Ecobee4 Alexa Has Shut Off How Do I Get It Back Again
Our ecobee4 Alexa-enabled smart thermostat rating:
The ecobee4 at a glance
Vocalism control, integration with a diverseness of dwelling automation systems, and a sleek, piece of cake-to-apply interface – the ecobee4 has it all. It'due south easy to ready and schedule, it offers fine-tuned control over your HVAC'due south features, and the remote temperature sensors are well-loved by users with large homes and rooms they desire to prioritize over others.
For years, ecobee distinguished its product line with useful room sensors until Nest added them in early 2018, only Ecobee still makes a better sensor. Ecobee's sensors observe occupancy and and they aren't beholden to set-in-stone time menstruation. Also, you lot go ane for "free" in the box. Nest makes you buy the sensor separately.
The ecobee4 is still unique in offering on-unit Alexa integration (you tin can talk right to the matter), simply the novelty wears off once your routine is gear up. If your thermostat is in a central location you lot might observe yourself using it for timers and other useful Alexa skills (of which there are thousands to pick from), just if information technology'due south in an inconvenient location you probably won't exist walking over just to talk to it. It's also worth noting that the Alexa integration is watered-down, missing features similar messaging and streaming Spotify (the speaker quality is very tinny, hardly suitable for music anyway).
If there's anything we don't like, it's the ongoing server stability problems that both Ecobee and Nest struggle with. When the servers go down, so does your ability to interface with the thermostat via your smartphone – and isn't that the whole signal? Neither manufacturer lets y'all connect through your local network, then simply beingness home and on the same WiFi network isn't even enough – your requests must go through their servers.
The short of it
ecobee4 Smart Thermostat with Born Alexa, Room Sensor Included
Tiptop selection for most homes
Set up a schedule or allow the room sensors figure out where you are. Nuanced control over HVAC settings. Alexa fans volition love the convenience of a wall-mounted Echo device.
Who we are: independent and unbiased tech enthusiasts who buy, endeavor, and review these thermostats with our own money out of love for home automation and technology. Nosotros've never accustomed freebies and all photos are our ain unless otherwise noted. We source opinions from local HVAC installers and friends and family who are long-term users of various smart thermostats. This review is intended for visitors in the US and Canada. We promise you find our site useful and we welcome your comments and corrections.
What we honey about the ecobee4 smart thermostat
It'south like shooting fish in a barrel to schedule. Every smart thermostat on the market today is easier to schedule than the tiny-LED-screen programmable thermostats from 10+ years ago, but the ecobee shines on scheduling considering you get complete control. You aren't limited to a item number of aligning periods per twenty-four hours and you get tight control over the swing range (i degree).
The ecobee4's room sensors are reliable and useful. One sensor is included in the box and yous tin add more if you similar. It's a small, unobtrusive plastic square that runs for well over a year on battery ability solitary and monitors the temperature in whatever room you identify it in. Information technology communicates a temperature reading back to the principal unit, which incorporates the temperature information in heating/cooling decisions. The sensors also act equally motion sensors, so on days when your schedule deviates from the norm and yous find yourself home, the thermostat picks upwards on that (or you can gear up it to "Follow Me" by default). Place a sensor in whatever room(due south) you deem "mission critical" and the ecobee takes information technology from at that place.
The ecobee4 has excellent HVAC compatibility, possibly the best on the market right now. Every ecobee model ships with a Power Extender Kit in the box and information technology's easy to wire it up in your furnace if yous need to. Nosotros prefer the PEK to Nest's "just attempt it and encounter what happens" solution to dealing with installations that lack a C-wire.
The (gratis, automatic) HomeIQ report delivers a summary of your HVAC'due south runtime each month. This can be useful in figuring out why your HVAC is running when it is, simply mostly we remember of these equally something to browse (briefly) each month when they come up out. They are non ever timely and they are not the end-all, be-all of HVAC data.
ecobee4 integrates with all major home automation systems, including Google Assistant, IFTTT, SmartThings, and HomeKit. This is fifty-fifty more than important after Google'southward proclamation that they're catastrophe the "Works with Nest" plan and potentially taking a lot of integration with third political party systems along with it.
