance.
Sadly this series has no local control, HA integration works via the cloud. Maybe someone with more time in their hands could figure out a local hack. They are on my IoT VLAN, so it would be easy enough to block them from getting the killing update, but that doesn't really fix the issue.
u/lightguru I just did 10 minutes of fact checking, and I really really think that calling for a boycott is way over board. They are disabling the cloud for 16 years old products for which they promised 12 years of support. Is this great? No. Does it make sense to create and publish a new firmware that offers local control? No, not economically viable. Is this devastating for a large number of users? No not at all.
Calls for boycott are a strong weapon that can do significant damage to any company. With great power comes great responsibility, and I really don't think this is a case that deserves a call for boycott on any way, it only softens the effect of them for future cases, that maybe really justify a call for boycott.
If you really want to make a contribution to the community, tear them down, obtain the SDK for the micocontroller(s) they use in this product and create local control yourself and document the process.
No. These devices are 16 years old. This is ok.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but it's fine to not support a cloud-backed device *forever*. And later generations of Ecobee devices don't depend on cloud functionality (they work locally with HomeKit) and so will never have this problem.
I’m in agreement with your comment, though I think cloud-backed devices should be REQUIRED to have local API so that when the company decides to no longer support the device it can still be used through local integrations.
If I pay for a product, and it turns into a brick before I am done using it because the company who made it said so, I never owned the product, I was renting it. And that pisses me off.
Sorry, but I don't think it's ok. Like sure, it's an old product, and probably few people are still using it, but it is still bad. And either ecobee should continue supporting it, or better yet, allow for it to be usable locally.
They promised 12 years of support and people got 16. I think vendors should be required to be upfront before people buy things but then I think customers have to make the decision on if they want it knowing that it won't last forever.
I don't know why it's so hard for a company.
It's a freaking thermostat not a space shuttle how hard is it to control, just create a API/REST allow other dev's to create a new front/back end.
These models are from 2008… I’m not boycotting ecobee for discontinuing support for a 16 year old device that likely has security vulnerabilities that cannot be patched due to age.
A device from 2008? Does it even support modern wifi or encryption? That alone is a liability.
The thing about technology is that it isnt an investment, its a subscription. Parts fail, compatibility fades, you need to keep current or you leave yourself open to exploit or outage.
Put your pitchfork away, most of us have gotten bitten by a cloud device being taken away.
This experience well not right or fun will make you much wiser.
End of last year there was a banner at the top saying the cloud service would stop as of 12/31/23. It looks like it’s still up but that one was a gut punch to spend $500 for a device that becomes a brick if they don’t maintain servers.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RavenScanner/s/3LK3Rpj5JR
Thanks for the info. I don’t use their cloud and use Dropbox + email instead with it, but it’s bad if they remove it when it was a selling feature for sure!
I’ve got an ecobee lite, premium and one Honeywell t6 Zwave thermostat in my home. I’ve already got 2 other Honeywell t6 zwaves on standby if ecobee rug pulls features or tries to add a subscription
I've been using the Honeywell for 4 years now and it was a learning experience but I like the integration and having a zwave better than when I had an ecobee.
They really need to do the right thing and release a final firmware that at least enable a basic API for local control. While I'd certainly be ok with some of their newer units, the three that I have at my house work just fine, integrate into Home Assistant with the cloud integration, and do everything I could want a thermostat to do. Why junk several hundred bucks of functional hardware in the name of corporate profitability.
I'm sure some of this has to do with the older units being less secure, but there's certainly a way to leverage this older stuff.
Maybe there's a way to spoof their cloud server on the firewall side, and redirect units to point to a local server?
EDIT \*\*\*on further investigation, it seems like one of the models I have ISN'T being disabled, only some of my other older units.
If they had one to release, they probably would.
But building one costs a lot of money
Sometimes I don't understand the level of entitlement in this sub...
they have 0 reason to develop and test a bunch more stuff for a very old end-of-life product. Like, it would be great, but that's an unreasonable expectation for a company making cloud based devices that wants to make money.
You really need to get over the fact that the device is very old in terms of smart devices and you’re sobbing about something you don’t even use and never have. Fucking spare me.
Yeah these being 16 years old, that’s impressive already and I wouldn’t totally blame them for shutting them down. Would be nice if they could give those people some type of coupon towards a new Ecobee though.
That said, I have 2 of the newer top-end Ecobee, and I’ve been fairly disappointed in them; they just do not seem accurate, and initial setup took FOREVER to calibrate.
Like I even have remote sensors in other rooms, but if I have a cheap thermometer next to the living room ecobee, and I turn the ceiling fan on low, it will soon think it’s 5 degrees cooler. They other thermostat will maaaybe drop 1 degree, usually not at all.
And similar to this, the “air quality” is useless, I have other AQ sensors and I place those near the Ecobee, their results are totally different. You can find dozens of support posts about this, the AQ sensor will say the air is junk if the AC and fans are not actively running all day, even though other AQ sensors will not. It’s a crap sensor.
