The Original Smart Thermostat, Unveiled 16 Years Ago, is About To Get Dumb 72
Ecobee, the company that pioneered smart thermostats with its Ecobee Smart in 2008, has announced it will end online support for the device and its commercial counterpart, the Ecobee Energy Management System, on July 31, 2024. The move will disable internet-dependent features such as web portal control, smart integrations, and weather-related functionality, while basic HVAC control and scheduling will remain operational.
well, that explains one reason why I don't like .. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: well, that explains one reason why I don't lik (Score:2)
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A. Buy a regular thermostat (which is what the smart thermostats are becoming, they aren't becoming bricked)
or
B. Buy a smart thermostat that doesn't rely off a cloud integration. Having dealt with Z-Wave in 2008 and the nightmare of compatibility issues as manufacturers somehow implemented a "standard" in an inconsistent way, I don't think it was a better bargain.
Fifteen years is a looong time for tech devices. Yes, not "all thermostats", dumb ones can last decades, but so wil
Re: well, that explains one reason why I don't lik (Score:2)
I have some trane zwavw thermostats and a zwave dongle, and it's never given me trouble. I know that the set up, as is, can continue indefinitely.
I think nowadays Zigbee might be a better path, but at the time that was the best path. I do also have wifi devices, but I have to be careful to check if they demand Internet or not (e.g. I've been happy with my OpenGarage, which is wifi based)
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I can't recall why I chose zigbee over Z-Wave initially, it might have been price or ease of Home Assistant integration at the time.
My understanding is the Z-Wave has better range, so for some that might be an important factor.
Re: well, that explains one reason why I don't li (Score:2)
Yes, Z-wave has better range. I live in a mansion and it reaches everywhere except inside my mailbox.
Yolink works there, but unfortunately relies on cloud at this time.
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Depending on where practical concerns require you to put the hub, and depending on what might block or interfere, even a modest house can be large enough to have areas outside the reach of zigbee without carefully placed repeater nodes.
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Yes. That's why I only have two Zigbee devices - the PG&E SmartMeter, and the Rainforest Eagle 3 that connects to it.
If I added a Zigbee interface to the PC that runs my Home Assistant VM, it would be out of range of the meter. And it also wouldn't be authorized to talk to the SmartMeter.
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> That's why I only have two Zigbee devices - the PG&E SmartMeter, and the Rainforest Eagle 3 that connects to it.
Interesting. So far as I know, smart meters where I live broadcast in the clear on 433MHz and can be picked up with a standard SDR dongle.
Sadly, the smart meters have only been deployed randomly and mine isn't one of them (nor anyone near enough for me to pick up), so I couldn't tap that for home energy monitoring. Of course, if I could I'd be complaining that my home energy use was bei
Re: well, that explains one reason why I don't li (Score:2)
Zigbee does have encryption on some level, though i dont know the details. It operates on the 2.4 Ghz bandx as far as I know. Not 433 Mhz. Credentials from PG&E are also needed in order for the Rainforest Eagle to fetch the SmartMeter daya. I live in a fairly secluded area and it would be hard for a physically present attacker to get close enough to capture the Zigbee signal, while also going unnoticed. And that's assuming they could decrypt it.
Easier to put a nearby camera with a good zoom, with view o
Re: well, that explains one reason why I don't l (Score:2)
Forgot to add that the Smartmeter demand is recorded every 15 seconds. That's how often Home Assistant updates it. And also the interval in the CSV files. 12 years is a lot of entries and the server doesn't allow downloading more than 1 years worth at a time.
I wish there was a way to feed these CSV into home assistant energy sensor curves.
For solar, Enphase records the data in 15 minute intervals on the cloud. For each of the 70 solar panels with micro inverters.
Home assistant uses a local interface, and ca
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> the Home Assistant database sucks ass.
If you're running more than a basic setup, you probably want to investigate MariaDB. It's as easy to add as any other add-on - pull from the repository, add a username and password, stick those in your configuration.yaml.
