Sorry for the long post...

I had a local company come in and install a ductless minisplit/heatpump because I had no other AC options in the main section of my house. I happened to be at work and my wife was here while they were installing. For my main thermostat I had a Nest that was using the Starling hub to connect to Homekit. I also have another zone in the house that is using a nest thermostat.

During the install, they told my wife that they needed to install a new smart thermostat in order for us to be eligible for a rebate for installing the unit. My wife just told them to do what they needed to do since she was trying to work and kind of figured we would sort it out later.

Now, attached to the minisplit is some sort of "dongle" for lack of a better work, that makes the minisplit smart. So when we want to control it with our phones we use this Flair app, which is the brand of the "dongle". Now, I don't know if they Flair hardware is ONLY compatible with the Ecobee thermostat or what, but I never really got the story of why my Nest thermostat wasn't good enough.

Anyway, since this Ecobee thermostat is homekit compatible I don't think it is too big of a deal, but I was wondering if anyone else was in a similar situation and could give me any advice or need to knows before I add this to my homekit.

Will I be able to control the minisplit with homekit if I do this?

Also, and this part isn't homekit related...if anyone has this setup or something similar, how do I override the heatpump so that the thermostat actually turns on my furnace?