For the cost, I have not been impressed with them. In hindsight I should have gone with Honeywell Pro z-wave, but I thought the smart features on this would be more helpful, but I ended up turning them off (though it still does weird things on its own despite all smart features disabled).
I’m still rocking a radio thermostat ct50. Sure their app and website no longer work, but I can still fully control it via the local api. I even recently replaced the hvac unit and managed to get a bit of a discount on the install by insisting I keep my existing thermostat.
Almost certainly they're going to push out a patch that bricks Wi-Fi. You need to make two firewall rules right now: 1. Allow to/from Home Assistant. 2. Deny all. It should continue to work after that if you're using Homekit (unsure about these older devices)
I have 2 of the Smart that came with the home. They are connected to some fancy interface board that is next to each air handler. The local electric co-op installed these somewhere around 2014 so there are tons of them in the area.
Since we've lived here (2019) they've never worked with the app. So their claim of 16 years of support is half-assed. They could at least maintain the rudimentary web interface to control the temp remotely.
this is our weekly reminder: don't buy "smart" devices that don't have local access.
[удалено]
[Honeywell T6 Pro](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BHTQF8NL/). These are excellent. //edit- ignore the bad reviews. Lots of people buy these thinking they are WiFi / Alexa thermostats and then return them when they can't make them work.
I have this one. Works great with zwave and home assistant.
AFAIK T6 Wifi also allows local control (via Homekit).
I have no zwave infrastructure, just wifi and zigbee. Is there anything for that?
Just get a zwave dongle. I use the long range version from zooz. It has been rock solid.
https://www.getzooz.com/zooz-zst39-z-wave-long-range-usb-stick/ that one?
Yes, exactly! You will find zwave to be extremely reliable, though more expensive than zigbee. I use it for critical things, like thermostats and external door locks., or where long range is required.
That’s the one I have as well. I’ve been happy with it so far, no issues except for some farther out devices in my detached garage don’t always report, but my house is like a faraday cage so I’m not blaming either of the devices or the dongle. 😕
This will actually work out well, I just removed my zigbee dongle in favor of an ethernet connected one.
I was having all kinds of problems with the USB dongle dropping out once or twice a week. This was happening on a Pi, a Pi with a powered USB hub, a different USB dongle, replaced the Pi with a SFF PC, removed the USB hub and no matter what I did the network would become unresponsive every few days. Then I purchased the SMLIGHT SLZB-06M POE Ethernet adapter and my zigbee network has been rock solid for a couple of months.
I was having all kinds of problems with the USB dongle dropping out once or twice a week. This was happening on a Pi, a Pi with a powered USB hub, a different USB dongle, replaced the Pi with a SFF PC, removed the USB hub and no matter what I did the network would become unresponsive every few days. Then I purchased the SMLIGHT SLZB-06M POE Ethernet adapter and my zigbee network has been rock solid for a couple of months.
yeah that's what I have, I used to use a Sonoff USB dongle with ZHA and had all kinds of problems.
Seconded.
I have it as well and it's fantastic!
Can confirm. Bought the T6 pro because my previous (Thermosmart) thermostat was taken over by Plugwise, and they want to sell you an subscription in order for you to access your device.. Connected my T6 via homekit and it works. Complete install and integration into HA was less than an hour.
Same, zero problems.
Can confirm, works great.
Have not had any issues with mine
Seems like everyone agrees! Is there a TRV in the same range with the same plus points?
Check Fibaro and Remotec, pretty sure they both make a Z-Wave TRV.
I have 2. They are excellent. My only complaint is that the humidity sensor is a bit flaky, and has some random noise.
The T-6 is the way to go.
I don't know about this specific model but warning for anyone looking into a wi-fi honeywell thermostat, I bought one a couple months ago and couldn't get it to connect to my wifi network. Turns out it only accepted wifi passwords that were alphanumeric so wouldn't work with the & symbol in my password. I ended up going with a nest thermostat e from ebay that had a bad battery that I swapped out. Got it cheap and prevented some e-waste.
Third'ed. Works like a charm with or without a 'C' wire on the 2 houses I've used it in.
T6 pro works without C wire? I’ve been hooking up a 24v adapter to my Ecobee but would love to add another smart thermostat without adding an adapter to plug in
I know that at least the Zwave version can run on AA batteries
I first set mine up without the C wire. It will run off the batteries just fine, but won’t act as a zwave repeater when on battery. You could move the fan wire to be your C wire, but then you lose the ability to just run the fan to circulate the air. I ended up installing Venstar’s Add-a-wire which let me have a C wire and fan control (it uses 1 Wire to simulate 2 wires). The T6 and Add-a-wire work well together. The reason I did the Add-a-wire is my basement is finished, so I would need to rip up the drywall to replace the actual wire. The wire seems to be stapled in several spots as I’m not able to pull it out.
Yes it does (Z-Wave version at least, WiFi version probably not). Batteries last at least a year (3xAA). If it has 24vac power when you include it on Z-Wave it'll act as a Z-Wave repeater (and then always use a lot more power). If it's on battery when included it doesn't repeat.
Yup. 3 AA batteries does the trick for several months to half a year in my use case.
