Ecobee Smart Sensor issues
Hello,
I currently have 8 smart sensors throughout my house in various rooms and 1 gateway puck. My thermostat is on the main living floor but I have a few issues:
- Rooms facing the sun in the afternoon get abnormally hot (upwards of 80 degrees)
- Basement gets abnormally cool (near 65 degrees)
- Thermostat is set at 71-73 auto
My problem is once the thermostat reads that it is at this temperature it shuts down any auto features and no longer heats or cools the rooms. My understanding is that Flair would close a certain number of vents to redirect airflow to the rooms that were cool (making them warmer to the 71-73 range) and then adjust to turn on AC to the rooms that were hot (making them also 71-73 range). I'm not currently seeing this happen but rather just small adjustments to these rooms and mostly just trying to make the thermostat happy. Am I missing something?
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I have the EXACT same situation and configuration...funny. Here are my solutions :
EASY but not perfect : Remove the ecobee remote sensors from ALL the Confort Settings on the Ecobee, you only keep the main Thermostat. Flair will assume this is the case and update the temperature accordingly. That works...ok. It helps to have the fan automatically running at least 20 mins per hour...it allows the air to flow and balance the temperature.
HARDER: I ended writing a python program calling the ecobee API and the flair API. I deactivate and activate sensors in the Home confort settings to keep only the ones which need cooling or heating so that the sensors which are taken into account are only the ones which need attention. Now it works...I have heat getting sent to the rooms which are too cool for example in the basement during fall/winter.
I finally have a good temperature everywhere...but I shouldnt have to do it this way...it should have been out of the box.
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Jerome,
I would be interested to see how you did "HARDER". My comment got pushed to the ticket system with Flair and they helped out but only like your "EASY" solution. Ideally the system would run heat to heat rooms that were cold, then run AC to cool the rooms that are hot, then find the equilibrium once all rooms are in the threshold and just make small adjustments to keep rooms where they need to be. This would also allow for individual room temperature settings (say one room at 75 and one room at 65 and the rest of the house at 72). I could see that being VERY beneficial for certain houses.
Flair team, care to jump in?
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Hi Chris,
I'm seeing the agent advised setting Set Point Controller to "Flair App" to allow Flair to control the set point. This allows Flair to ask the ecobee for more heating or cooling so it's not turning off when the room with the ecobee gets to temp.
Scheduling is a great way to prioritize rooms. This article explains how to create and use a schedule:
https://support.flair.co/hc/en-us/articles/360004526031-Scheduling
The basic concept is that you set rooms to inactive when you're not using them so Flair can concentrate on airflow to the rooms you are using. So, for example, set bedrooms inactive during the day and active at night.
All the best,
Finn
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Finn,
I apreciate the reply but that will not work in my case. I have 6 people in this home nearly at all times (thanks covid) and at any given time one or all of the rooms will be occupied. I just simply want to set flair to tell ecobee to heat and cool to my set point in flair. Currently this is not happening. I just contacted support describing the same situation. I'm willing to let you access the account to poke around and see what you can find.
Thanks,
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Hey Chris,
Let me explain my situation and what I did:
Like you we are all at home due to COVID, when we have to cool we like a temperature of 75-76, and when heating 68-69, here is the logic:
Every 5 minutes :
If the average temperature outside for the last hour > 72.5 and average temp inside for the last hour > 75 => Flair Mode : Cool & Set point 75F
else if the average temperature outside for the last hour > 85 or average temp inside for the last hour > 76 => Flair Mode Cool & Set point 75F
else if the average temperature outside for the last hour < 55 or average temp inside for the last hour < 71 => Flair Mode Heat ; if time between 10PM & 6PM set point = 67 otherwise 70
else Flair Mode = off and all vents are open
Then I set the Ecobee Mode :
If Flair = Heat : Ecobee = Heat & Activate only sensors below flair set point
If Flair = Cool : Ecobee = Cool & Activate only sensors above flair set point
If Flair = Off : Ecobee = Auto, Away Mode (All sensors active & Temp maintained between 68 & 76)
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So when heat or cool mode, the sensors of the ecobee are constantly activated based on those which need attention, when in between Ecobbe is handling...but basically there is no heating or cooling
I can send my python code if you are interested....
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I added it to GitHub : https://github.com/jeromemorignot/FlairControl
Not the greatest code...but it works for me :)
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