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Support multiple schedule configurations such as spring etc..

ChrisJ
ChrisJ ✭✭✭

It is very common to want different sets of heating parameters for different occasions. A typical example might be a different set for summer versus winter. Or for when guests are staying versus not.

It would be great if the Tado system supported the ability for user's to create multiple named configurations and switch between then as required.


--- original message above, tado edit below, Feb 7th 2024 ---


The suggestion for having multiple schedules, for example for summer/winter or shift workers and so on, have been suggested to us multiple times and for a long time. We know. We have 2 things to add this:

1.

Such a feature is, to some extent (and admittedly not super intuitively) already available. And has been for years. For each room you can save 3 seperate weekly schedules. You can easily switch between them. More information about this feature is found here under "1. Select the days for which you want to set a specific schedule": https://support.tado.com/en/articles/3387209-how-do-i-set-up-my-tado-room-smart-schedule#h_cefd90c4e9

It gives you 3 scheduling options. Mon-Fri ,Sat, Sun and Mon-Sun and Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun. All three are saved. You can use one for winter and the other for summer, for example. I realize it is not exactly what is being asked here, but it can be used as having multiple schedules.

2.

The idea of having multiple schedules was researched by our app development team with a number of test customers in 2023, when we improved and simplified the whole UI of the schedule. I think you've seen the results in the app.

Our app development team assigned time to try making this idea happen (also because of these topics in the forum) but when we ran our prototypes with customers we discovered that only power-users could really master this idea of having active and inactive schedules for the same room. Other users already struggled with even getting the basic schedule set up and adding more functions made it even more difficult for them. We therefore decided to focus on making the schedule more useful and intuitive for the largest group of customers, and kept it simple as a result.

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  • [Deleted User]
    edited May 2019

    Hi mw9342,

    This is already possible, at least sort of - you can set three different schedules per room and toggle back and forth as necessary. I am referring to the Mo-Su schedule, the Mo-Fr Sa Su and the Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su schedules in your Smart Schedule on your app.

    Best regards,

    Frank

  • mw9342
    mw9342 ✭✭✭
    Hi Frank - how do you do that? When I look at my settings I can’t see anywhere where I could create additional schedules nevermind switch between them.
  • I believe they are saying the "Schedule Days" option works as three different schedules, so you could theortically switch between different ones that way. But you would be restricted to the preset groupings, so you couldn't have the same grouping of days for each schedule.

  • mw9342
    mw9342 ✭✭✭

    Ah I see - not really what I was asking for; the MON-SUN group is not suitable for me, and neither is the MON-FRI,SAT,SUN grouping (see also make it easier to setup more relevant schedules for different days) so I only have one grouping available to me and therefore switching is not possible.

  • DLuckcock
    DLuckcock
    edited May 2019

    An excellent idea for the home ChrisJ.

    In a similar vein I have to change the settings each week for multiple time slots and zones using Tado to control the heating in the church rooms that are occupied by different groups. If we could create pre-programmed weeks 1, 2, 3 & 4 it would make life a lot easier. Regards

  • This is something I would really like to see as my building turns off heating during summer, so I just want to turn off all my radiators from a specific date as there is no reason for them to adjust themselves during this period.
  • Sands
    Sands ✭✭
    I agree this would be really helpful!
  • Now this is a good suggestion.

  • Agreed. We need multiple schedules, with each schedule being able to include specific zones, and be able to manually or automatically switch among schedules as we wish.

    For example, I have two homes, 100km apart, in different climate zones, and I spend weeks at one, then weeks at the other. This means that whichever house I'm not in may get quite cold. Particularly the one in the mountains may require more than a day to come up to comfortable temperature as the inner wall surfaces get very cold.

    For that, I need to be able to remotely switch from "Away" to as-if-I-were-there-so-that-it's-comfortably-warm-when-I-arrive, something for which geofencing is useless, as it needs to start heating hours or days before I even set off for that house.

  • Agreed, my scenario is divorce and having the kids about half the time. I am currently experimenting with multiple zones ie one per room and keeping the kids bedrooms off when they are at school. But I also work from home, so I'd like the zones to each accept different home/away parameters or have alternate schedules that are easily switched eg Home 1, Home 2, Away

  • Agree a great idea. Multiple pre-defined policies that can be applied with a click would cover it. They could be applied for seasons, guests, etc
  • Is this type of control even needed? I have Tado TRVs on every radiator so the heating for each one would only come on if needed. I.e. room 1 temp is 30+ degrees C in the summer and the smart schedule is set to heat to only 21, so it would never be needed.

