I know that the API for ecobee has been dead and everyone is using the HomeKit Integration which is what I’m using today. I have a dual fuel Heat Pump and Natural Gas furnace and the Ecobee Premium is one of the few thermostats that can run all of the stages of both simultenously and manage it.
Normally I’d be totally fine with the HomeKit integration however, I also have Solar and would want to control when the heat pump kicks on during the day to maximize and use the solar and then use the furnace more at night as it’s LNG and cheaper. I can’t trigger the Ecobee Aux heating mode from HA and haven’t found any good way to do it. I don’t have ecobee API access.
I was wondering if the SmartBuilding API was working for anyone and how they were using it? Open to any thoughts and insights on this.
Smartbuildings is a separate product from the consumer thermostat API. It requires a SmartBuildings account and subscription (~$2.50/unit/month), and is designed for managing across multiple facilities / thermostats— not single-home HA automation. It does not support aux control.
I feel your pain. I came from a home automation platform that had a plugin where the developer had the Ecobee keys and provided a pin and many features were exposed. While Ecobee didn’t commit a MyQ kind of thing here, it is becoming annoying and seems to not have a brighter future. While it’s unlikely I’ll switch, I have started considering what my options could be on HA.
Honeywell T6 Pro or Emerson Sense expose aux/emergency heat via their HA integrations.
I have used the Venstar Colortouch in the past on a different platform; the automation control is incredible, and truly is local API. It’s just not as attractive or user friendly on the wall. Also aux is not exposed by the official HA Venstar Integration, but it’s plausible that local rest API calls could be made to set/query aux state.