I'm not doing it currently, but at one time I was running it on a completely separate computer so I could mess around with HA without having to shut down the DB with it each time.
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Thanks. I'll consider MariaDB. I wonder how this impacts backups, though. Will all the DB data still be stored as part of the regular backup ? I do a nightly one onto my NAS.
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If you install MariaDB as an addon, it will be part of any HA backup. If you install it on a different system as I did... You're going to need to back that up too.
Re: well, that explains one reason why I don't li (Score:2)
Around here, you can also opt out of Smart meters altogether. But there will be an additional fee for the meter reader to come out.
https://www.pge.com/en/save-energy-and-money/energy-saving-programs/smartmeter/opt-out-program.html
pg&e also uses Smartmeter for gas consumption.
I think they use a different technology than Zigbee. And I'm unaware of a bridge solution to get the data in real time.
There is a HA integration that uses a cloud API to get the gas data, but it comes about 2-3 days late. Certainly
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I guess "smart" is another way of saying "subscription based" or "cloud connected" or "functions by using someone else's computer"
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I guess "smart" is another way of saying "subscription based" or "cloud connected" or "functions by using someone else's computer"
Or, at least, there are varying degrees of "smart". My thermostat is *not* connected, but the programmable features (which I don't use) are capable of learning a little bit, like how long it takes the house to come up/down to the programmed temp at different times of the day. So not super smart, but smarter than the old dial thermostats with mercury switches.
I have a 3-stage heat pump so have simply set the upper and lower temps and let it automatically switch between cool and heat throughout the year
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I mean, who buys new thermostats every 15 years?
Errr lot of people actually. If you want to save money you're not running shitty on/off control thermostats from the 70s, and electronics have a finite life time.
It's fashionable to complain about forced obsolescence, but 15 years for a thermostat is hardly anything that anyone will give a shit about.
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Re: well, that explains one reason why I don't lik (Score:2)
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You can save just as much money with a 1970s thermostat. You can save just as much money with a 1970s thermostat. Turn it down or off or up when you need to, simple as that.
Actually you can't. Physical impossibility. The 1970s thermostat for example can't modulate the boiler which would result in more gas being used to maintain the same comfort level in the room. That's before you realise that human behaviours prevent you from doing what you want to do. "Oh I'm only going out for 2 hours, I'll leave the heat on because I don't want a cold room when I get home". A smart thermostat can handle that for you without any loss of comfort, you won't, because you are a creature of comf
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Or any Internet-connected device that is dependent on that connection and some remote server, out of your control, for the functionality that it offered and for which it was purchased. Companies wishing to bail should update, or make available, the server software for stand-alone use.
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I think 14 years is a good run for an Internet-connected device. You are correct that you can get a "dumb" thermostat which will run forever. My in-laws also have an avocado colored rotary phone in their basement which is 50 years old. But I think I'll keep my 5 year old smartphone which I'll probably replace in the next three years.
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Smart thermostats are one of the few "smart" appliances that can actually save you significant money, well over their cost. Be sure to only get smart devices that can run local using open protocols, or else you can be sure the company will cut the service once they decide that looting your data isn't worth the servers.
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Never buy IoT hardware unless it supports Home Assistant/Matter/open source firmware.
Same with cameras. Open protocols or forget it.
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I have an old 3M-50 thermostat from 2010 or so. They closed down the cloud service about a year ago. But it still supports a local JSON interface (which I knew about back when it was new), so I wrote a bash script that can talk to it. The main problem is that my DSL router keeps giving it different IP addresses which I have to keep updating in the script, but I have some C code that can find it. It also has its cloud server URL as a configurable parameter, but it seems nobody ever bothered to document what
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> I mean, who buys new thermostats every 15 years?
I'll take "Honeywell Customers" for $200.
Oh, and try *reading* the license on their smart ones . . . it basically says "we can do anything we want with your data, and disclose it to whomever we choose, especially if they're going to pay us."
