Ecobee: Smart Thermostat that you can control via web
November 3rd, 2008
The Ecobee “Smart Thermostat” is a smart way to control the temperature of your house even when you’re still at school or at the office. You sure want to have a comfortable house when you get home so why not get one and see what I’m talking about.
This digital thermostat features a touchscreen, wireless connection, and iPhone-like icons. It can be considered as a ‘green’ gadget because it helps you save and optimize energy use.
The Ecobee Thermostat is yet be released in 2009 but you can now place your order for one.
Written by TechFever.Net • Filed Under GreenGizmo, GreenTech, Home Gadgets •
This unit apparently has only the bare minimum (to qualify for energy star) of 4 pre-programmed temp changes per day; has only 30 min resolution! Ridiculous that an advanced, expensive unit would have such obvious limitations!!
Robert Shaw units (of course, not WiFi capable) provide 6 pre-programmed temp changes per day. This means you can have wake/breakfast, lunch, return home/dinner settings, or, as I use the extra settings: late-night, wake/breakfast, regular-day, return-home&dinner, after-dinner-tv-watching (yes i only really need 5).
Other units also provide 15 min or better resolution.
Apparently, there is still a lot of room for improvement in web accessible thermostats.
One question I have is does one have to register with them, or, if I have my own dynamic dns capable router, can I bypass their web site? Axis security cameras work this way: if you want, you can feed your web cam thru them and they’ll do the work of keeping track of its IP address if it ever changes, but, if you have your own dynamic dns capable router, you can bypass their hosting service and get directly to your web cam from the internet. I’d hate have to go thru a third party forever.