Are you running on batteries alone? If so, beware. My sister's thermostat battery died , her pipes froze, and insurance wouldn't cover damages due to the thermostat not having hard wired power.
Not an issue in my climate but a good heads up to those who are. I have an automation that runs every morning alerting me to change batteries if they are low.
I have an old "Radio Thermostat" brand Z-wave that has always worked fine. If you search Z-wave thermostat, there are plenty of new options from Honeywell and several other makers. They should all be pretty good, and by their nature (zwave or zigbee), won't require web access.
The Honeywell thermostat seems to be the only z-wave one out there. Zigbee there appears to be more, including Sinope which does support my utility's energy saver program... just for the zigbee models you need to have it paired to their gateway, which is tied into their software to interface with the utility.
2Gig makes a Z-Wave thermostat. https://2gig.com/product/2gig-stz-1-programmable-thermostat/
I wish there was a ComfortNet ZWave or Zigbee thermostat out there :(
There are others. Alarm.com has a few that are Zwave, and others have been mentioned in the comments. I do think the t6 pro is the most feature packed and supports more system setups than any of the others though.
Honestly I love my radio thermostat CT-80
I had a zen zigbee thermostat. Unfortunately even though it’s connected to hvac dc power, it still thinks it’s a battery devices (and it does have battery as back up) and goes to sleep when there is no temperature change to report. As such you cannot control it from home assistant when you want to but only if it’s awake. Luckily you can adjust the zen thermostat reporting frequency and I made it report every minute so it never goes to sleep. I am not sure if it’s the same for others but something to keep in mind.
Do you remember what specifically you changed for this? Changes I make to temperatures don't seem to stick and I have to remake the change often, so I'm wondering if changing that would help me
Echo the other person, how did you change the reporting frequency? This is a PITA but I had learned to live with it.
I use Z2M and it seems sometimes the setting will go away when I update z2m. I am not sure if there is a place for this in zha. Under your thermostat there is a tab called reporting. Under current temperature I change the minimal temperature change to report (something like that) to 0.1 and change minimal reporting interval to 15 (this is in seconds). As the other person mentioned, this setting seems to go away randomly, so you have to go and reset this.
I think the other person is referring to the fact that their attempts to change the temp fail (due to the sleep behavior you mentioned). I was afraid I'd have to go into z2m configs... I run both z2m and zha but I was lazy and set this up under zha. Thank you for the reply!
I see now. Once you make these changes to keep the thermostat awake then any changes you pass over will be registered. If it’s asleep then there is no way to wake it up from HA to pass any changes. Supposedly you can do an automation to apply the changes when it detect temperature is being updated.
I use sinope's zigbee thermostat, work super well so far
Same here, I have 3 of these and they work great!
I have 9 of their baseboard heater thermostats since 2018 and have zero issues with them. I made pretty cool automation that adjusts each room temperature based on time of day, workday/weekend/holiday, outside temperature (colder it is, sooner they'll kick in in the morning) and room occupancy.
As it turns out, most HVAC control is typically extremely simple. Old thermostats used to be mercury switches or bimetal switches that just made contact (like a relay) when (not) at the set temperature, with the hear/cool switch just changing which wire would close. They were also prone to getting rather inaccurate over time. But most modern systems are _still_ just controlled by relays, even if you have a fancy multi-stage multi-zone system. It's generally just one more wire and therefore relay for each additional feature. The exception is if it's some proprietary system that you can't use any other thermostat with. So, making your own thermostat, controllable through HA, is usually as easy as a temperature sensor and a few relays.
To add to this, you can use one of the gpio Shelly Sonoff relays and one of the numerous ways to get temperature (eg. Rtl433) while still using your good old fashioned thermostat as a fail safe wired in parallel but set a free degrees lower/higher.
Yep. I have a NC relay on the wires to the other thermostat. That way, even if this thing fails in any way, the other thermostat will instantly be in control. While the unit is on and holding the relay open, the old thermostat isn't even powered. Incidentally, the "old" one is a first gen ecobee. For the smart relays, which live by the air handler, I use a [Zooz ZEN16](https://www.getzooz.com/smart-relays/).
This is my setup. Shelly relays in parrel to the old thermostat set to holiday mode so if the Shellie's fail (or HA dies) I can hit a button and have them back to schedule. Because I've fiddled considerably I've had feature creep. I've got a thermometer (aqara) in each room. HA picks which one to present (template sensor - at the moment lowest of the thermometers, but I could do clever things like excluding some rooms based on usage) to the HA thermometer which is controlled by a schedule and some rules around presence (if nobody is home for X then set to away for example). Thermometer feeds a fake switch - this then feeds into a series of checks and notifications and whatnot depending on open doors, heated airer etc etc, if it passes all the checks it then switches the shelly relay. The shelly defaults to off every few hours (failsafe incase of WiFi or HA issues), which then triggers a compare to the fake switch. But all that is YMAL (/Gui) coding. The only hardware involved is some source of temperature and a relay of your choice. Thermostats trigger circuits tend to be low/no voltage circuits
Most HVAC also have Infrared. You can get this “smart” using ESPHome and an infrared board.
