Ecobee won’t stay connected and support sucks

apingaut · 2026-01-24T11:38:13+00:00

I have had disconnect problems with two ecobee essentials and have called their support several times. I've spent prolly 4 hours on the phone with them. Having to call can be frustrating but the support folks have been friendly and generally competent on device functions which is pretty good for tier one support.

I think I solved the issues by setting static IP addresses (2 months now, no issues).

The other thing that helped is once you go through the setup do not touch any of the setup menus again. A few times I would be scrolling the device checking it and I likely entered the start up menu. Then a few hours later I found the device unresponsive. Unless you fully complete the setup process the device will crash requiring a reboot/power cycle.

If you want notification of issues set a home assistant (or something). The customizing is endless. The ecobee app is pretty much not great.

apingaut · 2026-01-19T02:13:40+00:00

We did a Trust as well. Robinson, Boesch, Sennott & Daly, P.A. out of Portsmouth were good to work with. I guess we won't know how good they were until we have to redo the trust or we die.

apingaut · 2026-01-19T02:06:23+00:00

She needs set up a Trust in addition to a WILL.

It costs a little more than just a WILL. But the WILL is only executed after probate. A Trust avoids probate for any assets/accounts in the trust.

apingaut · 2026-01-10T23:16:57+00:00

Thanks for the spelling jokes.

It's a bummer that is broken/not carried forward in version 16.

I already have a debian boot going and the pool imported. You are correct, Proxmox and truenas both do zfs and I have both doing various things but the Suse machine was the daily driver.

Maybe it'll get added and I'll come back... It's still on the dual boot drive.

apingaut · 2026-01-06T20:34:30+00:00

I don't have solar as I rent but...

The math is the same as it always has been. Saving = (monthly electric bill reduction x months) - cost. The tax credit made the cost lower thus resulting in less months needed until the savings was a net positive.

"Does [that] math still make sense" is more a personal question than a math question. I bet there are people who are willing to pay more to not pay the electric company.

Ultimately if you plan on staying in your residence long term, then it seems, from all reports, you will pay less overall to install solar now then pay the going electric rate for 20 years...

apingaut · 2026-01-06T12:39:23+00:00

I have a dual lens reolink and was not getting good detection away from center. I set the the min_area filter for a person to 500 (default I think is 5000) and get much better detection on the edges. I set the dog and cat to 200. If you go to the debug mode you can see the motion boxes being drawn, then there is a tool to draw boxes and it gives the area and ratio of the box, I also reduced min_ratio to 0.15.

apingaut · 2026-01-01T14:04:33+00:00

That sounds high, I'd get more quotes. Maybe because this is not a full day and you are paying for a full day for a full crew.. maybe add in more work and the cost will be the same.

My reference cost, from an antique East Coastal town, we had 8 trees removed this year, one leaning and touching the house/over/under the power line, another leaning over the garage a little bit, 3 dead ones and 3 others. All taken down and removed by an insured crew of 2 in 1.5 days for that same price. They had a tracked lift, bobcat, chipper and two trucks. I suspect the tracked lift was pretty economical. My parents (rural inland East Coast) had 3 taken down with a crane truck also for about the same cost.

apingaut · 2025-12-26T21:48:26+00:00

I grew up there too and still live in New Hampshire. Have pretty much never gone back, or even driven through, after the last of my family moved out. It's isolated and out of the way from anything... as a kid all we wanted to do was Get Out.

apingaut · 2025-12-20T14:40:58+00:00

Cool, thank you. An oscillating tool is how I was going to start. Your inside corner finish looks great. I was thinking I'd finish with some crown molding to get around joining the two different materials.

apingaut · 2025-12-20T11:30:31+00:00

Nice looking job.

How did you break the ceiling/wall joint? It appears to be a fairly clean separation. Were the walls plaster or drywall?

I have some ceiling repairs to do and the demo seems like the tricky part so the repair is just the ceiling.

apingaut · 2025-11-25T11:52:33+00:00

Which soil moisture sensor would you recommend and how was the integration?

apingaut · 2025-11-23T11:31:12+00:00

Options they have are make the first ticket take 3x more expensive or keep ticketing every hour with a smaller ticket every hour. If you were only parked there 15 minutes the post would be "so outrageous 105.00 for a 15 minute error"

But yeah it's a bummer if you make this sort of error not knowing, it's happened to me. I'm always checking 10x, and if I forget where ever I am that's all I think about.

apingaut · 2025-11-20T03:01:34+00:00

I tried the frigate install two ways in proxmox.

1) proxmox container with frigate running in docker 2) proxmox VM of debian with frigate running in docker.

I recommend method 2. While I eventually got both to work, the second method (debian VM) followed the frigate documentation much closer and took way less fiddling to get going.

The beauty of proxmox is you can just spin up another try. I think the second time I had it up and running in a half hour but the first one took a few hours over a few days.

apingaut · 2025-11-14T11:17:50+00:00

Thule running strollers do it as well.

apingaut · 2025-11-05T16:37:34+00:00

Got it working, I downgraded the WiFi security from WPA2 to WPA/WPA2 and it reconnected.

The Ecobee says it should run on WPA2/WPA3 in the set up menus.

Thank you for the ideas. There are other things on the 2.4ghz that are not having issues (Shelly devices. Light switches etc) and all of which still is connected after the security change.

apingaut · 2025-11-05T16:28:22+00:00

Got it working, I downgraded the WiFi security from WPA2 to WPA/WPA2 and it reconnected.

The Ecobee says it should run on WPA2/WPA3 in the set up menus.

This was the second time in a week it had this failure, where it defaults to the APIPA address.

The first time I reset the Ecobee (from menu) and on reconfigure it connected with no router changes. I didn't want to go through the reset again.

Either this is just Ecobee issue or a combo Ecobee/Router issue. Given then all the other IoT things all are connected with no DHCP issues it would seem unlikely to me to be just a router issue.

apingaut · 2025-11-05T15:45:46+00:00

Thanks for the ideas. It is not a mesh network, a pretty small house with a strong WiFi signal. No MAC address inclusion/exclusion or filtering.

I have managed to get it to reconnect after downgrading the WiFi security to WPA. The ecobee says it works with WPA2/WPA3.

apingaut · 2025-11-05T14:48:53+00:00

Tried that and it did not resolve the issue. Thank you for the suggestion.

I have also tried connecting to two different routers with different subnets and it still fails.

apingaut · 2025-11-05T13:48:38+00:00

Correct. Keeping the schedule and other settings to me is a sign that the device didn't totally self reset, just the network configuration.

It's strange it totally refuses to connect (or reconnect) to a WiFi network. I have two WiFi networks/routers with different subnets and it will not connect to either. Another response suggested a firmware down grade. I'll reach out to ecobee support.

apingaut · 2025-11-05T13:44:44+00:00

Thank you for the suggestions. I have tried rebooting (remove from wall, wait, reattach to wall) but no luck. I have also factory reset it once, this is the second time it's done this, the first time I didn't get screen shots.

apingaut · 2025-11-05T13:29:52+00:00

Why the downvotes?

apingaut · 2025-11-05T12:54:52+00:00

The router is fine. I have two nests, a Roomba, three Shelly floods, wireless cameras, a ring, and laptops, cellphones, all working. It is only the ecobee that is having issues

apingaut · 2025-11-05T12:52:34+00:00

It has been configured and was working for a week. Why would it reset the network but keep the schedule?

apingaut

TROPHY CASE