Prissy touches and extras include a clock on the idle screen, "ESP" to assistance the thermostat's built-in Echo distinguish which Echo yous're talking to in a room that has more than ane, and alerts for maintenance reminders and temperature readings outside the desired range. If you make up one's mind yous don't desire Alexa in your thermostat, information technology'due south piece of cake to turn information technology off and yous no longer incur the bright red e'er-on light that bothered many customers at the ecobee4's launch.
ecobee4 Alexa integration: the adept, the bad, and the "meh"
Having Alexa built into a thermostat is a neat novelty, just it'southward a novelty that wears off subsequently a lilliputian while (for united states it was most a week). The "good" here is that information technology'southward fun and easy to adjust the temp on the fly using only your voice. We did this a lot in the outset few days with our ecobee4, simply and so nosotros settled on a schedule we like and didn't really conform it from at that place. There'due south only so much of my life I want to dedicate to tweaking a thermostat's schedule, but at least the ecobee4 makes that like shooting fish in a barrel and painless.
Here's a downside yous might not similar: since anyone in your habitation can speak to Alexa and have her deport out a command, this means anyone in your domicile tin can control the thermostat and featherbed the 4-digit Pivot (if you have i on your ecobee) from anywhere in the house. If you lot want to maintain iron-clad control over your home's temperature for whatever reason, then you'll want to disable Alexa or consider a different thermostat.
Every bit for the "meh", well – it's merely a crappy Echo Dot stuffed into a thermostat. Don't look a miracle. If you live with someone named Alex or similar (similar nosotros do), await misfires during normal conversation. It even picks up sure bondage of words and phonemes and interprets them as "Alexa". All Echoes have this problem, and it's why people alter the wake-discussion to Echo or Computer, but you can't do that with the Alexa congenital into the ecobee4. You're stuck with "Alexa".
Sound quality is abysmal and so y'all won't even intendance that it doesn't integrate your favorite music services, so we're surprised at the number of people complaining virtually this online (was there really that much need for thermostats to double as speakers?) but other familiar Echo features are missing likewise, such as messagin.
If you don't want Alexa in the hardware, you might want to selection upward an ecobee3 while there's still some stock left. It'south not quite the exact same thermostat – information technology gets firmware updates at a different pace than the 4 – but y'all can sometimes find it at a bargain since it was finer discontinued a couple years agone.
It's as well worth pointing out that you can control this thermostat via other Echo devices in your home, even if you disable Alexa on the thermostat itself. We turned off Alexa on the thermostat eventually since it kept picking upward our daughter'south name on accident, merely nosotros still enjoyed decision-making information technology from the Echo in other rooms of the firm. We also take it prepare up with our Google Home (which doesn't seem confuse anything with "Okay, Google…") and information technology works fine through that, besides.
ecobee4 unboxing
ecobee4 installation
The app walks you through installation with animations and diagrams. Overall, information technology was easy to follow (and we take a toddler adding layers of challenge to every dwelling project).
Nosotros're onetime, and we've been through enough of circuitous installation processes. This wasn't one of them.
Linking the thermostat to the ecobee app was easy. Only enter the 4-digit code given to you by the thermostat and it's connected.
Setting up Alexa was easy, too – just enter your Amazon credentials and she'll start responding. You'll take to add the ecobee as a device in your Alexa app, as well, only one time that'southward done you lot should be able to result vocalisation commands. It'south kind of weird that the congenital-in Repeat doesn't "know about itself", but we got through this after only a moment of confusion.
On-unit settings vs. web portal settings vs. app settings
Confusingly, the settings you can adjust for your ecobee vary based on where you admission them from. This had us utterly baffled for a little while. We knew we saw a setting just we couldn't find it over again. Surprisingly, the app offers the least amount of access to the thermostat's settings.
| Thermostat | App | Web portal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manage Schedule | |||
| Comfort Settings | |||
| Smart Home / Away | |||
| Follow Me | |||
| Vacation | |||
| Reminders and Alerts | |||
| Hold Duration | |||
| Smart Recovery | |||
| Access Control (PIN) | |||
| Configure Apple HomeKit | |||
| Wi-Fi Configuration | |||
| Diagnostics | |||
| Reboot |
How the ecobee'southward room temperature sensors piece of work
The included room sensor is small, wireless, and piece of cake to forget about once y'all place it somewhere. You tin add up to 50 to your thermostat.
Temperature readings
The sensor reads the temperature of the room it's in and reports it to the thermostat, then the thermostat can better make up one's mind if more than heating or cooling is needed. Think of information technology like telling your thermostat which rooms yous really care virtually (and when).
Merely be aware that the ecobee4 and its sensors don't actually equalize temps beyond your home or fix your perpetually cold room without turning your warmest rooms into saunas. It can't exercise that. The ecobee4 can't brand upwards for a strained HVAC system, a home that's all windows on one side, poor/uneven insulation, etc.
Occupancy detection
Virtually of the time yous'll run the ecobee with a schedule, but if you desire to base its actions on whether you lot're abode or non y'all take some options. The room temperature sensors are besides motion sensors and can be used to decide if someone'southward dwelling. The ecobee4 also supports geofencing, where it uses your telephone's location to determine whether yous're domicile or not.
