Ecobee Switch Plus

Hardware
1

https://www.ecobee.com/switch-plus/

Looking at possibly picking up this for the house. Anyone have it and get it to work with home assistant yet? Is there support for it?

Thanks

2

Im interested in this also

3

I have a Switch+ but home assistant is not seeing it as a device at the moment. I can see my Ecobee3 and all my room sensors but no switch data at the moment. I’m guessing the Ecobee API is not including the Switch+ at the moment.

I was one of the beta testers for the Switch+ and I know a lot of us were asking for the occupancy sensor in the Switch+ and whether it would be available also as a room sensor. They told us that would come with a future update.

4

You were one of the lucky ones to get the beta. :slight_smile:

5

I guess so, all I did was answer their questions, they chose me. I was a little disappointed with the price point of the switch+ when they went public. I still feel like $75 would probably sell them more but I don’t know that it’s worth the $99 price point.

It’s essentially a wifi light switch with Alexa Voice Services installed. It also has a night light.

6

Yeah I was disappointed I wasn’t picked. :frowning: oh well, I guess I have gotten enough free ecobee stuff over the years with their VIBee program. I agree, I had filled out a few of their surveys and also suggested the $60-75 price point. I had preordered the Brilliant Light switch for $99 which has Alexa and a screen (although the price is more now) so I think they are a little pricey for what you get too.

7

Are you able to at least turn the switch on and off on home assistant or is the API not open/available yet?

8

HA doesn’t even see the switch. The API must be limited to thermostats and sensors at the moment.

9

Have you actually verified through the API that the switch isn’t available? Support for the switch entity actually needs to be added to HA for it to show up in HA but that doesn’t mean the data isn’t available over the API.

Edit: and also, is it a switch or a dimmer?

10

I have not verified the API. I’ll look into that further when I have some time.

The switch is only a switch, it does not have dimmer functionality nor can it be used in a two-way configuration at the moment.

11

So far I haven’t seen the switch in the Ecobee docs, but it does have IFTTT support, so you can get basic on/off functionality using that.

  1. Setup ifttt integration in Home Assistant
  2. Create two applets using webhook trigger and ecobee action
    • one event name turn_light_on and one event name turn_light_off
  3. Setup input_boolean in Home Assistant called ecobee_switch_light and add the input_boolean.ecobee_switch_light entity to whatever group you want the light in
  4. Add automations to trigger ifttt when the input is toggled

It is pretty slow (at least 3 seconds to update) and doesn’t track changes outside of Home Assistant (although that might be possible with more IFTTT applets), but it is better than nothing until the API can be reverse engineered (or documented)

Example YAML:

# https://www.home-assistant.io/components/ifttt/
ifttt:
  key: !secret my_ifttt_key

# https://www.home-assistant.io/components/input_boolean/
input_boolean:
  ecobee_switch_light:
    name: Basement Light
    initial: off
    icon: mdi:lightbulb

automation:
- alias: Turn Basement Light On
  id: '15074123433'
  hide_entity: true
  trigger:
    platform: state
    entity_id: input_boolean.ecobee_switch_light
    to: "on"
  action:
  - alias: IFTTT light on
    data:
      event: "turn_light_on"
    service: ifttt.trigger
  condition: []
- alias: Turn Basement Light Off
  id: '15074123434'
  hide_entity: true
  trigger:
    platform: state
    entity_id: input_boolean.ecobee_switch_light
    to: "off"
  action:
  - alias: IFTTT light off
    data:
      event: "turn_light_off"
    service: ifttt.trigger
  condition: []
12

I did some more research with this after trying to use the HomeKit controller without much luck. I found that this could be easily added (switch only) once the python library is updated: See https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/issues/19677

14

Not sure if this still relevant, but the Ecobee Switch plus works for me via HomeKit.
I get the following features, switch, motion sensor, illuminance, and temperature.

15

For those who are searching for this post later, I was able to get ecobee switch+ working. Here’s how.

If you already have the switches working homekit: Delete them from homekit. They can’t be added to HA if they are already in homekit, so you need to delete them from homekit first. Hold the switch+ button down until it starts reading the configuration menu, and select reset homekit. After a few minutes, HA will start to find them if they are on the same subnet as HA. Discovery can be slow. Give it 30 minutes.

If you still want to use them in apple homekit later, then use the HA bridge integration for apple homekit which will let you add your HA devices into homekit directly from HA.

If you are installing switch+ for the first time or if you factory reset them, the switches must have a working internet connection before HA can find them. There are two options.

  1. Add them to the ecobee app using the ecobee app process. Once they are working in the ecobee app, HA should be able to find them. Discovery can be slow. Give it lots of time.
  2. Add them to apple homekit first (so they can get the wifi information). Then, delete them from homekit. The switch+ will keep the wifi connection even after it is deleted from homekit, and HA should be able to discover them after 30 minutes or so. Discovery can be slow. Give it lots of time.