Don’t expect a miracle. Somewhat surprising, though, is the sheer number of thermostats in this list that don’t look at first glance like a “smart” thermostat – they may lack a color touch screen or use a humble grey/white body design, even though many are WiFi-enabled. Linking the thermostat to the ecobee app was easy. I have an ecobee 3 lite, I have it set to not come on under 60 degrees. 7 replies It can’t do that. If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This setting prevents your equipment from short cycling. Since listening to music is a key function if Alexa, being forced to listen to it on a tiny speaker was a big oversight. The Ecobee 4 features a responsive touchscreen display, a remote sensor, as well as a number of additional features, including a built-in Amazon Alexa speaker.. ecobee EB-STATe3L-01 3 Lite Thermostat, Wi-Fi, Works with Amazon Alexa. If you want your home to be 70 degrees by the time you arrive home at 6:00pm, it will look at your home’s current temp and start heating at say, 5:20 to make that happen. Like all smart thermostats, the ecobee4 is affected by occasional server outages, so it may not be your perfect remote home-monitoring solution. Furthermore, you won’t get your first HomeIQ report until you’ve had your ecobee thermostat up and running for a full calendar month from start to finish. Those are not short cycles. Problem. Surprisingly, the app offers the least amount of access to the thermostat’s settings. Compressor Min Cycle Off Time This enforces a minimum time that the compressor must be off between cycles. As for the “meh”, well – it’s just a crappy Echo Dot stuffed into a thermostat. Amazon Certified: Works with Alexa. We knew we saw a setting but we couldn’t find it again. In other words, turning on and off frequently is just a symptom of “short cycling.”. An AC system that short cycles can become less efficient, resulting in increased energy … I didnt like the short-cycling of my system so I increased the temp differential to 1.5 degrees. Immediately I noticed it was short/rapid cycling. The humble but popular Honeywell RTH7600D is the only non-WiFi thermostat in our top 8.. 1 User Guide ecobee3 ©2014 ecobee 477 Richmond St West | 2nd Floor, Toronto | Ontario | M5V 3E7 | Canada Toll free 1.877.932.6233 www.ecobee.com It even picks up certain chains of words and phonemes and interprets them as “Alexa”. Archived. $200 at Amazon. FREE Shipping. You can set up your ecobee4 to alert you for a variety of conditions, including: Alerts can be displayed on the hardware unit (optionally) and/or emailed to your email address (optionally). Find Ecobee4 Smart Thermostat prices and learn where to buy. Also, if you integrate the ecobee4 with Alexa, then anyone who can speak to Alexa can raise or lower the temperature that way. Check your breaker box to ensure that the circuit powering the furnace isn’t tripped. Having multiple sensors is good for temperature balancing in many homes. Ease of Use. It really helped out. A “short-cycling” furnace (when your furnace keeps turning off and on) will typically only run for a minute or two (or less) before shutting off. Press J to jump to the feed. Save this story for later. Needless to say, i don't use the fan feature on my ecobee anymore. Whereas, a properly functioning furnace will run for several minutes per cycle. Who we are: independent and unbiased tech enthusiasts who buy, try, and review these thermostats with our own money out of love for home automation and technology. I had hoped they would have included a second set of dry contacts, in the latest version, so you can control both humidifier and HRV. Every smart thermostat on the market today is easier to schedule than the tiny-LED-screen programmable thermostats from 10+ years ago, but the ecobee shines on scheduling because you get complete control. So if I can maximize first stage but minimize cycles, this would be ideal. While the average air conditioning cycle lasts around 20 minutes, sometimes your air conditioning system can go through cycles too quickly—an issue known as “short cycling.” Short cycling is a term that means the air conditioner turns on and off in short bursts and does not heat or cool your house properly. Replies: 3 Views: 1,051; Rating0 / 5; Last Post By. The old thermostat was identifying by an HVAC specialists as a possible cause of rapid/short cycling. Since changing it to the biggest differential I now have a 30 min run time then one hour off. And pretty evenly spaced out calls for heat too. There’s only so much of my life I want to dedicate to tweaking a thermostat’s schedule, but at least the ecobee4 makes that easy and painless. Short version: the ecobee supports more stages of heating and cooling than the Nest Thermostat E, for both conventional systems and systems with a heat pump. 4. Compressor Min Cycle Off Time This enforces a minimum time that the compressor must be off between cycles. I don’t know why they can’t make this better, and it’s something Ecobee should definitely improve because us nerds want these reports. They it started with the 3 minute delay and E195. When the battery runs low, you'll receive an alert. 