ecobee Switch+ Smart Switch with Alexa

ecobee Switch+ Smart Switch with Alexa

I’ve had one of these for years. I paid $99.99 for it.

It promised great things.

Don’t buy it. At any price. Do not even accept one for free.

It was supposed to provide an extra temp sensor for my ecobee thermostat. Since many of these were mounted on exterior walls (a no no for mounting temp sensors) they took it upon themselves to disable that feature entirely. Seriously? Just tell people to not use the temp sensor if it’s mounted on an exterior wall.

Then the Alexa functions were garbage. You can’t add it to a music group which was half my intent. Then for some reason when I’d be elsewhere in the house and play music on Alexa, it would play on this device by the back door and nowhere else. I couldn’t get the music to stop until I walked over to this device and told it to stop, then mired the microphone, then went back elsewhere and reset the music. So now the Alexa device lives on permanent mute. Every now and then I unmute it and give it another try and it just messes everything up so I remote the microphone.

Then I couldn’t get Alexa to identify the switch so that I could use it for voice commands to turn on and off the light.

So it’s a remote temperature sensor and alex device that is also an Alexa controlled light switch but you can’t use the temperature sensor, or the Alexa features, or use it as a smart Light switch.

I’m going to replace it with a $15 Kasa WiFi light switch and then smash this thing to pieces in the driveway. Then of course I will properly dispose of the eWaste, but not until I go full “PC Load Letter” on this scourge of my existence.

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