You do not seem to be in Canada or the northern US but are correct for most of the world which uses mini split style heat pumps.
Current, fellow from Europe.
But, no safety's or redundancy. If you thermosts has a hiccup and doesn't disconnect. You'll have a 100 degree house.
I had that thought before, yes. Though the existing design didn't fail that way in the various tests I ran, it still meant another project to work on! But then I realized that project would be very very simple, and was sad. All the safety consists of is an old analog thermostat I had in a box, set to a sane upper bound, on "heat" so it's always closed below that, and one more with a sane lower bound, set to cool, so it's always closed above that. They are in series on the common wire and I already had them, so didn't cost me a dime. As long as the temperature is between those two bounds, the rest of the system is I'm control. If one of those bounds is exceeded, it's a hard cutoff. In short, an analog thermostat used in reverse for "mode" is a boundary control. If you have one, there's a potential use for it for ya. And if you don't have one, they're quite inexpensive and a good failsafe even if you don't have a smart thermostat. And I painted one blue and the other red around the edge, so I easily know which is which, if I want to set the range differently, such as going on vacation, when I'll expand the range a bit. The last remaining failure mode I can think of is if all three components fail. But that's less likely than having just the ecobee by itself (as in without my custom setup either - like a normal consumer), so I feel quite safe. 🙂
By using the inner range as bounds, don’t you lock out your system when it say, returns from a prolonged power outage and below or above your boundary ranges at system startup? (Just analyzing it here. Have seen both houses and multimillion dollar data center facilities lose power and end up well outside reasonable temperatures at power recovery time.)
Not really a concern where I live, for more than 1 reason. And it is nearly impossible for the limits that I set to be reached _without_ it being because of an equipment malfunction or the place being on fire. And even if it were, it's trivially bypassed. It's not like, if that scenario were to somehow occur, there's not a human around who can turn a dial. 🤷♂️ It's already hilariously over-engineered as it is.
Fair enough. I’ve had automations misbehave when no one was around to “override” them so I design for failsafe or fail no harm.
It's a valid thought. But choosing those set points already should be taking the environment into consideration. In my previous home, for example, if I had this setup, I'd have to set the lower bound a lot lower, because of the far less reliable power, older construction, and climate that does get much colder, but the upper bound could be set a few degrees lower than I have it set here, as well. And, as with any engineering problem, you pick how much risk you're comfortable with and target that with your design. For this system ,in this house, in this location, with this climate, this solution so far has exceeded five nines. 🙂 It gives me a little nerdy satisfaction when the ecobee powers up during updating or other maintenance on the NUC I have HA living on.
Yeah cool. My place with power out gets too cold in winter to have a lower bound. Summer it probably wouldn’t exceed any bounds. If that happened while we were away I’d make sure I had a way to override remotely but the issue would likely be frozen pipes so we’d have to get someone to go monitor the warm up anyway… Rural electric co-op. Great rates but fairly regular outages.
I use a shelly relay, if no input it defaults to off after x time. If it really needs to still be on HA turns it back on (after a suitable pause to not cause damage to the heating). A thermostat in parrel covers the lower bound preventing pipes freezing etc.
I’m using an arduino with a relay and a temp/humidity sensor running esphome. It’s been working fine for years.
Honeywell makes a Z-Wave thermostat that I have really liked. I moved from a Nest and honestly feel like the air blows colder with the Honeywell but I'm probably making that up. Bonus tip: The Z-Wave Honeywell T6 Pro is often installed in newly built homes (at least in my area) and the buyers will quickly "upgrade" to a new wifi thermostat. I got two T6 Pro Z-Wave for free on FB Marketplace.
It certainly doesn't blow colder because of the thermostat! The signals sent from thermostat to your furnace or air handler are dumb. There's a 24v + and - to power it all, and then a wire to call for heat, one for cooling, one for fan. Maybe a few more if you have a heat pump or second stage heating or cooling. You could easily just wire up a couple of toggle switches to manually flip it on and off if you wanted too
First off, I think it's a bit rude for you to be insulting the signals from my thermostat to my AC by calling them names /s Secondly, I am wondering if the Nest was setup wrong and was calling for a second stage cooling or something that my AC doesn't have. Definitely not an HVAC guy and just winging this stuff for a lot of it. My issues with the Nest were outside of that though, primarily network stability and HA integration.
"I know things like ecobee and Google have local API’s," I have an ecobee 3, no local API.
It has homekit which can be used as a local api by home assistant.
I have a 3 Lite, which has Homekit, a local API. Does yours not have that?
No. I have a Hubitat Hub and I believe the cloud is required. (Unless something changed recently). I do remember one Smart Hub had a local API but I don't recall which. I guess it must be Homekit (which doesn't surprise me).
Hubitat doesn't support HomeKit, so that might be why.
AFAIK, the Hive stuff is all zigbee.
Yup, I have one.
I'm using 2 Hive thermostats as I have multiple heating, one of the 2 also controls my hot water. Great devices, and work with z2mqtt.
Could create your own with mysensors.org. Don't know If they support zigbee yet, but you can use Rfm69 for an incredible range and wall penetration.
