Ecobee is a home automation company in Canada that manufactures contact sensors, smart cameras, temperature and occupancy sensors, smart light switches and smart thermostats.
It is a private enterprise that started in 2007. It has its headquarters in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
History
In 2009, Ecobee manufactured the first Wi-Fi-enabled thermostat in the market. They also built their mobile app and created a web portal for every smart house.
Then in 2010, they created the first affordable commercial Wi-Fi thermostat.
The Home IQ report is an invention they like to take huge pride in as it calculates how smart a house is. They created this in 2012.
In 2014, they improved on the smart thermostat by adding the wireless room sensor feature to it and then added the Alexa feature in 2017.
This thermostat can be talked to, you can play music with it, and it can give you a news update. It is a very interactive thermostat as it is a screen touch-enabled thermostat.
Ecobee then went on to create the first cloud-based thermostat management platform, which is called smartbuildings.
One of the major selling points of Ecobee is usability. The phone app mirrors the interface of the thermostat, making it easy to control from wherever you are. The app is compatible with any device, a smartwatch, an iPad, an iPhone, or an Android device.
Ecobee has a few features that make them stand out, and they will be discussed in this article. They are:
- Ecobee SmartSensor
- Eco+
Ecobee’s SmartSensor
Ordinary thermostats only read the temperature in one room (which is usually the hallway). This can make other rooms uncomfortable.
But Ecobee SmartSensor detects temperature and delivers. It follows you by detecting where you are in your home and increases comfort in those rooms.
The following are its features:
- Advanced occupancy detection: It uses motion detection to achieve occupancy detection and infrared (to detect motion even at night).
- It has five-year battery life.
- It has a connection range of over 50 ft.
- It detects pets easily.
- It is fully backwards compatible.
Eco+
Eco+ is Ecobee’s Artificial Intelligence. Eco+ has the following features:
- It personalizes energy optimization. For example, it detects how long specific rooms in the house take to get hot or cold and uses it to help you measure the efficiency of the equipment.
- It learns your schedule, i.e. uses the previous choices of temperature you have set on the thermostat at specific times to automatically set it the following days. You can disable it through your phone.
Homes
This feature is for people who have multiple places they call home. For example, if you have a house for vacation alongside the normal everyday home, the Homes features help you monitor and control all the houses at once.
The following are its features:
- It groups and manages all Ecobee devices across your homes.
- It enables multiple users.
- You can program unique schedules and comfort settings.
- You can set individualized climate properties of each home.
- You can also set individual reminders and alarms for each home.
Home IQ & Portal Overview
This feature gives you personalized reports on operations and how much energy you have saved with Ecobee over a period of time (about 15 months). It is a pretty elaborate report, so it is preferable to use a widescreen device like a laptop, iPad, etc. to view this report.
They also give recommendations on how to save more energy. The portal can be found at www.ecobee.com.
Other Ecobee Products
Ecobee has other products that they have manufactured over the years. They are:
- Smart Light Switch: This was released in March 2018. It has a built-in microphone and is Alexa supported.
- Smart Camera: It has a 1080p video quality, two-way talk, night vision, and Amazon Alexa support. It was released in April 2020.
- Contact Sensor: It was released alongside the smart camera in April 2020.
