I have my whole house automated using my iPhone, iPad, and computer to control everything and I did it myself.
Of course, this site has very little useful information on how to do things and they keep recommending the geek squad to install things which are useless in anything geekish.
You install each ring system differently. Mine, I had to short the terminals in the house chime box, and ring doorbell alerts us if the doorbell rings or if there is motion.
When you buy a product to automate a function, like your thermostat, garage doors, vacuum, outside doors, lights, sprinkler system, refrigerator and stove, you need to know which smart home capabilities it supports and what you want to use: apples HomeKit, google home, Alexa, and is it wifi capable, Bluetooth, z-wave.
There is a lot of info that you need to put in your ecobee to make it useful. Setup programs to vary temps during the day and night, high humidity settings, change furnace filter reminder settings, hook up to your wifi 2.4ghz network, and more.
I automate everything that I stated above and if you do it yourself, or have the geek squad do it, you would have 10 different apps to start to operate them.
I use 1 app and have 1 icon representing each device on the page to make it very easy to use. On this page, I can start the vacuum, change the stove temp, start a zone on sprinkler system, lock/unlock the doors (garage and house doors). Or better yet, I can just state Siri to open the front door. Plus every time a door opens or closes, stove reaches the desire temp, the refrigerator door is open, I get an alert on all of our handheld devices.
I don’t pay any annual fees for ecobee to automate it.
If you want some help PM me.
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