More an ecobee than beestat question, but how happy are people with the source that ecobee uses, which I guess must be The Weather Channel?
This morning they (and my ecobee) said my local temp was -10C. The Weather Network said -14C. Accuweather said -18C. My own thermometer said -16.8C. All at 7:09 AM.
Unbelievable to have an 8 degree disagreement.
I have a La Crosse weather station with two outdoor temperature sensors–north and south side of the house. They are 99% of the time in the shade, and it’s not uncommon for them to differ by 5° or so depending on the weather,
Sure, I have several local wireless thermometers. It’s the frequent large discrepancy between the three online weather services in the temperature they report for my small community that makes plotting the outdoor temp that ecobee reports seem unreliable in understanding my heat pump’s performance.
Since my original post I’ve installed an ecobee remote sensor outside, in the not-too-close vicinity of the pump, so I can now do that.
Let me just add that it’s not just about my curiosity. The ecobee has a setting
" * Compressor Min Outdoor Temperature: Sets the lowest outdoor temperature at which the compressor operates."
So with the numbers above, if I had it set at -10C, the ecobee would still have the heat pump running at a true outdoor temperature of around -17C, rather than switching to aux (gas furnace).
Not! They use Apple Weather which is all over the map from right on to almost ten degrees off depending on the day. It wouldn’t matter except it drives the thermostat logic. The option for a local source, even third party provided is badly needed. If they cab make Flair vents work, they cancmake a third party outdoor thermometer work.
You are right. But the ecobee temp always matches the Weather Channel, and indeed Wikipedia tells me that:
“From iOS 8 to iOS 15, The Weather Channel was used as the weather data source of the app. Since iOS 16, Apple has used its own internal forecast data.”
If they have a more reliable internal source, ecobee hasn’t switched to using it.
And they wouldn’t need a third party outdoor thermometer. I already have their tiny remote sensor reporting to the ecobee thermostat! If it’s not designed to be robust enough for the outdoors, they can make it so.
I am in a small rural Ohio town, chances of an accurate internet source are small. I doubt that only applies to me. The outdoor sensor needs to read humidity too to drive part of the logic.
It seems like such a no-brainer for them to just do it. You have to wonder.
The main problem I see is that on the ecobee it’s only updated once per hour. Especially around sunrise or sunset this is clearly too infrequent to update. It’s surprising because it doesn’t take a lot of network bandwidth to ping TWC every minute!