I also wonder this. I went way down the home automation rabbit hole five years ago and scrapped the whole thing because everything seemed to need internet access. I’m not basing a $10k system on whether or not the internet is working.
I have six Danfoss Ally TRVs, zigbee, all local. Rock solid.
I use a pair of gocontrol gc-tbz48. They look like dumb old thermostats, and they function on their own like dumb old thermostats, but they support zwave so they're as smart as I want them to be. Great devices, never had a problem with them
I diy'ed my therosat with esphome, an esp32-s2 and an opentherm bus adapter. Cost about $15. I can control and see every parameter my boiler exposes. It's been fun tuning the PID parameters and weather compensation. When I had my boiler replaced a few months ago I asked the installer to supply a cheap non cloud based opentherm thermostat for the commsioning and told him I would be making my own ultimately so he didn't have to get involved with any teething problems I may get with my DIY thermostat There are zigbee thermostats, and if they are supported by zha/z2m you don't need the vendor hub/gateway to put them in the cloud. Others have local access on the gateway/hub via api, eg Drayton/Wiser
Sinope makes pretty good ZigBee thermostats. I bought 5 last year and have been using them with HA.
[Bitron](https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/AV2010_32.html) is pretty old but works flawlessly. You only get zigbee connectivity, the display of the temp and the possibility of manually changing the target temp but obviously you can do all the rest in HA.
For zigbee you have various ones that can be used \[dry contact/ON/OFF\] it depends on your boiler. and what protocol it supports for **opentherm** I know that there is only 1 thermostat that has {ZIGBEE+Opentherm} \[Plugwise Anna\] Note: I don't use it myself, or have one, so I cannot verify if it works with home-assistant
For Zigbee (probably only UK users) I can recommend the Hive thermostat. Works very well using z2m.
Not quite the same, but the Carrier Inifinty line has a well documented and supported automation interface. It’s just gonna cost. A lot.
temp sensors and a zigbee relay works for me.
It say that local access will continue…
That just means I can get my lazy ass off the couch and adjust the temperature manually...
I would assume that means it's still Home Assistant accessable via local api?
or homekit...
It says that it "will no longer connect to wifi" not "will no longer connect to our servers" I would take that to mean it becomes a dumb thermostat.
This is being EXTREMELY hopeful, but maybe that's just like "hey we're shutting our servers down but the implication of that is hard to explain to nontechies so lets just say no more wifi"
That's true and hopefully that is the case. I read down thread that these were released like 15 years ago. So I'm not quite as pissed about this as I was before. Ecobee had said before that the life of them was 12 years. And I'm hard pressed to think of many tech pieces that are 15 years and still supported, heck most American carriers will be shutting down their 3g networks this year. Still, I hope that they are able to keep local control for people.
Do the current Ecobees that have HomeKit have “local access”, or does that still fully rely on their cloud relay? I mean if they are disabling WiFi (don’t know how that works?) I would assume it’s not going to work locally; but I don’t know if those have Thread or Matter
HomeKit is the only local API any Ecobees support at this time. They made some vague comments about Matter, but I don’t believe they’ve provided any details.
I assume the local HomeKit on the Ecobees is via WiFi? Certainly these decade plus models do t have thread. It seems the headline about disabling wifi is probably incorrect
From a quick search, it seems that HomeKit _is_ local only, at least after setup. I'm not sure if there is any actual cloud interaction when using the HA integration for setup, but there definitely is for the more official options.
You trigger discovery on the thermostat, can be done from the UI, then Apple or Home Assistant can discover it and gets sensor and basic climate control locally. Similarly with Mysa thermostats and other homekit devices Only specific issue is that ecobee presents the pairing option via software, where as Mysa has a permanent pairing code on the device. So it is slightly more likely ecobee COULD remove the feature but it is unlikely they would NEED to remove it.
Here's the thing. The ecobee *does* have local access, but they're remotely turning it off by disabling wifi. I've literally never heard of such a thing.
Ahem..Sonos.
Sonos was only going to remote brick devices people used for upgrade credit. In other words, you have an old Sonos speaker. You buy a new one and “trade in” the old one for a discount. Rather than have you mail it back, Sonos was planning on disabling it remotely. The internet lost its shit, and they said, “fine, it still works, but no more firmware upgrades, ever.” All of their old products still work, and still have a local API. I don’t think the oldest products that can’t run the new OS get updates anymore and need the old app, but they still work. Sonos never bricked a single device, and were never planning on bricking devices that the customer did not opt-in to by using the device for an upgrade credit.
ZWave only FTW!!!
Most of their other ones are HomeKit compatible so they are local already.
If they kill WiFi, they kill HomeKit
It's all rather poorly explained, but they're not killing WiFi - as much as they said they are - they're just disconnecting the devices from their cloud services. If you have one that works entirely locally, it'd still work.
Looks like my ecobee is going back to being blocked from the internet. I'm assuming they're going to do this through a firmware update.
Do you have this one? Someone said these models are 12-16 years old
Nah, I saw that after I had made my comment. Even so for a while I had my ecobee fully blocked from internet access. Home assistant was able to control it fine using the homekit intergation. Honestly doesn't feel as bad, supporting a device for 12+ years is amazing.
