A couple of weeks ago I stopped being able to use my ecobee through the app and I’m getting an error connecting to ecobee.com. Reached out to support and got the response attached. I now have a paperweight on the wall.
Happened to me a couple months ago in venezuela. I’ve been using them with homekit, but i’m planning on changing them to nest. It is really a hassle to use them without the app
Ecobee has always been vocal about only being available within North America. Since you’re in South America, this isn’t surprising.
Unfortunately for you, the US State Department designated Nicaragua as an ITAR restricted country in March.
To comply, ecobee is legally required not to give you access to their servers.
What country? It’ll work fine without internet connectivity too.
You can set up a VPN through your home router and everything will be behimd it. ExpressVPN has the options for you 
“When I decided to buy your product, there was no indication that none of its smart features (the reason I bought an ecobee instead of a $50 dumb thermostat) would work in my country. Since your company has independently decided to remove key advertised functionality from my thermostat after purchase, I would like a refund”
Or are there warnings about it only working in certain countries? I’ve never looked
I’m curious about this as well. What country?
Was the ecobee ever officially supported in your country?
Yea. Thanks! I’m looking at alternates as well. I don’t like having too many workarounds to get products working as they should
Yea it’s possible. From the federalregister.gov website:
The policy of denial toward Nicaragua applies to licenses or other approvals for exports and imports of defense articles or defense services, except that a license or other approval may be issued on a case-by-case basis for non-lethal military equipment intended solely for humanitarian assistance, to include natural disaster relief
Nicaragua. It won’t work for me as I have a ton of automation using home assistant
Or are there warnings about it only working in certain countries? I’ve never looked
You mean, like this?
which begins with:
ecobee devices are only sold and supported in the U.S. and Canada.
Nicaragua. Sorry tried to edit the main post but couldn’t
Not officially but it worked. Just kind of a bummer they’re actively blocking it now.
Just saw Nicaragua listed here under ITAR restricted
I’m assuming that because they have contracts with grid/energy providers in North America they’re considered defense services
using home assistant
If you have an ecobee that supports HomeKit, you can pair it directly to HA using the HomeKit Device component.
That’s bizarre, why would Nicaragua block Ecobee? Is it political? You’d think a thermostat would be the least controversial thing ever.
So you’ll need a VPN on your router and on your phone to get the ecobee to work again. This is no different than trying to get Gmail and Chromecast to work in China.
The purpose of Home Assistant is to integrate devices from different ecosystems to one hub for local control without the need of a cloud. I have my Ecobee in Home Assistant with HomeKit, 100% local control.