I have a propane furnace and an electric heat pump. My Ecobee 3 Lite thermostat checks the outside temperature to control whether to use propane or the heat pump. It is important that the Ecobee knows the outside temperature.
My Ecobee often displays a cloud with a line though it instead of the outside temperature. It switches back and forth between the outside temperature and cloud with the line every few minutes.
When I go to the “About” menu option, my Ecobee shows: (C) 2014-2025 ecobee firmware version: 4.8.7.240
The Ecobee is connected to my Asus RT-BE55 WiFI router which is connected to our Starlink using an Ethernet cable. Wifi is turn off on the Starlink router. My Asus router is the only device providing WiFi for my home. It is configured as follows: My main WiFi network supports WiFi7 and both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. It is used by most of my devices. My Ecobee connects to my Guest network configured to only support 2.4GHz. I have an IP reservation configured for the Ecobee MAC address. I have also tried setting the Ecobee to use that IP as a static IP address. The Ecobee uses DNS address of 8.8.8.8 and secondary DNS of 8.8.4.4.
The Ecobee is near my router. It shows WiFi signal strength is 100%. When the cloud with the line is displaying on the Ecobee, I can still successfully ping the gateway and ecobee.com from my Ecobee menu. There is no packet loss. When I go to the Ecobee menu option “About” and select “WiFi”, it shows connected to WiFi=yes, connected to access point=yes, signal strength=100%, connected to ecobee.com=no. Usually, a few minutes later, the Ecobee reconnects to ecobee.com and again displays the outside temperature.
I have a number of WiFi devices, and they do not have any connection problems.
There are no system error log messages on my Asus router showing the Ecobee’s MAC address. There are no other system error log messages for any other MAC addresses around the times when outside temperature is dropped.
I have tried turning off my router and Ecobee for 15 minutes and rebooting both. Usually, the Ecobee begins showing the outside temperature correctly and then after some time (sometimes an hour, sometimes longer or shorter), the cloud with the line displays and the thermostat cycles between the outside temperature and the cloud with the line every few minutes. The time varies. It is not always the same.
I’ve tried using the Google-AI and ChatGPT to see if there are settings I can change on my Asus router. While their suggestions have helped, the Ecobee still drops the outside temperature regularly. Before making those changes, the outside temperature would not display for hours or days.
When I log into the Ecobee website and use the Monitor feature, the graph shows outside temperature for days but occasionally, there will be gaps where the outside temperature is not tracked for an hour or so. Usually, the monitor graph does correctly show the status of the internal temperature, the furnace fan, and heat/cooling cycle during those times. It seems strange to me that only the outside temperature is missing.
Originally, I was using the Starlink router for my WiFi but I was losing the outside temperature on the Ecobee for extended periods of time. So, I purchased the Asus and while things are better than before, I still have problems.
I have contacted Ecobee support but they say the problem is with my network.
I’ve considered purchasing a newer model Ecobee but I’m not sure if that would solve my problem.
Do any of you have an Ecobee 3 Lite and use a Starlink Internet connection? If so, what firmware version is your Ecobee using?
Also, I would appreciate any suggestions you may have on how to solve this problem.
Thank you!
Source: r/ecobee · by /u/Old_guy_27