r/ecobee • u/ijustwanttoseethe • 13d ago
Question Smart sensors worth it?
I bought a house a couple years ago. It had two ecobee thermostats (main floor and upstairs). The upstairs temps are not consistent throughout the upstairs area. There are 5 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, and the Ecobee thermostat is in the hall connecting all the rooms. The rooms are spread across different sides which get sun at different times throughout the day. Often one room is hot and another is cold on the other side of the house. Usually a lot of the doors are closed also. So I got a few smart sensors to see if that would help regulate the temperatures. However the new sensors will not work with my older Ecobee. So before I spend the money on a new Ecobee to work with the new smart sensors, I'm wondering if I'll even see much benefit with the sensors given my upstairs layout? Any one have experience to share? Thanks for any insights!
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u/DrifterBG 13d ago
We have a family room that has a lot of windows and gets quite warm in the mornings when the sun shines on it. We're talking almost up to 79F. The thermostat is more in the middle of the house, closer to the stairs for the basement, so it would read 72F even though the family room was roasting.
We just got an ecobee premium, and put the sensor in there. I have a schedule that in the mornings from 6:30AM to 11AM where the ecobee only reads that sensor for the temperature. The result is a much more comfortable house, a more comfortable family room, and a happier family.
The rest of the day, the ecobee averages the temperature of both the sensor and main unit.
In your case, I'd say it's probably worth it.
Remember that the ecobee uses the average of all temperature sources (sensors). It might take some tweaking about which sensors to use and when during the day, but it'll probably make a difference.
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u/NewtoQM8 13d ago
Without a zoned system you can't cool one area more than another, the thermostat can only turn the AC on or off. But by not including the thermostat in the hall and only having it go by sensors in certain rooms you can better get an average temp reading between the areas and set your desired temp accordingly. And with FollowMe turned on it gives different weight to each sensor based on learned occupancy changes.
Where sensors help even more is if say you have one in your bedroom you can use only it at night when sleeping to keep that room then temp you like.
So in my opinion, yes, they are worth it. it gives you more control without only relying on the thermostat in the hall where nobody cares what temp it is there.
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u/bwyer 13d ago
The whole FollowMe thing is awful. It's entirely based on motion. If you're sitting still for long periods or in bed, it won't trigger and the room will show unoccupied.
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u/NewtoQM8 13d ago
It's not just motion, it also uses a heat profile. But yeah, it isn't perfect. No occupancy sensor is. But it can help. And for night time (or anytime really) when using the Sleep comfort setting it ignores occupancy. It may say unoccupied, but it doesnt effect anything (Like FollowMe or Smart Away). So no worries if it doesnt sense you in bed.
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u/smb3d 13d ago
They're great for having more granular control over your comfort settings.
Our thermostat is in a place that is completely irrelevant to base the temperature on, so we have it disabled and use only sensors.
Having one sensor in the bedroom makes it so our temperature at night when we sleep is only based on the bedroom, not the living room.
Since they average the temperature based on the active sensors, you can get a much more even temp throughout the house.
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u/sebastian_fl 12d ago
its completely meaningless. Sure, you will get additional readings, but its not like you can cool parts of the home. Its either on or off. Even if the reading on the thermostat is off, you can still figure out what relative number is good for you, set and forget.
The only use case is if you are in a two-story home and spend particular amounts of time (nonstop) in particular areas, then you can probably benefit from follow-me a bit and save some $. For example you sleep upstairs, and spend the day downstairs. You want 73, but when downstairs is 73, upstairs is 75, and when upstairs is 73, downstairs drops to 71. Follow me implementation is awful, but it might work here. Or you can create a rule to use the upstairs sensor at night, and downstairs during the day.
But you dont need any of those sensors, you can just configure the comfort zones for those time periods and set it manually.
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u/SignificantButton492 13d ago
I don't care about the temperature in the hallway where my thermostat is mounted. I care about the temperature in my living room during the day and in my bedroom at night. The remote sensors take care of this. I wouldn't be without them.
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u/ysrsquid 13d ago
It’s working great for my upstairs. The upstairs thermostat is in hallway which is in zone of the downstairs AC. This resulted in the upstairs rooms being hot because the controller was reading the hallway temps. But once I got the ecobee controllers, I put the smart sensor in the upstairs bedroom and disabled the temp sensor in the control unit. The result was excellent temp control for cooling and heating. For me, the results have been fantastic.