Never ever (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to build a 'smart home', never ever but anything that requires the vendor's server to operate. First, it's immediately dumb to have your local home automation dependent on the Internet. Second, it is dumb to have your local home automation dependent on the continuous support of a company not getting a monthly fee out of you.
No matter how attractive those devices seem, do not purchase them. Just don't.
A big indicator of potential issues is that the devices use WiFi.
That typically means they want routable IP connections and will need to call home to set up and call home to function. Get zigbee or Z-Wave devices and they'll work until they have a local hardware failure.
If you want to control things over the Internet, get Home Assistant set up and let it be your portal. The software is free.
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Well, I live in an apartment and the power company was allowed by the owners to install these - literally minutes before this story posted (with threats that if you don't they'll consider it a least violation, naturally), and it is this brand.
Mine is not connected to my network and I've already reconfigured their "Comfort settings" to just be the one temperature I like on hot or cold.
The guy from the power company was of course all "you can control it with an app" and all that and enroll it in our program a
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Well, I live in an apartment and the power company was allowed by the owners to install these - literally minutes before this story posted (with threats that if you don't they'll consider it a least violation, naturally), and it is this brand.
Mine is not connected to my network and I've already reconfigured their "Comfort settings" to just be the one temperature I like on hot or cold.
The guy from the power company was of course all "you can control it with an app" and all that and enroll it in our program and save $20/mo on your power bill (but we are allowed up to 10 times to just change the temperature whenever we want).
Fuck that shit.
I somehow doubt your power company is installing the 16 year old model being deprecated...
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You'd be surprised. If he's talking about PG&E, then yes, there is a company that buys them for the program and still sells them (to PG&E) at $175/pop, hell, they still offer the Nest as an option despite Google abandoning it a month ago.
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The override is not as if they're going to turn your A/C down to refrigerator temps. Quite the opposite. It's so that on very hot days they can get some A/C's to pre-cool homes before the afternoon heat, and slightly raise the set point for a little bit afterward, so that that grid does not get hammered so hard when everyone else cranks their A/C's after work.
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Nope, no one is installing *these*. They haven't been manufactured for over a decade now, and the ones depreciated had no external control functionality for the power company.
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If you want to build a 'smart home', never ever but anything that requires the vendor's server to operate. First, it's immediately dumb to have your local home automation dependent on the Internet.
It's immediately dumb to make dumb generalisations. Virtually all "smart home" devices are not "dependent" on the internet, this one included which will continue to function as a thermostat going forward. Secondly a large part of the "smarts" in a smart home device are dependent on connectivity. Without an external server manage a session for you your device instantly is not suitable for 99.9% of the population who don't have external routable IPs, or any idea how to configure port forwarding on a router, o
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That was a lot of ignorant crap spouted out there. Let's sort the shit into different piles and identify it:
1) Virtually all "smart home" devices are not "dependent" on the internet, this one included which will continue to function as a thermostat going forward.
Err... except that it IS dependent on both the Internet and the vendor to be anything more than a dumb thermostat, and those extra features are why it was purchased in the first place.
2) Without an external server manage a session for you your devi
Re: Never ever (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think it's BS. My home has 170 IP devices 43 Z-wave devices, 15 Yolonk devices. The router has 3 different public IPs from separate ISPsx and I know very well how to setup port forwarding.
I use Home Assistant with nearly all my devices. There is unfortunately a large number of devices that don't expose a local public interface. They only call out to the mothership. They don't listen on any port except for the initial setup procedure, and setting up a tunnel to them wouldn't help if there is no interface to retrieve the data. One day I will block internet access from each of these devices one at a time to see how exactly they misbehave without it. But until then, the "cloud" integration indicator in Home Assistant is a sufficient indicator that there is a significant risk the device may no longer be useful once EOL'ed.
You may wonder why I still chose to use them. For some categories of devices, there isn't a lot of competition. For example, I know of no practical alternative to Flume2 for water meter. Moen requires a plumber to install and costs much more. Probably relies on cloud as well.
