Ecobee temp sensor trigger zwave outlet on/off

#1

1) Give a description of the problem First foray into webCore as I was largely getting enough functionality out of the ST classic up but not sure if I’ve done this right. I’m trying to use an ecobee sensor to trigger a z-wave outlet on and off, based on temp and state of ST.

2) What is the expected behavior? There is a space heater plugged into the outlet, so I was trying to get webCore to turn the space heater on when the ecobee sensor sensed it was 64 degrees or less, although only at nighttime (based on ST set to Night mode). I also wanted the outlet to turn off if the ecobee sensor sened 70 degrees, only at nighttime. Effectively, it keeps the room between 64 and 70 degrees. (I didn’t just leave this to the Ecobee itself because that room has poor airflow/circulation from the furnace).

3) What is happening/not happening? So I put this piston together, but had two questions. 1) Can this on/off functionality be accomplished in one piston? It seems so, but I"m not sure I have the logic of the piston ok. 2) I don’t need/want ST/webCore to be polling that Ecobee sensor every second - it will drain that battery super quick. Is webCore using Ecobee’s polling timer (not sure how long that is) to determine temp, or is it checking every second? Can I set it check the temp every 20 minutes? I checked the ST IDE and it does appear to be polling the sensor continuously (last activity “a few seconds ago”).

**4) Post a Green Snapshot of the piston! babyroom|690x365

**5) Attach any logs (From ST IDE and by turning logging level to Full)**Logs are clear

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#2

Can you post the “green” version of your piston here for us to take a look at? What you are trying to do looks possible but need reference to what you have already done. One warning that the Ecobee sensors are “polled” from the cloud and depending on how you configured the SmartApp for the ecobee integration that delay could be say 5 minutes.

Polling the API from Ecobee doesn’t drain the sensor. The sensors report back to your thermostat and the thermostat reports back to Ecobee servers. The sensor only sends information back to the thermostat when the temperature changes or the occupancy changes.

#3

Thanks for the response. Here is the first attempt. After I played around with it, I came up with second version that I thought might solve the issue.

warmer-ver1
warmer-ver1.png1178×785 120 KB

Here is the second version of the piston that is currently running.

warmer-ver2
warmer-ver2.png1178×709 113 KB

I guess I’m not sure what/where controls how often the ecobee temperature is polled/queried by either ecobee or ST. Normally, it seems like the ecobee sensors aren’t updating very frequently - 15-20 minutes at best. Obviously battery life for the sensor is more important than continuous temperature updates.

#4

I would suggest you try this:

if ecobee sensor <= 64 (this is a trigger)

and

Time between sunset and sunrise (this is a condition)

then

   Turn outlet on

else

   Turn outlet off

This would simplify all the date and time conditions you specified.