Does Sense have any internal temp. sensor and/or humidity sensor in-built? If yes I propose building capabilities surrounding it. For example, in many cases the device itself is located INSIDE the panel. Thus, if device detects a sudden increase in temp. it should generate an ASAP alert for home owner?
Humidity sensor if available will also be very helpful here. Humidity is a root cause for oxidation and other related failures. Humidity means water and everyone knows water and electricity aren’t friends. Most homes have outside lines coming in and are prone to weatherization failures leading to water entering the panel. Sense can be a God send here to warn homeowners that it detected a sudden increase in humidity.
Most electronics devices have an on chip temp sensor somewhere, but that is useless for measuring ambient temperature. My solution for what you are asking for has been to station an Ecobee sensor in my service closet where my panel and Sense are located. I don’t worry about alerts but do watch the numbers over time and use the Ecobee data export to chart a time history.
@Beachcomber, are those first gen or second gen Ecobee sensors ? I ask because I use second gen for the parts of my house that venture outside of the 65-75 degree band. I chose second gen for those, not because of accuracy, but because they have a far larger battery and longer range. They seem to work well for my application - looking at the temps in my registers closest to the upstairs and downstairs furnaces (plus attic and service closet)
You will also note all the Ecobee Sensors spike in the direction of less error (real temp) at the same time.
Considering how much more accurate the Ecowitt sensors are for $12 each from Amazon (and they measure humidity and DewPoint as well, I’d rather use those to emulate the Ecobee Sensors via HA if I can figure out how.
Thanks - I see the same, but even with the jaggies, the sensors are accurate enough to give me a read on whether my HVAC is working effectively. I mostly rely on the relative temperatures. My upstairs register measurement is located in the attic, my downstairs register measurement is in the crawlspace under the house.
Upstairs
You can see the one brief run of the AC yesterday. Dropped the upstairs register temp by 10 degrees in almost no time.
I also have around 6 ecobee sensors and also SmartThings various motion sensors who all do temp. Yes there are discrepancies across both but frankly for +3 years now I don’t really see an issue. I feel we aren’t in a lab here where a 1 to 3 degree difference can mean life or death.
The area where I feel having ecobee remote sensors to manage virtual zoning vs alternative mechanisms shines is its motion sensitivity. I used to use RACINE (or sounding similar) name’s offering in SmartThings to control my HVAC whose thermostat was ecobee. However, it was all over the place, i.e. 66.5 and then sometime later 70.2, etc. etc. However, ecobee motion sensors trigger algorithm is way better. Stays in motion state longer but at the same time doesn’t kick in for every motion, etc. I’d say the accurate temp readings are offset by advanced motion sensing capabilities realizing itself into higher savings ultimately. So I went all native and have ecobee room sensors controlling my HVAC. @kevin1 I have rooms near the HVAC which rather quickly react to the temp. changes. Upstairs there’s an east facing room which gets really hot - fast. Thankfully ecobee offers this feature on thermal cutoff which I am using heavily. I keep a 10F difference and between those and others if ecobee finds greater than 10F just ignores that sensor’s readings.
