Lots of craziness going on recently with VMworld and VMware’s tech summit, I haven’t had the time to get as much done as I would like.  More to come on home networking soon, but today the Ecobee3 Thermostat is officially up and running.

When researching, the Ecobee3 gave me the best options, multi sensors, and most importantly my first apple home kit device.  As we are nearly an all apple family, sticking with the eco system just made sense.  In Oregon, there is an energy rebate, not a ton, but it helps.  I am hoping between the rebate, multiple sensors, and trending we can use this to help cut energy costs to pay for it.  Besides it looks really good in the house.

Install was pretty simple, the Ecobee.com website has some good videos I watched, but as it turned out I didn’t even need those.  I have never worked on an HVAC system, but the directions were straight forward.  I just killed power, disconnected the wires from the old thermostat, connected the new one, and gave it power.  The setup took a few min, mostly waiting for it to register with Ecobee, and then about 10 min to calibrate.

For me the biggest thing is it is so simple I don’t need to spend time trying to figure it out, and even my wife and kids, who don’t want to have to struggle with tech find it very straight forward so far.  I am also pretty excited about the trending, hoping to see some savings, but also to understand where we are using energy.  I suspect HVAC is one of the largest consumers of power, so this should help.

Next more networking but for now, I give the Ecobee3 smart thermostat a big thumbs up, very simple and elegant.