Flume2 relies on cloud and only a limited subset of the data is available with Home Assistant. I use the Flume app for notifications about leaks, since real-time GPM is not available to HA. The cost of water leaks is far greater than having to replace the device some day.
Simular story for the Rainforest eagle that connects to my PG&E smart meter. Even though the meter uses Zigbee, there is no open-source interface to it. Rainforest does have a local interface, though. But the initial implementation had lots of bugs. It only supported ethernet, also, requiring a wireless bridge to be installed in my garage which was the limit of where the Zigbee signal from the outside meter could reach. So, I upgraded to the Eagle3 last year. It fixes some nasty bugs with HA also.
Similar story for my Enphase solar meter. The original Envoy-R from 2010 was replaced with an Envoy-S last year. It now has wifi in addition to ethernet. Both the Eagle and Envoy were originally relying on the wireless bridge to having ethernet only. Sadly, the Envoy-S latest firmware requires a token obtained from a cloud login to access the local interface data. Sigh. I believe the token may be long-lived, though, so a short internet outage won't affect it.
To get back to smart thermostats, sadly I don't have one. I have a Carrier infinity zoned system with 2 furnaces, 2 central ACs, 2 master thermostats and a total of 10 zones. That's a total of 10 thermostats. It uses a proprietary interface over RS422 bus. There is no remote access connectivity of any kind. Carrier made some sort of IP bridge available, but it was very costly, like $1000 each - I would have needed 2 of them. But more importantly they didn't publish the specs to make them useful for anything. Someone reverse engineered the protocol but they only had one zone, and couldn't reverse engineer multi-zone protocol. And thus the combo of a Raspberry Pi with a USB to RS422 interface running that software wouldn't have been useful for me. My HVAC system is now 14 years old and still works like new. Looks like there is a new thermostat option with connectivity in it. I found an HA integration. Unclear if it supports zoning or multiple master thermostats
Last time I checked , that thermostat cost about $1000. There are some for $200 on ebay now. I might just bite and buy 2 if the HA support is forthcoming.
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Err... except that it IS dependent on both the Internet and the vendor to be anything more than a dumb thermostat, and those extra features are why it was purchased in the first place.
No. Smart != necessary away connectivity. When my internet goes down my thermostat still controls each room independently, it still runs on a schedule, it still can be controlled from a master unit upstairs. Oh noes my phone can't connect, whoop de fucking do, the loss of a single feature doesn't make it dumb. The same is applied to all my other smart devices. So I can't turn my lights on by shouting "Hey Siri", but they are still network connected to other devices, the movement sensor can still trigger the
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For WiFi stuff look for Tasmota open source firmware support. Most of those devices, especially the cheaper ones, use the same chips. The more expensive ones tend to be the worst in terms of support.
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Second, it is dumb to have your local home automation dependent on the continuous support of a company not getting a monthly fee out of you.
No matter how attractive those devices seem, do not purchase them. Just don't.
It doesn't matter if you paying someone a monthly fee.
You still can't depend on them - they can decide anytime to either increase the fee or still shut down the paid service if they think it's not profitable enough.
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First, it's immediately dumb to have your local home automation dependent on the Internet.
I don't know. I tried setting up a cheap weather station to get weather data for my thermostats. You know what? They sucked. Were super unreliable for disconnects. Temperature monitoring is hard to keep properly ventilated and shaded.
I went back to using internet data. The internet occasionally goes out but far less often than self-managed sensors. The same has been true of my Bluetooth LE sensors. Home Assistant drivers keep messing up every 4-5 updates in weird and inconsistent ways. My Matter/Zig
Pretty good run. (Score:1)
If I remember right, it's a pretty simple swap. Nothing crazy wired into the wall. Frankly, if any smart devices last 16 years I'm blown away by the longevity.
I've fired every last smart device I tried for being incompetent at being the thing they're trying to be "smart" about.
