HomeKit Thermostat Limit In HomeKit???

[Itinj24]

Sorry if this is too long but it’s helping me vent. No clue what the heck is going on and this is the most frustrating thing I ever faced in HomeKit.

In my house, I have three heat/cool zones and three heat only zones, so six in total. I replaced the three heat cool zone thermostats with Ecobee Smart Thermostats (the newest version) and added them to HomeKit. Everything running smooth. A week ago, I added an Ecobee 3 Lite to one of the three heat only zones. Still running smooth.

Yesterday I picked up two more Ecobee 3 Lite thermostats to complete the hat trick and these two have been an absolute nightmare to add to HomeKit. I can’t count how many times, I reset and rebooted them. One went into HomeKit eventually then dropped off as “No Response” and remained that way. The other just wouldn’t be recognized be HomeKit.

Thought maybe the HomeKit modules (if that’s even a thing still) were bad so I exchanged them for new ones today. Got the other two in HomeKit finally and now one is showing “No Response” perpetually. Reboot, reset, nothing helps. Even changed my Eero Pro HomeKit Router to “No Restriction” which I believe helped get them into HomeKit.

These thermostats are sold at Apple too so I’m wondering if there’s a thermostat limit in HomeKit which sounds absolutely ridiculous. For the record, they’re showing perfectly fine in the Ecobee app and have strong WiFi connections. Thanks for reading...

 

[StumpyBloke]

That’s just a wall of text. Can you add paragraphs to it to make it easier? I struggle with stuff like that and therefore don’t bother reading it at all.

 

[Itinj24]

That’s just a wall of text. Can you add paragraphs to it to make it easier? I struggle with stuff like that and therefore don’t bother reading it at all.

Cleaned it up but at least I used punctuation the first time 😀

 

[waw74]

have you tried rebooting your router, and all home hubs you have. (ideally everything should be off at the same time) Rebooting your phone probably wouldn't hurt either.
not sure how hard it is to reboot the thermostats, but if it's not too bad, maybe hit those too

do you have other things in the house?
from what I'm seeing there is a 1000 device total limit, nothing about thermostats in particular, but there's also a file size limit, which is typically hit much faster. if you've got a lot of devices or scenes and automations you might be running into that, (a lot means approaching 200 of any of them) although it seems the home app has notifications that are pretty clear when you run into it.

have you tired one of the alternate home apps like eve?
does the same thing happen in the home app on your Mac?

this program (there is also a version for iOS) will let you see everything that's broadcasting on your network. Every so often devices send out a packet that says what they can do, and what their address is. It's how other devices find each other on your network, it's used for things like airplay, and having other shared computers show up in finder.
I'm not sure how the eve thermostats work. but each homekit device should have it's own entry. If you add each thermo individually they all should show up separately. If it's something like hue where there's a hub, then only the hub shows up, and not each individual bulb.
the entry you want to look for is "_hap._tcp." that should have all your homekit devices, there is another entry called "_homekit._tcp." but that's your homekit hubs.

 

[Itinj24]

have you tried rebooting your router, and all home hubs you have. (ideally everything should be off at the same time) Rebooting your phone probably wouldn't hurt either.
not sure how hard it is to reboot the thermostats, but if it's not too bad, maybe hit those too

do you have other things in the house?
from what I'm seeing there is a 1000 device total limit, nothing about thermostats in particular, but there's also a file size limit, which is typically hit much faster. if you've got a lot of devices or scenes and automations you might be running into that, (a lot means approaching 200 of any of them) although it seems the home app has notifications that are pretty clear when you run into it.

have you tired one of the alternate home apps like eve?
does the same thing happen in the home app on your Mac?

this program (there is also a version for iOS) will let you see everything that's broadcasting on your network. Every so often devices send out a packet that says what they can do, and what their address is. It's how other devices find each other on your network, it's used for things like airplay, and having other shared computers show up in finder.
I'm not sure how the eve thermostats work. but each homekit device should have it's own entry. If you add each thermo individually they all should show up separately. If it's something like hue where there's a hub, then only the hub shows up, and not each individual bulb.
the entry you want to look for is "_hap._tcp." that should have all your homekit devices, there is another entry called "_homekit._tcp." but that's your homekit hubs.

Very much appreciate the time you took to write this lengthy reply and as always, waw, they never disappoint.

I have quite a few accessories and automations/scenes but nowhere near the 1000 limit. I didn’t think to reboot my router because they were latching onto to WiFi with strong connections and working fine in the ecobee app. Everything else in HomeKit was working fine too and didn’t want to screw with that.

I can’t count how many times I factory reset and rebooted the thermostats, my iPhone and my wife’s iPhone (hard reboots). I didn’t know you can add accessories in the Eve app but it looks like it just directs you to the HomeKit interface. That wasn’t the issue.

The issue was that the thermostats are supposed to digitally generate a HomeKit code on their screen, but they weren’t doing that. When they did occasionally, they would go No Response immediately after connecting to HomeKit and stay like that.

I think I may have discovered the issue and by some miracle sorcery, I got them all in. I have a HomeKit router (eero pro). I switched the permission from “Automatic” to “No Restriction” and I got them in after very few attempts after that. My Wemo Minis had a similar issue with the HomeKit router thing.

Thanks again!