1. 1 User Guide ecobee3 ©2014 ecobee 477 Richmond St West | 2nd Floor, Toronto | Ontario | M5V 3E7 | Canada Toll free 1.877.932.6233 www.ecobee.com [4] Sound quality is abysmal so you won’t even care that it doesn’t integrate your favorite music services, so we’re surprised at the number of people complaining about this online (was there really that much demand for thermostats to double as speakers?) 7 replies heat, air-conditioning was running and for how long, When “Smart Recovery/Early On” was running, How your HVAC system responded during “Follow Me” mode, Time for HVAC maintenance (you can even include technician contact info in this alert), Furnace filter needs to be cleaned/replaced at the interval you set, Ventilator filter needs to be cleaned/replaced at the interval you set, UV lamp needs to be cleaned/replaced at the interval you set, Temp is lower than X (you choose X, between 35 and 68 degrees F), Temp is higher than Y (you choose Y, between 60 and 104 degrees F), Auxiliary heat source has run longer than X (between 30 mins and 8 hours), Humidity is too low/high (acceptable range 5%-95%), Set a desired maximum temperature and minimum temperature (must be at least 12 degrees apart), Turn off all control at the thermostat itself, humidifier accessory configuration (if present), ventilator accessory settings (if present), thresholds (temp and time thresholds associated with heating and cooling equipment), compressor min outdoor temp (prevents compressor running when the outdoor temp is too low), AC overcool max (uses your AC to reduce humidity by cooling beyond the set point), heat/cool min on time (set the minimum equipment run time in “heat” or “cooling” mode – 1 to 20 mins), No more month-long wait for your first HomeIQ report, Better server reliability – ecobee suffered some noticeable outages during winter 2019 (, Less confusion over what settings can be changed in the app, the web portal, and on the device itself. Place a sensor in whatever room(s) you deem “mission critical” and the ecobee takes it from there. You’ll have to add the ecobee as a device in your Alexa app, too, but once that’s done you should be able to issue voice commands. The room temperature sensors are also motion sensors and can be used to determine if someone’s home. Linking the thermostat to the ecobee app was easy. Dirty Air Filters. We also have it set up with our Google Home (which doesn’t seem confuse anything with “Okay, Google…”) and it works fine through that, too. For example, an A/C unit set at 78 would turn on at 82 and off at 75. Here’s a downside you might not like: since anyone in your home can speak to Alexa and have her carry out a command, this means anyone in your home can control the thermostat and bypass the 4-digit PIN (if you have one on your ecobee) from anywhere in the house. The contractor checked the wiring, power, AC compressor unit, etc. but other familiar Echo features are missing as well, such as messagin. And naturally, thanks on your effort! Fix the Ecobee smart thermostat's most annoying feature. What is geofencing and how do smart thermostats use it? You stay comfortable all day and you don’t even have to fiddle with the thermostat’s day-to-day programming. This was going to help me with short cycling from my old Honeywell thermostat. If your thermostat is in a central location you might find yourself using it for timers and other useful Alexa skills (of which there are thousands to pick from), but if it’s in an inconvenient location you probably won’t be walking over just to talk to it. With their 4th generation model, Ecobee has released their best smart thermostat to date. Our ecobee4 Alexa-enabled smart thermostat rating:(5/5). When your furnace is cycling on and off, it's called furnace short cycling. 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