Hither's a great potential use for the sensors: imagine that your habitation office is always cold compared to the rest of the house. Y'all place a sensor in your home office so that on days when you work from home, your ecobee knows you're there – and runs the heat until your home function is at your desired temperature. You lot stay comfortable all day and you don't even accept to fiddle with the thermostat'south day-to-solar day programming. No overrides needed.
We placed our one and only room sensor in our daughter'south room, so information technology was pretty useless at knowing when nosotros were home since neither of usa really goes into her room outside of wake time and bedtime. Geofencing was reliable, just with one of united states of america working 30 miles away and the other working at habitation (and running errands within ane-two miles, non enough to leave the geofence), the feature wasn't super useful for united states of america. I could see information technology being excellent for a family that leaves at different times and commutes five+ miles from the home for work/school before returning home at different times. Your mileage may vary.
Home automation integration
The ecobee4 integrates with pretty much every major home automation hub, including Apple HomeKit. You can apply this integration to develop more than elaborate routines, such equally setting a temperature and turning on lights when you enter the geofence around your home.
Even though Alexa is congenital in to this thermostat, yous tin still command information technology via other Alexa-enabled devices. For example, if yous've got an Amazon Echo next to your bed you could tell that Repeat to raise the temperature a few degrees and your ecobee4 will however get the command.
HomeIQ reports exit a lot to be desired
Don't get excited – the Habitation IQ reports aren't as cool equally you might be imagining. If you lot're familiar with the Nest ecosystem you lot might exist expecting a page in the app showing contempo usage statistics and you'll be disappointed to know that there'due south nil similar in the ecobee app or website.
Furthermore, yous won't get your start HomeIQ study until yous've had your ecobee thermostat up and running for a total month from start to stop. So if y'all install information technology on the second, you won't go a report for that month. I don't know why they tin can't brand this meliorate, and it's something Ecobee should definitely better considering usa nerds want these reports.
The report you do get is kind of nifty, though – HomeIQ reports are free and once you figure out how to read them, they're useful for figuring out:
- Within temperature vs. exterior temperature
- When the heat, aux. heat, ac was running and for how long
- Humidity levels
- When "Smart Recovery/Early on" was running
- How your HVAC system responded during "Follow Me" mode
Y'all tin can dump all this data to CSV and run your own analysis on it, likewise.
Besides, the reports can only exist accessed through the website – non the app.
Excellent 24-volt HVAC compatibility
Assuming y'all have a 24-volt HVAC organisation (cardinal forced air, central heating, non electric baseboard), there's a skillful adventure the ecobee4 will work with your wiring. If you take a C-wire, you lot're good to become. If you don't have a C-wire, the ecobee4 comes with a Power Extender Kit that you attach to the wires inside your furnace to basically add together the same functionality. (Read more than about what to do if yous're missing a C-wire hither.)
More great ecobee features
Everything we loved most the ecobee3 is nevertheless here, including:
Alerts
Alerts are a not bad way to keep an center on your house when you're not around. Y'all tin can set your ecobee4 to alert you for a multifariousness of conditions, including:
- Time for HVAC maintenance (you tin even include technician contact info in this alarm)
- Furnace filter needs to exist cleaned/replaced at the interval you lot prepare
- Ventilator filter needs to be cleaned/replaced at the interval you prepare
- UV lamp needs to be cleaned/replaced at the interval you gear up
- Temp is lower than Ten (you choose X, between 35 and 68 degrees F)
- Temp is college than Y (you choose Y, between 60 and 104 degrees F)
- Auxiliary heat source has run longer than X (betwixt 30 mins and 8 hours)
- Humidity is too depression/high (acceptable range 5%-95%)
- Fault condition alerts
- Lost communication with sensor(s)
- Depression sensor battery alerts
Alerts can be displayed on the hardware unit (optionally) and/or emailed to your email address (optionally). Yous can choose which alerts you lot want and set the rest to OFF.
Intuitive app
The ecobee app guided united states of america through the installation and makes it piece of cake to prepare upwardly a schedule. The app doesn't requite full access to all of the thermostat's features (you'll have to stand at the unit for that) and it doesn't include any kind of usage reports. You'll accept to log into the ecobee website to see your HomeIQ reports.
Smart Recovery
Smart Recovery is the name Ecobee has given to its thermostats' ability to learn how long it takes your dwelling house to reach a desired temperature and outset pre-heating or pre-cooling in advance. If you want your home to be lxx degrees by the time you arrive home at 6:00pm, it will look at your home's current temp and start heating at say, 5:twenty to make that happen. You lot tin read more most how Smart Recovery works here on the ecobee site.
