I have an issue with my ecobee thermostat when Ha is sending the Climate: Turn on/off auxiliary heat service.
Hardware and software I use:
- Ecobee Smart Thermostat with Voice Control. Note that I do not use the voice feature.
- Heat Pump system
- Air handler with 2 stage aux (aux1 and aux2)
- Home Assistant Core 2024 2.0
- Home Assistant Supervisor 2024.01.1
- Op. System 11.5
- 2 x ESP8266 connected to HA via MQTT to detect air handler status and the duct temperature.
What I would like to do:
- During the defrost cycle the air handler will engage aux1, which is normal. I found that when the outdoor temperature is around 30F and defrost is active the temperature in the duct is getting so cold that the heat pump, after the defrost cycle is complete, will never be able to catch up before the next defrost cycle starts. So the idea is to engage aux2 when the temperature is below 33F, defrost is running and the duct temperature is at 72F or below. To this point my automation is working.
Problem:
- After the defrost cycle is complete aux2 stays engaged until the indoor temperature reaches a point predetermined by the thermostat threshold, which in the long run becomes expensive. So I thought that with HA I send a command to the ecobee to turn off aux heat when the duct temperature reaches my pre-determined set point. However, sending “set_aux_heat” to the ecobee will turn the thermostat to OFF, full stop no heat = it’s getting cold in here.
Naturally I suspected that I made an error in my automation so I started the ecobee back up and it was running without aux heat. Selected ‘Developer tools’ – ‘Services’ – ‘Climate: Turn on/off auxiliary heat’ but didn’t change the toggle for ‘Auxiliary heating’ (gray) and selected Call Service. Immediately the Thermostat turned OFF, full stop, no heat.
On this forum I found several topics on this issue even with samples showing that above-described commands do work but these were ecobee 3’s or 4’s. Any guidance on this issue would be appreciated because I am totally stumped.
So first question: Can anybody confirm that controlling aux heat works on the ecobee Smart thermostat?
Second question: If above works, does it work from Developer tools – Services or is there a trick to it?.
Third question: What on earth am I doing wrong?