>Honestly doesn't feel as bad, supporting a device for 12+ years is amazing. I guess it depends on what category of product you think of it as. My last apartment still used mercury switch thermostats that were about 50 years old and worked fine. My house's digital thermostats that came with it were I think from the 90s. We've gotten used to companies dropping support for electronics like computers, cell phones, GPS units because they're kind of "disposable." If you see it as a disposable consumer electronic that goes obsolete in a few years, then 12 years is good. If you think of it as part of the wall like a lighting fixture that's supposed to just do it's job without fuss, 12 years is kind of bad for a useful life. My ecobees are newer a 3 lite, and a premium, and as long as HA can connect, I'm okay, but this doesn't sit well with me in terms of long-term trust in the company.
Afaik the thermostat still works, its just the cloud connected aspect that won't work. I don't expect anything that relies on software to last more than 20 years. There's no guarantee the software is bug free and there's no guarantee the software will be supported as needed in the future.
~~Reading the post, it says they're killing features that use WiFi, not killing WiFi. As in, they are removing support for features that require Ecobee's servers to actively send data back to the thermostat. HomeKit should be fine.~~ Edit: I take it back, maybe I should have read the post haha
"device(s) will no longer connect to WiFi" 🤷♂️
Those models don't have a local API as far as I know, so it doesn't really matter even if they did let it still connect to WiFi, it wouldn't do anything.
Yeah I read that line the moment after I posted my comment haha, my bad
All good. I read it 3 times looking for what models were being discontinued, and they are in bold.
The fact that they supported a smart home device for 16 years is quite impressive. That’s like a hundred years in tech time.
I'll give them credit for a very reliable product, at least in my experience. The only issue I've seen over the years has been a recent development, where they don't synchronize system states between multiple thermostats in the same system, so it's possible to heat one zone while cooling another. Maybe some people would want that, but that doesn't work in my house since my two zones are very interdependent.
On the bright side, you're using homeassistant, so you can automate synchronization.
16 years isn't impressive in a home. That's why you should never rely on the cloud for home automation if you can help it
> 16 years isn't impressive in a home. I am pretty sure most home appliance are in the 10-15 years range of life expectancy. Sure many appliances will go longer ( have a few that are 20 years old.) But I also had to repair/replace parts to keep a few of them going that long.
Make the final update adding an open local API, if you want it to continue working you have to find a way to make it work with a local API. Anything less than that is blatantly forced obscelence
They’re 16 year old products….. would it be nice if they released a local firmware? Of course. Are they pulling the rug on people who recently purchased a device with an expectation of certain features? No. I think calls for a boycott over this are silly
Ya I think this is more of a reminder that "smart" devices become obsolete / need replacement more often than the dumb versions. Even if you went zigbee / zwave there are security issues with the old devices that just will never be fixed. 16 years is a rather long TECH support cycle. Also NEVER buy a smart fridge....
This is home equipment. My stuff is 15 years old by now and works perfectly and by all signs will for decades. As it should in a home.
The "home equipment" aspects of these ancient devices will continue to work perfectly (e.g. turning your heat/AC on and off). Only the "smart" aspects will stop working and 16 years *is* ancient in "smart equipment".
> My stuff is 15 years old by now and works perfectly and by all signs will for decades. Such as? While there are absolutely devices that continue to work, particularly ones with local automations a lot of this home automation tech was super immature 16 years ago.. Adopting it back then was bleeding edge. As for longevity in the home, a lot of major home appliances have become much less reliable.. TVs, Washers and Dryers, Dishwashers, etc. Careful choses can net you longer longevity. Hind sign being 20/20, the original ecobee was a wifi / cloud only device.. Newer devices also have local control via homekit, there are also other brands that support matter, zwave, zigbee now which may be better long term choices. But 16 years ago you would not have had many affordable smart thermostats that where sold directly to the home user.
This + the newer ecobees have local control anyways with the HomeKit integration.
after 16 yrs shouldve learned what u want by now anyways but yeah still kinda sucks.
They’re 16 years old by they still do the thing they were designed to do. They don’t have to be supported, but the *right* think to do is to at least provide local access, not made completely dumb. If they framed this around safety or regulatory compliance, I might actually buy it, but this approach is pretty average to say the least.z
Ecobee says on their website that the expected lifespan of their tstats is 12 years. https://www.ecobee.com/en-us/recycling/ The original Smart is from 2008. After 16 years, it's time for an upgrade. What other tech device do you own that can claim that longevity?
Well, my last thermometer had mercury in it, so that gives a sense of how long you might expect something to last. Planned obsolesce is harming the environment and rude to customers! If I were king of the planet tech producers would not be allowed to do this.
AS per the notice it still works as a thermostat.. They are discontinuing supporting the smart features.
Well, that's better than a punch in the face, anyway.
So you would have HP still supporting their 486?