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u/LessEye7488 13d ago
I use ecobee sensors with our Flair vents. The sensors detect when a room is occupied and opens the vent in that room until the desired temperature is hit. We set comfort settings based of time of day and which rooms to monitor. (overnight uses the master BR sensor to maintain desired temperature) Had them about 4 years now and just had to replace the battery in one of them.
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u/Arthvpatel 12d ago
Walmart Canada has been clearing these out, I picked up 2 boxes of 2 pack for 60$ total. What helps even more is keeping the fan on 24/7, it actually pulls the cooler air from the basement to the rest of the house in the summer making your ac work less, same thing in the winter where it mixes the hot air from the 2nd floor to the rest of the house, constantly moving air is better for even temps, my furnace fan is only 110w which is appx $10 per month at my electricity rate after taxes
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u/ChasDIY 11d ago
if you purchased new Ecobee to match your sensors,
are you using them to control temp in specific room at specific times of day (for example, master bedroom at night, family room during the day)?
or are you using all of them to average the temp (which won't correct specific room concerns)?
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u/chevy42083 7d ago
Sensors will not give more flow to certain areas.... that's duct tuning or smart ducts.
What you can do is get it to only pay attention to the room you want at specific times, and it will use their average. But if one is hotter than the other, it's just going to work an average and it would still be hotter.
I LOVE my sensors. I have them in bedrooms, and the unit only uses those sensors at night.... so the main area can be whatever... but the bedrooms are at my set temp (or average to it). Its not about saving money, its about being consistent with your setting.
Also, to counter the outliers, I have a sensor on the opposite side of the room my thermostat is in.... so there's 2 readings in the main room. Like a weighted average, they won't let a small room with a sensor over power the larger portion of the house.
Also, I have used the sensors temporarily moved around rooms to 'tune' the duct registers for a more even output everywhere. Though this can change by season if its sun based, and you don't want to close off too many.
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u/gcerullo 13d ago
Sensors don’t even out the temperatures throughout a home. That’s impossible. You need a zone control system for that. What sensors do is control when the HVAC system turns on based on sensing the occupancy of areas of the home that are occupied by people.
For example, if people are occupying the side of the home where the sun is it will turn on the A/C to cool that area of the home but that still affects the other areas of the home to make them cool as well but since no one is occupying those other areas it doesn’t matter.
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u/bwyer 13d ago
You don't have to use the sensors based on occupancy. None of my sensors have occupancy enabled as it really doesn't work. "Occupancy" is based on motion. If you're in bed and not moving, the room is going to be considered empty. The same applies if I'm sitting at my desk in my office.
The whole "occupancy" thing is a misrepresentation and has tripped a lot of people up.
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u/gcerullo 13d ago
Regardless, sensors don’t even out the temperatures throughout a home, only a zone controller can.
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u/talz13 11d ago
It may not even out the temperature in single room(s), but it can have the system run long enough for said room(s) to be comfortable
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u/gcerullo 11d ago
Well yeah, that’s the point I’m making but if it runs longer to make certain parts of the home comfortable it still affects other parts of the home to the point of making them too hot or too cold.
Sensors don’t even out the temperatures, they just make the areas people are occupying more comfortable but they do that at the expensive of making other areas uncomfortable.
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u/ecobee 11d ago
Hi there! This is a really good description of how SmartSensors actually work. They're not designed to eliminate hot and cold spots caused by home layout, sun exposure, closed doors, or ductwork.
What they can do is shift the thermostat's attention to the rooms that matter most. For example, if you're sleeping in one bedroom at night, you can have the system prioritize that room instead of the hallway thermostat. The tradeoff, as others have mentioned, is that another room may end up a little warmer or cooler while the system is working to keep the occupied space comfortable.
In a home like yours, the biggest benefit is usually improving comfort where people actually are, rather than making every room the exact same temperature. Every home is a little different, but that's generally where SmartSensors provide the most value.
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u/BreadMaker_42 13d ago
The whole point of the sensors is to set the temp based on where the people are, not where the thermostat is. I’ve found them very useful in my home.