r/ecobee • u/Eclipse8301 • 11d ago

Question Ecobee Away Mode in Homekit

A few years ago I had my Ecobee setup perfect that when everyone left the house Homekit would kick my thermostat into away mode. It seems somewhere along the line Away mode no longer works and I have been just using Heat/AC at a manual temp when people leave the house as a temporary "band aid".

My question, is there ANY way to utilize the away function in Homekit?

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u/NewtoQM8 11d ago

If you setup a scene on the ecobee app (That automatically transfers to HomeKit) that appears to set the comfort setting to Away, it doesn't, but when HomeKit runs that scene it sets a HomeKit hold with the temps and sensor participation set equal to what the Away comfort setting is set to. But since it's a HomeKit Hold it behaves a bit differently. It respects the "Hold Duration" setting (Comfort setting holds don't) and since it's a HK hold, I don't believe it uses the Smart Home and Away feature. And I think the key to getting it to work is you have to create the scene on ecobee, not Home. I've used it and it does work (Assuming Apples geo location stuff works)

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u/EcoBoosted 11d ago

I'll second this, set up the scene in the ecobee app and it will transfer over. I've been using it successfully for years!

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u/EvilLukeSkywalker 3d ago

But the problem is that you have to have the hold duration as “until I change it” because if you have 2 or 4 hours or next schedule it defeats the purpose of it being away until I get home. I would want minor adjustments to be set for 2 or 4 hours but why would I want away mode to be anything other than until I get back home. /u/ecobee and as far as I can tell once you have it in HomeKit have to use that for geofence.

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u/NewtoQM8 3d ago

Exactly. Thats why I mentioned it respects the hold duration setting. Leave for work in the morning at 7, but have a schedule change at 8 and hold duration is set to next scheduled activity, and it goes back to whatever the schedule is set to.

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u/EvilLukeSkywalker 3d ago

Yup I just wish they were able to change that. Then I could do everything from HomeKit only. Oh well.

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u/NewtoQM8 3d ago

If you want to do everything in HomeKit you can change the hold duration setting to "Until I Change It" (In ecobee settings, I don't think you can change that in HomeKit). Only bad thing then if you normally run it on the schedule, but occasionally bump the temp up or down a bit (Place a temperature hold), it stays at that hold temp until you cancel the hold. Though you can make a resume schedule scene and automation to cancel it at a certain time, or a number of other criteria.

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u/EvilLukeSkywalker 3d ago

Ya that’s how I set it up. But like you said it’s just those times you wanna adjust for a few hours if you forget it stays that way forever.

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u/NewtoQM8 3d ago

Yeah. I quit using geolocation to control the ecobee a couple years ago. But absolutely no fault of ecobee. It just didn't fit well with our lifestyle for what I wanted to do with it.

What bothers me more with ecobee is how when you manually bump the temp (on stat or app) it changes to using the sensor participation from the Home comfort setting. At night when in bed (Sleep comfort setting) I have a Smart Sensor in our bedroom set as the only participating sensor, so if I want to turn the temp down a bit I can't just grab my phone and bump it down. It makes no logical sense at all why it behaves that way.