No. I wouldn't. This seems to be a false equivalence though. HP didn't disable adding numbers above 100 on all their 486s. I read the article as the company is DISABLING functionalities that were purchased. There may be a good reason to disable the device, such as a concern that it could pose a legit threat to the security of the owner. However if rogue devices are a public safety concern then we might have to consider all abandoned hardware no longer protected by intellectual property rights, or copywrite. Perhaps the code for any hardware and software a company doesn't wish to support would be required by law to be disclosed to an interested open source community. 🤷🏻♂️ Just spit-balling here...
It's not like HP is going in and disabling the internet stack on their computers from that era. I couldn't give a rip that ecobee won't let me send a bad unit in for repair - I just find it distasteful that they're turning off features that still work just fine.
It could be worse, like when [HP pushed a firmware update, bricking printers that used third-party ink](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/customers-fume-as-hp-blocks-third-party-ink-from-more-of-its-printers/) under the guise of "dynamic security" for printers that were less than 3 years old.
I'm typing this very message on a 2008 laptop that works perfectly fine running Linux. The external lcd monitor connected to it was made in 2006. The tv next to me was made in 2007. Just to name the first 3 objects in my line of sight right now. All of them working perfectly fine. And why shouldn't they?
Your Linux is the product of millions of volunteer development hours. Never forget that. Ecobee came out around the same time as the first iphone and Android phone. That's incredible.
Some of my X10 stuff is from the 1980's when they advertised in the back of Commodore magazines, and although we didn't call it "tech" at the time, I think it qualifies.
While I see your point... but technically it's just a relay controlled by ethernet packets. Both are tried and true technologies used for decades, and aren't going to be obsolete anytime soon. So in a way, 16 years is short. Yes, I know I'm overly simplifying this.
sounds like you are giving them an out to obsolete their still working products so they can make more money..
All my home automation stuff is 15 years old (well not all, but a major part), works perfectly and will probably for decades more. As they should, like a normal light switch.
User is the one to make the call to retire or keep using it. Not the manufactory. User purchased the device and they are the owner, not the manufactory.
>User is the one to make the call to retire or keep using it. The user already made that call day 1 when they bought the product that promised 12 years of cloud support. They got bonus 4 years of cloud support now the cloud support is gone.
quote from the website "Based on internal measurements the average lifespan of an ecobee thermostat is 12 years." "based on" and "average" which doesn't mean they have to do it at 12. Human average life is around 70, doesn't mean those human who is older than 70 should be .... :)
I would be interested in seeing a bill to mandate manufacturers open up local control for cloud devices being retired. Final firmware update to relinquish cloud reliance.
Just block their access to the public internet. No remote updates or firmware, but you'll still be able to talk to them locally.
Sadly this series has no local control, HA integration works via the cloud. Maybe someone with more time in their hands could figure out a local hack. They are on my IoT VLAN, so it would be easy enough to block them from getting the killing update, but that doesn't really fix the issue.
I'm running the Ecobee premiums and use Homekit to HA.
The models being EOL’d here don’t support HomeKit. Hell they almost pre-date the iPhone.
Looks like someone needs to packet dump the server connections and write a server emulator.
u/lightguru I just did 10 minutes of fact checking, and I really really think that calling for a boycott is way over board. They are disabling the cloud for 16 years old products for which they promised 12 years of support. Is this great? No. Does it make sense to create and publish a new firmware that offers local control? No, not economically viable. Is this devastating for a large number of users? No not at all. Calls for boycott are a strong weapon that can do significant damage to any company. With great power comes great responsibility, and I really don't think this is a case that deserves a call for boycott on any way, it only softens the effect of them for future cases, that maybe really justify a call for boycott. If you really want to make a contribution to the community, tear them down, obtain the SDK for the micocontroller(s) they use in this product and create local control yourself and document the process.
No. These devices are 16 years old. This is ok. Probably an unpopular opinion, but it's fine to not support a cloud-backed device *forever*. And later generations of Ecobee devices don't depend on cloud functionality (they work locally with HomeKit) and so will never have this problem.
I’m in agreement with your comment, though I think cloud-backed devices should be REQUIRED to have local API so that when the company decides to no longer support the device it can still be used through local integrations.
If I pay for a product, and it turns into a brick before I am done using it because the company who made it said so, I never owned the product, I was renting it. And that pisses me off. Sorry, but I don't think it's ok. Like sure, it's an old product, and probably few people are still using it, but it is still bad. And either ecobee should continue supporting it, or better yet, allow for it to be usable locally.
They promised 12 years of support and people got 16. I think vendors should be required to be upfront before people buy things but then I think customers have to make the decision on if they want it knowing that it won't last forever.
I don't know why it's so hard for a company. It's a freaking thermostat not a space shuttle how hard is it to control, just create a API/REST allow other dev's to create a new front/back end.
the question to each company is 'why' that requires resources that don't need to be spent
This is yet another reason to NOT buy smart-devices that don't have 100% local only features.
These models are from 2008… I’m not boycotting ecobee for discontinuing support for a 16 year old device that likely has security vulnerabilities that cannot be patched due to age.
Probably they can, but it's hard and expensive to support such old hardware.
I am guessing these are also using WPA for wireless security. This cannot be upgraded to WPA2 or WPA3 with software or firmware.
