I’m looking at replacing my thermostat with an Ecobee, and am trying to decide between Ecobee Enhanced, or Premium. I don’t really need all the Premium features, but the one that stands out is “Choice of Siri or Alexa Built In”. What’s not clear from that is if that means I can only integrate with Homekit if I have Premium, or if the limitiation is only on Siri. Since my reading suggests that currently you can only integrate Ecobee to HA using the HomeKit Device integration, I’m concerned that it means I need Premium in order to integrate to HA. Anyone have knowledge on this?
Apple’s Homekit is an automation protocol. It’s available on all recent Ecobee thermostats except specific models listed in Ecobee’s support documentation:
So, no, you don’t specifically need the Premium model to integrate it with Home Assistant via the Homekit protocol.
EDIT
The reasons why you might want the Premium model is if you want additional features like the ability to talk directly to the thermostat to interact with Alexa or Siri, stream Spotify to it, a built-in air quality sensor, control peripheral HVAC equipment like a humidifier or dehumidifer, etc (refer to Feature Comparison).
Indeed. That’s what I was misunderstanding. Their documentation saying it “includes Siri built in” means that it has a speaker to allow talking to the thermostat and get Siri. I was interpreting it as meaning it had the homekit integration. Many thanks!
You’re welcome!
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