Ecobee Thermostat Sporadically Loses Power Then Ok Again
Both Nest and Ecobee were affected by a series of server outages during the wintertime of early 2019. This frustrated many users and made it difficult to operate the thermotats remotely, which is one of the primary reasons people become a smart thermostat in the outset place.
In this article, we'll talk almost why smart thermostats need a server in the get-go identify, what features are lost during an outage, and what to await in the future from the companies that make smart thermostats.
Why does a thermostat demand a server, anyway?
Nearly all smart thermostats communicate regularly with a server – a computer somewhere (probably) far abroad from your home – over the Internet.
The server is how a request to raise the temp from your telephone gets communicated to the thermostat itself. Even if your telephone and the thermostat are on the aforementioned network, requests made via the app are sent through the visitor'south servers equally a sort of "heart man".
This is a common criticism of smart thermostats. The lack of a "local network" alternative to fall dorsum on during outages makes the devices almost completely dependent on the visitor'south servers, even when your phone and the thermostat are on the aforementioned WiFi network.
Generally, your dwelling house is even so rubber
In outcome of server outage, your Nest, Ecobee, or other smart thermostat remembers the schedule that information technology was going to run and continues to run it. It doesn't need to check in with the mothership to go on your HVAC running. (Note that this is in event of a server outage. In the event of a power outage at your home, your smart thermostat relies on whatever power it has stored in its bombardment to run your HVAC.)
During a server outage y'all won't be able to modify the schedule or the current temp unless you're standing at the thermostat – your phone/tablet/computer are now useless for controlling information technology.
In a perfect world virtually users won't notice a server outage. Smart thermostats are designed to be scheduled and then forgotten near, more or less. Outages are most noticeable to people who are opening the app oft to monitor their home from somewhere else.
Smart thermostat go "impaired" when the servers go downwardly
The frustrating part of a server outage is the loss of remote and "smart" features. Whatsoever characteristic or action that would normally go through the server stops working when the servers go down.
- The app on your phone or tablet won't connect, meaning yous tin can't check on your dwelling house remotely or change the temp from your phone (sometimes, this looks like a failure to log into the app entirely)
- Aforementioned deal for the web portal
- Features like geofencing won't work at all
- Data collection stops or gets summarized in some fashion
- Weather reports and forecasts won't display on the thermostat hardware
- Dwelling house administration like Amazon Echo and Google Dwelling won't be able to send your verbal commands to the thermostat (this includes the version of Alexa built into the ecobee 4 thermostat)
When the servers go downwardly, smart thermostats become old school thermostats that can't be operated from an app or website.
Wintertime 2019 – Nest and Ecobee server outages frustrate users
The winter of 2018-2019 up here in the Northern Hemisphere saw a series of outages affecting both Nest and Ecobee. Owners took to Twitter, Reddit, and the official Nest and Ecobee forums to complain and they weren't kind:
These customers have a valid argument: existence able to monitor and accommodate the thermostat remotely is a major selling point for smart thermostats, so it's aggravating when those features are disabled – especially if it too happens to be the coldest day of the twelvemonth.
Nosotros hope the makers of smart thermostats come up with a mode to mitigate the touch on of server outages, and amend their server stability in 2020, because the fashion the devices get disabled when the company'due south ain servers endure an outage is a major caveat we make someday we recommend a smart thermostat.
How to tell if your smart thermostat'south servers are down
Somewhat surprisingly, since it's a bit like hanging your dirty laundry out for your neighbors to see, Nest has a server status website and back up Twitter that alerts users to outages:
- Official Nest server status page and support Twitter business relationship
Ecobee announces its planned outages on Twitter and r/ecobee.
Outages are as well tracked by third political party sites:
- Nest outage history at outage.report and downdetector
- Ecobee outage history at outage.study and downdetector
How big of a problem are server outages, really?
It depends how you lot want to apply the thermostat.
For anyone who wants to "ready it and forget it" outages shouldn't exist a problem because the thermostat can continue to communicate with your HVAC system without checking into any server. The only real loss of functionality is the power to control the thermostat from your phone. If you're happy with your schedule, though, yous may not find yourself doing that very often.
If you want to apply a Nest or an Ecobee to monitor a home's temperature while you lot're away, though, your annoyance level may run higher in event of outage. Outages will be noticeable to y'all and probably very annoying. The thermostat should keep running your schedule, merely in event of uncommonly bad conditions yous may want boosted peace of mind. Nosotros once pointed an inexpensive Yi camera at a large thermometer in a house we weren't living at but wanted to monitor through a winter – sounds light-headed but it worked.
In our own testing and trial runs with thermostats from Nest and Ecobee, nosotros didn't encounter any major outages. We're very "set it and forget it" though, so once we had a schedule we liked nosotros didn't proceed logging into the app. Many outages and scheduled downtimes went unnoticed by united states of america.
(As an aside, we've used Nest cameras for over four years to monitor a holding we don't live in total fourth dimension, and we've only encountered the occasional Nest service outage. Every bit an additional layer of security we fix the property upward with cameras from both Nest and Yi, figuring it was less probable that both services were out at the aforementioned time.)
Who has the more reliable servers?
On April 11, 2019 we visited outage.report and took these snapshots depicting the final ~4 months of server outages for Nest and Ecobee.
Nest's outage history
Nest'due south outage history for 2019 shows many reports of outages during two days in January and two days in March. (Ruddy box = more reports.)
Ecobee'southward outage history
I thought this looked pretty bad, merely and so I took a expect at Ecobee'southward outage history for early on 2019 – yikes.
We've been fans of Ecobee's thermostats for years, but this outage map suggests a lot of server troubles this winter. Ecobee is a smaller visitor than Google-backed Nest, but that's no reason for this many outage reports. We're disappointed and hope Ecobee is making investments in its overall server stability.
If you're trying to decide between a Nest and an Ecobee and accessibility through the app and overall uptime are a major concern then yous may detect yourself happier with Nest.
Source: https://smartthermostatguide.com/server-outage-what-happens-to-your-smart-thermostat/
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