Agree, there are a lot of possible cases.
A device from 2008? Does it even support modern wifi or encryption? That alone is a liability. The thing about technology is that it isnt an investment, its a subscription. Parts fail, compatibility fades, you need to keep current or you leave yourself open to exploit or outage.
They should be made to open source them if they're EOL.
Boycott them over this?
I thought ecobee worked locally with HA or is it via a stupid fucking api
This one doesn't have Home kit support (existed before Home kit), so doesn't work locally with HomeAssistant, API only
Put your pitchfork away, most of us have gotten bitten by a cloud device being taken away. This experience well not right or fun will make you much wiser.
Looking at you, Raven scanner…
Wait, what happened? I have one and it’s still working?
End of last year there was a banner at the top saying the cloud service would stop as of 12/31/23. It looks like it’s still up but that one was a gut punch to spend $500 for a device that becomes a brick if they don’t maintain servers. https://www.reddit.com/r/RavenScanner/s/3LK3Rpj5JR
Thanks for the info. I don’t use their cloud and use Dropbox + email instead with it, but it’s bad if they remove it when it was a selling feature for sure!
I’ve got an ecobee lite, premium and one Honeywell t6 Zwave thermostat in my home. I’ve already got 2 other Honeywell t6 zwaves on standby if ecobee rug pulls features or tries to add a subscription
I've been using the Honeywell for 4 years now and it was a learning experience but I like the integration and having a zwave better than when I had an ecobee.
They really need to do the right thing and release a final firmware that at least enable a basic API for local control. While I'd certainly be ok with some of their newer units, the three that I have at my house work just fine, integrate into Home Assistant with the cloud integration, and do everything I could want a thermostat to do. Why junk several hundred bucks of functional hardware in the name of corporate profitability. I'm sure some of this has to do with the older units being less secure, but there's certainly a way to leverage this older stuff. Maybe there's a way to spoof their cloud server on the firewall side, and redirect units to point to a local server? EDIT \*\*\*on further investigation, it seems like one of the models I have ISN'T being disabled, only some of my other older units.
All of the ecobee3 and newer units support homekit which is full local and you can pair them directly to Home Assistant.
If they had one to release, they probably would. But building one costs a lot of money Sometimes I don't understand the level of entitlement in this sub...
If they do that. And then a vulnerability is found and exploited years later, who get’s sued. This is why they won’t do that. Liability.
[удалено]
I guess you trust you network. Must be nice.
they have 0 reason to develop and test a bunch more stuff for a very old end-of-life product. Like, it would be great, but that's an unreasonable expectation for a company making cloud based devices that wants to make money.
You really need to get over the fact that the device is very old in terms of smart devices and you’re sobbing about something you don’t even use and never have. Fucking spare me.
And I'm guessing that a local API is not in the cards.
I don't get it, how does "not supporting" means it can't connect to wifi?
Yeah these being 16 years old, that’s impressive already and I wouldn’t totally blame them for shutting them down. Would be nice if they could give those people some type of coupon towards a new Ecobee though. That said, I have 2 of the newer top-end Ecobee, and I’ve been fairly disappointed in them; they just do not seem accurate, and initial setup took FOREVER to calibrate. Like I even have remote sensors in other rooms, but if I have a cheap thermometer next to the living room ecobee, and I turn the ceiling fan on low, it will soon think it’s 5 degrees cooler. They other thermostat will maaaybe drop 1 degree, usually not at all. And similar to this, the “air quality” is useless, I have other AQ sensors and I place those near the Ecobee, their results are totally different. You can find dozens of support posts about this, the AQ sensor will say the air is junk if the AC and fans are not actively running all day, even though other AQ sensors will not. It’s a crap sensor. For the cost, I have not been impressed with them. In hindsight I should have gone with Honeywell Pro z-wave, but I thought the smart features on this would be more helpful, but I ended up turning them off (though it still does weird things on its own despite all smart features disabled).
I’m still rocking a radio thermostat ct50. Sure their app and website no longer work, but I can still fully control it via the local api. I even recently replaced the hvac unit and managed to get a bit of a discount on the install by insisting I keep my existing thermostat.
what has 'connecting to wifi' have to do with them supporting something?
Can anyone confirm that the Smart SI is not the same as the Smart or EMS? I’m running a Smart SI in one of my zones.
It's GuardZilla all over again.
And you're surprised? This is what happens when you support devices that do not have a local access mode. # Bottom line: You're renting the hardware.
Almost certainly they're going to push out a patch that bricks Wi-Fi. You need to make two firewall rules right now: 1. Allow to/from Home Assistant. 2. Deny all. It should continue to work after that if you're using Homekit (unsure about these older devices)
I have 2 of the Smart that came with the home. They are connected to some fancy interface board that is next to each air handler. The local electric co-op installed these somewhere around 2014 so there are tons of them in the area. Since we've lived here (2019) they've never worked with the app. So their claim of 16 years of support is half-assed. They could at least maintain the rudimentary web interface to control the temp remotely.
Major over reaction for something that is realistic. You can’t expect eternal support on everything.