Sounds like an upgrade to me (Score:4, Interesting)
Smart thermostats changing the temp on me are annoying as hell. In a perfect world they would be smart enough that you'd never notice it but that just isn't the case, especially for a household where everyone works from home.
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So you have a unique situation where a product doesn't apply to you. Why does that make you angry? For the most households the entire household does not work from home, and smart thermostats have objectively helped people save gas and money.
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You think households where someone is generally home all the time are unique or uncommon, even one remote worker in the home or stay at home parent creates this situation. Especially post covid that is probably at least half of households. All it needs to do is stay within a reasonable margin of where I manually set the thermostat, that would work for pretty much everyone. Instead smart thermostats will jump 10-15 degree variations to temperatures nobody in the house sets and continue to do so after years o
I like my ecobee (Score:2)
I got the first one because the local gas company offered a subsidy to buy one ($25 total cost) .
got a second one (two heating systems) to solve a problem with areas not heating/cooling because of solar gain. The remote sensors deal with that.
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I believe the first few generations allow/have/can have local HTTP controls
Works offline just fine ... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have an Ecobee 3 Lite, connected to my Home Assistant system using HomeKit.
I never signed up for an account with Ecobee, and I even block the thermostat from accessing the internet, with the firewall rules in the router.
It works just fine, and can be controlled from Home Assistant over the web.
It lacks certain features that I would make it better, such as season settings, but it is minor inconvenience to do the settings a few times a year (e.g. Heat only, Auto; and different thresholds for heat/cool).
Lesson: don't use any device that requires cloud functionality to function ...
Why not open it up? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not just open it up so that others can provide those services?
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Open source.
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Why not just open it up so that others can provide those services?
I suspect the issue is security. It sounds like they run an embedded Linux, but whatever distro they used probably doesn't offer 15 year support.
That means whenever a security bug shows up they need to backport it to an increasingly out of date set of packages on ancient hardware, and if they screw up they've bricked a bunch of devices. That kind of support requires a lot of work by some fairly specialized developers, and I suspect it costs quite a bit to keep the devices secure.
Overall, it's probably safer
i am soo old school (Score:4, Interesting)
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My thermostat (Score:2)
I have a semi-smart thermostat. I can program in schedules using the built-in keypad, but I don't think it has any IP connectivity or remote control. There is, however, a USB type B port on it. I recall plugging in a laptop to see what showed up (I was hoping for a TTY or something) but it wasn't recognized.
Anyway, it's fine for my needs. I manually adjust the temperature as needed and have never once felt the need to change the temperature remotely.
Get smarter (Score:2)
I think this would be great for apartments for example where different roommates want different temps. And ev
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That problem is solved here with thermostatic radiator valves. Simply set the room that you are in to the temperature that you want it to be and keep the door closed. System thermostat goes in a room without a TRV and flow balanced such that if that reaches the set temperature it means that all of the TRVs have closed.
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Meanwhile most of the smart thermostats allow satellite thermometers and can control multiple heating zones.
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For force hot air furnaces, air balancing is adjusting the amount per room to prevent that issue. For other heating systems, valves. If you have uneven heating, either adjust yourself or get a professional to fix such. Don't need a tech workaround when there are existing solutions.
Smart is a business model not a technology. (Score:2)
Complex Issue (Score:1)
People in the replys point to Home Assistant and Hubitat as alternatives - however, Home Assistant is also a commercial product and requires updates. If they stop updating it, for any reason, then you're just going to leave yourself open to cybersecurity issues.
The idea of having IoT hardware sitting around without receiving software updates is now a myth. These devices all need a constant revenue stream, of some kind, to support the people writing security patches. Because open-source developers tend to no
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Re: Complex Issue (Score:3)
Just because something is not directly internet connected doesn't mean it no longer requires security patches. That is very naive thinking.
Web services = suckers. (Score:3)
Network Thermostat. It is expensive. You own it. It is Ethernet. Wired controls, FTW!!!
www.networkthermostat.com