ecobee thermostat configuration basics | Home Assistant | Page 1

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:05 AM

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thread to keep the conversation all together

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:05 AM

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Hi Hmoney

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:05 AM

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ok first open the ecobee app

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yo

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:06 AM

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is it a requirement to not use the app? Since I'm sure my wife is going to prefer to continue to use it

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:06 AM

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no

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:06 AM

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I'm on it

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:06 AM

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i just have no need due to controlling via home assistant or siri

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touching the thing on the wall or in their shitty slow webapp is so 2019

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lol

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:07 AM

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my home assistant still looks super ugly. I do want to fix that. A lot of the work I was doing yesterday was just trying to understand how to configure the dashboard

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:07 AM

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my guess is you never changed your "comfort settings" from their defaults

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:07 AM

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dusty prism my home assistant still looks super ugly. I do want to fix that. A lot of the wo...

let's fix this first

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:07 AM

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yes thats right

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:07 AM

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ok

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open the app on phone tell me when you're there

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:07 AM

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I have it open on the phone

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:07 AM

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ok

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btw ios?

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im on ios not sure if different on android

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:07 AM

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(I did change the heating temperature for the sleep activity). Im on android

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:08 AM

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i think they are the same cuz they are both webapps iirc

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:08 AM

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I should be able to find whatever it is. you're right they're very similar

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:08 AM

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ok

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:08 AM

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my wife has the ios version

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:08 AM

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so on home tab

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i see "more"

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then setting sprocket top right

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from there- we need to look at schedule and comfort settings

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:09 AM

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I have "upstairs". And when I select that I get to settings

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:09 AM

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i think these two are your culprits

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ok

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https://support.ecobee.com/s/articles/What-are-Activities-and-Comfort-Settings

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:09 AM

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ok, so I can share why I know it came from homeassistant

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if that helps

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This morning I actually chatted with ecobee support and they looked into the logs

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and they told me the "off" commands came from that integration

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:10 AM

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dude i'd bet you money that they're just some helpdesk fuck

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lol

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:10 AM

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no they read out the name of the integration accurately. So they atleast looked at it

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:10 AM

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we already confirmed automations inside of home assistant arent doing it

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so unless someone was manually doing it

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then it literally cant be hass

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hass doesnt have a mind of its own

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:11 AM

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So let me share my ecobee app settings

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:11 AM

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it is as smart as you make it with automations

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sure

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:11 AM

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Last night I set "sleep" to start at 8:00 pm and for "home" to start this morning at 8:30 am

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under "schedule"

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and on comfort settings I had my "sleep" set to "desired heat: 70, Desired cool: 82, Heat mode auto, cool mode auto" and there was one participating sensor (I turned off the main sensor since its not in the bedroom where we sleep)

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and what we noticed was it would heat up to 68 and then the head mode would go "off".

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So we'd manually turn the heater on and again it would go "off" in seconds

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:15 AM

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are the times for home / sleep / away comfort settings overlapping?

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:16 AM

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I didnt realize that was possible at all

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the UI doesnt let me overlap them, am I missing something

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:16 AM

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i'm not sure either i just wanted to confirm

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nah just gotta ask the dumb questions

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oh

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what about homekit automations

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are there any made with it?

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for example on your wife's phone

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or any iOS device

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:17 AM

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so before I chatted with you folks, I was suspecting this other integration I had added called "better thermostat". I had uninstalled it before we spoke.

no I havent setup homekit

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:17 AM

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ok

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im not familiar with that integration i briefly looked it up earlier

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:18 AM

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Its connected to google home, but again, I havent done anything fancy

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:18 AM

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looks like it's for trvs and radiators for like floor heating and shit

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never used that

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well

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i really thought it would be as simple as you not going to comfort* settings to be honest

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the webapp is pretty barebones and easy to navigate even for new users and you seem to already have a grasp on it

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:19 AM

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yeah, I can just disconnected it from homeassistant for one day to see if we mak eit through the night and then re-visit this

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:19 AM

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can you confirm the schedule is accurately showing home / sleep / away comfort settings

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:20 AM

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sec, let me share it

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:20 AM

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is this a brand new device or did you move into a home with an ecobee already there?

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:20 AM

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brand new. I installed it yesterday

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:20 AM

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k

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i wanted to rule out being trolled by last owner / person who fucked with schedule in the future who was looking at house

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never know

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:22 AM

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At this point Im thinknig I should disconnect this all and maybe attempt the homekit approach tomorrow once i confirm the thermostat works the way we want

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lol

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:22 AM

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well the homekit approach isnt going to change anything in any meaningful way

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it'll just not make you go ecobee in your home -> out wan to ecobees servers -> back in wan to home assistant to integrate it

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instead it'll be ecobee -> home assistant over homekit protocol local only traffic and works if internet or ecobee servers are down

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a lot of people using home assistant dont buy an ecobee and instead buy a zigbee or zwave controllable one

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:24 AM

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ah I see. I thought it would come with new widgets or something. But yeah, just an easy way to make sure I've ruled out everything other than the app

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:24 AM

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and then use home assistant itself to automate it

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which is kinda more work but full control

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:25 AM

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makes sense

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:25 AM

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no fancy alexa or siri built in to the thermostat tho

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so

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schedule?