Lock information technology down with access command levels
If yous are using the ecobee4 for a vacation rental (or maybe yous have someone in your home or role who doesn't sympathize the concept of energy bills), you might be happy to know that the ecobee4 offers some control over who can adjust what settings.
You can lock the ecobee4 thermostat downwardly at varying levels via the thermostat itself:
- Temperature and quick changes
- Schedule
- Vacation
- Arrangement and settings
Attempting to alter these settings requires the person at the thermostat to enter a iv-digit Pivot. (Wait in Installation Settings for these options.)
Yous tin can also:
- Set up a desired maximum temperature and minimum temperature (must exist at least 12 degrees apart)
- Turn off all control at the thermostat itself
Notwithstanding, anyone who is logged into the app tin can bypass these controls. At that place is no way to set information technology and then that sure app users are restricted in certain ways. Also, if y'all integrate the ecobee4 with Alexa, then anyone who tin speak to Alexa can heighten or lower the temperature that fashion.
Control over HVAC equipment settings
ecobee4 offers command over all of the following (get comfy, this is a loonnng listing – I bolded some of the most pop ones):
- heat pump configuration (if present)
- fan command (if present)
- humidifier accessory configuration (if present)
- dehumidifier settings (if present)
- furnace settings
- ventilator accessory settings (if present)
- thresholds (temp and time thresholds associated with heating and cooling equipment)
- heat/cool minimum delta
- compressor min wheel off time (enforces a minimum time that the compressor must be off between cycles to prevent short cycling)
- compressor min outdoor temp (prevents compressor running when the outdoor temp is too depression)
- oestrus differential temp (difference between current temp and set temp before arrangement calls for rut again) – sometimes called temperature swings, can be set up anywhere from 0 to three degrees F (0 to 1.7 degrees C) and in 0.5 caste F (0.3 C) increments
- AC overcool max (uses your AC to reduce humidity by cooling beyond the set point)
- heat/cool min on time (set the minimum equipment run time in "rut" or "cooling" way – 1 to 20 mins)
- compressor running max times
- compressor temp deltas
- temperature correction (if you find the displayed temp doesn't match the actual temp, this volition let you enforce an starting time)
Room for a few improvements
As we said earlier, the November 2017 firmware update took care of some of the more than pressing Alexa bug: you lot can at present disable the microphone without incurring the e'er-on blood-red light of doom and ESP is They even added the clock dorsum onto the idle screen!
Hither's what we promise to see go improved in 2019:
- Support for changing the wake word
- No more month-long wait for your beginning HomeIQ report
- Amend usage data in the app itself
- Better server reliability – ecobee suffered some noticeable outages during wintertime 2019 (read more on that hither)
- Less confusion over what settings can exist changed in the app, the web portal, and on the device itself
Should you upgrade?
If y'all don't have a smart thermostat, the ecobee4 is an first-class choice – particularly if you are already a fan of Alexa. Nosotros think yous'll love it, for all the reasons detailed in this review. This is the most fully-featured thermostat on the marketplace right now and information technology supports a mind-boggling array of home automation systems. Monitoring your home remotely is a huge plus – nosotros frequently use our smart thermostats to "check on" our home's temp when we're away during exceptionally common cold weather.
If yous accept a Nest, y'all wouldn't be alone in switching to an ecobee – many people who get from Nest to Ecobee say they love the bigger screen, the straightforward scheduling, the room sensors, and the ecobee's better power to bargain with one-off changes to your daily schedule.
The just folks who might non be best served by upgrading to an ecobee4 are people who already accept an ecobee3 or ecobee3 lite and at least one Amazon Repeat device. If you lot accept this, y'all have everything an ecobee4 has to offer minus Alexa inside the thermostat itself.
If the ecobee4 is correct for you, get ahead and choice 1 up – we call up you'll dear it.
The final discussion
With its smart sensors, a multitude of command options, ease of scheduling, and the convenience of Alexa built in the ecobee4 is a winner amongst smart thermostats. Like all smart thermostats, the ecobee4 is affected by occasional server outages, so it may not exist your perfect remote dwelling house-monitoring solution. (It continues to operate your HVAC without server admission, but you lose the ability to control it from anywhere via the app or website.) The included Power Extender Kit makes the ecobee4 the most widely compatible smart thermostat on the marketplace today. Overall, the ecobee4 is our favorite and nosotros highly recommend information technology.
Meet the ecobee4 on Amazon.com
Source: https://smartthermostatguide.com/ecobee4-smart-thermostat-review-alexa-integration/
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