Hacker News Reader

Comment by joezydeco | Hacker News Reader

I own an Ecobee. The internet connection is only used for remote adjustment and monitoring.

When the internet connection is down, the thermostat maintains the current program. I'm not quite sure what the outrage is here. If the OP was home, he could walk over and change the temperature. If OP was away, one would hope the base program was set to something that didn't freeze the pipes.

The owner finally mentions that the thermostat is in a location that's not accessible 24/7. While that's a great use case for a net connected device, it's puzzling why you would sleep in a place where you have no control over your HVAC.

View on HN

I specifically chose Ecobee for two reasons:

1. It works like a programmable thermostat when there’s no network

2. The additional remote sensors (our original thermostat wiring is in a crappy spot for keeping the house at even temps)

I’ve suffered through internet outages (some of my own making) on very hot and cold days and my thermostat keeps humming along on it’s programmed schedule for AC and heat.

I’ve even got an “exotic” config with only reading sensors in certain rooms at certain times of day (like ignoring downstairs when we’re all upstairs sleeping), a cycle of warming up before wake up times, a cycle of cooling down after bed times. This has all just worked for 3 years, through storms, snow, ice, and internet outages.

The Twitter user seems unreasonable in their assignment of blame here. Yeah, they had a crappy time- but a little self reflection here might be better than the lashing out.

They installed their HVAC controller in a spot they can’t access 24/7? What would they do without an Ecobee or similar? What’s up with their default schedule being so wonky that the heat shut off or wasn’t running hard enough?

Obviously, it’s best if Ecobee doesn’t have to take their servers offline but it really seems like a combination of user error and bad timing.

Not as puzzling as to why would one want to let "the internet" control their HVAC in the first place.

I understand this a popular opinion for IOT naysayers, but HVAC is one of the few features where IOT seems to make sense. It can cause a noticeable change in the cost of your utilities and general comfort.

But you do see that there is a downside - right?

Speaking of making sense, why does your thermostat needs to make a connection to a computer that is not under your control?

I'm with mvid. The benefits to the average user far outweigh the negatives.

It's unfortunate that for me using something like an ecobee requires a sandboxed network connection to protect my other devices from the ecobee and vis-a-vis, but that's how it goes in 2019. We are not as security conscientious as we need to be yet. Or we can all live in caves in isolation. That's okay too I guess.

In some states you can receive credit on your bill for lowering your thermostat during peak usage times. The Ecobee allows you to do this automatically.

"lowering your thermostat during peak usage times"

like with a timer?

Like with real-time electricity pricing based on grid demand and excess load.

I've been on a real-time plan with my utility for the past decade now, overall I've saved about 15% by shifting some loads to off-peak times. Being able to dynamically hold off the air conditioning compressor is a key part of this.

What's odd, though, is that the major net-connected thermostat makers (Nest, Ecobee, Honeywell) have not integrated with the utilities at all. The capability is there, but for some reason this is still a far-off feature.

Automatically. Power company signals the thermostat which adjusts the temperature if you have opted in. You can then manually adjust it at the device or through the app if you like.

Some of the twitter users in the linked thread said that the Ecobee reverts to defaults when it loses internet connectivity ... not quite the same thing. Not sure which one is true, but if it's the latter ...

Oh well, I'll never own one of the stupid things anyway.

It might be a more serious problem where the unit locks up when some kind of connectivity issue pops up. That’s not good news.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com