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:25 AM

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yeah, the schedule is actually fine. I checked

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:25 AM

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ok

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what about device settings -> heating range and cooling range?

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:26 AM

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heating is 45-79, cooling is 65-92

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:27 AM

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well

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maybe it was that custom integration being weird

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i dont see what else could be it man

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:27 AM

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I appreciate the help :). Let me give this a shot lol

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yeah

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:27 AM

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oh

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please please please dont waste your $ on their overpriced sensors

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:27 AM

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I was hoping to debug that "was turned off by service climate.blahblah". Since I dont know what the "service" refers to here

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:28 AM

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they are $50 each and only do temp and motion- but the motion takes 30 minutes to reset so they are basically useless

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:28 AM

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oh yeah? Tell me more? What do you recommend instead

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:28 AM

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the only reason you'd buy their sensors is if you want it to totally be separate so if home assistant is down it can still see the different room temps to do an average

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but if you think about it

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you end up wanting temperature + humidity + motion + maybe lux (light level) per room

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so you buy multisensors per room for home assistant

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:29 AM

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what sort of sensors do people buy?

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:29 AM

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so you'd have to buy two per room if you wanted ecobee on their own + proper sensors in each room for home assistant

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does that make sense?

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:29 AM

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yeah

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:29 AM

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i bought 6 ecobee sensors before i realized this 😦

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:29 AM

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but I guess, buying my own sensors means using homeautomation to read them and write to the ecobee via APIs?

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:30 AM

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no

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fuck all that

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you'd just use home assistant to average the temps instead of letting ecobee do it

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very trivial in automations

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are you familiar with how ecobee sensors work with the ecobee thermostat/ app?

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basically you have your thermostat temp but if you have their sensors per room then ecobee thermostat can average the sensors and come up with a different "actual" temperature

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i.e. if downstars ecobee thermostat + 1 sensor downstairs = 70F and 2 sensors upstairs = 80F then ecobee = 75F

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get it?

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:32 AM

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Ah I see

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Straight average? Lol

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:32 AM

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it's not all that useful- all it really does is lets you set a temp of like 72 and that means if the ecobee downstairs with better ac for w/e reason and ecobee thermostat reads 72 it's gonna stop cuz that's what you have it set to

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but it's still 80 upstairs

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ya it's kinda dumb

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pretty basic

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as far as i know no way to control multi zone or anything either

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not sure how your ac is setup

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:33 AM

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I have 2 zones in the house

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Thinking about whether we can get like smart vents or auto dampers or something. But it's not urgent

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:34 AM

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yeah

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i think that's the best way

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i dont have a great solution for that i need to research more

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but i cant afford to do what i'd like anyways so lol

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:34 AM

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So let me ask you two other questions

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:34 AM

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ideally an off the shelf solution not a diy solution is best for this (imo)

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:34 AM

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Not about the ecobee

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:34 AM

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ok

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 1:35 AM

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What's a good way to make the interface look like and clean and organized? Are there like off the shell things or do have to configure my dashboard and write the yaml?

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I bought this Philips hue starter kit and the lamp gets connected and disconnected all day. Any idea why that might ne

urban prawn Jan 15, 2023, 1:37 AM

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Ahh

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Return it

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Hold on I’ll go back to my pc in a min

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Hue starter kit is shit cuz their bridge is shit

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Dashboard - you make your own but they teased in the December dev livestream that they’re redoing it for people who don’t want to make a dash themselves

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But yaml isn’t needed for much until you get into complicated stuff

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And even then there’s tutorials and templates and code snippets people share and forums and Reddit and discord to get help if needed

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Back to hue

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Hue are the gold standard for zigbee bulbs and motion sensors but they are much better when controlled directly by a zigbee mesh not by their bridge

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Further, once you start setting up a zigbee mesh with stuff such as bulbs, you begin getting a nice mesh setup cuz each bulb is a repeater. Then end devices such as motion sensors or temp or whatever multi sensors are able to all use that mesh

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Regardless of brand, as long as they’re zigbee you can add them. Caveat being just cuz you can add anything doesn’t mean you should. A few devices from various manufacturers just suck and can cause issues with your mesh performance

dusty prism Jan 15, 2023, 2:11 AM

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I'll be back. my dishwasher came, I have to install it

#ecobee thermostat configuration basics