    In the winter when the ambient room temp is say 12 and the schedule calls for heat, it heats to 21. So isn't this already allowed for automatically?

    If you don't have Tado TRVs on each radiator, I think a better way would be an external piece that gets actual temps (instead of data-provided ones) and acts as an auto-offset, and takes over if needed. I.e. external temp is 30 = do nothing or external temp is 5 so call for heat.

  • Agreed. As a retired teacher, I would have also wanted the ability to save and switch between different schedules for term time and holiday time. Now I'm retired, I'd like to switch between saved schedules for early and late starts (grandchildren visiting and us home alone!)

  • So it's the 30th December, a Tuesday, and I've booked the day off and got family staying, so rather than get up at the normal 6am for a Tuesday we got up at the more leisurely 8, spot of breakfast then showers for 4.

    The issue, tado was set up for a Tuesday weekday to not hear hot water past 8am as if we were here on a normal Tuesday we would be working from home and unlikely to be looking to take a shower, yet alone twice the normal number.

    So what would be ideal is a simple way to tell tado to treat a weekday as if it was a weekend day. On the simplest level just need to be able to input annual leave into a diary and have it follow a change of behaviour each day to look at either the weekends schedule or a specific holiday schedule.

    More advanced tweaks could look at national holidays for the location the unit is, and or a personal calender integration to pull the data automatically.
  • I would like to see something similar.

    The schedule I have setup currently aligns with the biggest part of the year when we are working and the kids are at school.

    When we are on holiday and stay at home, that schedule does not work anymore.

    It would be great to make 2 (or more) different schedules at least to switch between the normal schedule for when we are working that week and another one for when we are at home for the week.

    It should not be to difficult to implement as you already have the schedule system. Just make a toggle to active on of the configured ones.

  • Good idea this. I'd find this useful also.

  • This is a brilliant idea, definitely use it

  • Yes, this would be a very good idea, to have up to three or four sets of programs (optional use).

    A Seasonal programme setting would also cater for situations as we have now, with warm sunny days each day, and little need for heating in the evenings as rooms have been warmed by the sunshine.

    Another bonus with home working at the moment would be that the normal low temperature daytime settings could be replaced by an all-day comfort setting, as we are all at home all day every day, so rather than messing with our usual schedule we could apply the "at home" schedule instead.

  • A very good idea as I'm currently using a lot of gas because my doors to the garden are open a lot. When it's sunny and 16 degrees outside my living doesn't need 19 degrees.

  • Depending on the time of year, I change the temp I want to heat rooms to. So around early April I adjusted things and will do so again in October. It would be useful to have a quicker way to jump between these two settings.
  • WouterF
    WouterF ✭✭
    edited October 2020

    Please also like my idea to improve the early start in the winter: https://community.tado.com/en-gb/discussion/5369/improve-early-start/p1?new=1

    Tado wastes 1 hour of energy each day because the early start doesn't work as it should.

  • Really would like this --- and potentially also have this all integrated with an optional external thermometer feed (see https://tado.vanillacommunities.com/en-gb/discussion/5387/outdoor-thermometer). This is the one major shortcoming with Tado at present.

    I would go a little further to suggest the ability to have MULTIPLE profiles (ideally up to 10), which can then be attached to dates, to events from IFTTT and other home automation systems, and/or to external temperature sensing. This could also be tied into another request I've seen about individual geofencing.

    I would also want to see the "open window sensing" process configured in each of these - during the summer, then often the temperature indoors will drop simply because the doors are open - you therefore would want to have a different "open window sensing" behaviour during these times. Especially good if the option of an external thermostat was there, so you could have logic such as "outside temp more than inside target temp never switches heating on, even if open window has been sensed".

  • AndrewM
    AndrewM ✭✭✭
    edited January 16

    Suggest this is linked to https://tado.vanillacommunities.com/en-gb/discussion/850/support-multiple-schedule-configurations-such-as-spring-summer-autumn-winter-etc which has some more ideas in the same model. My addon would be to be to allow multiple profiles which can then be triggered by month/date or other triggers (including IFTTT).

  • AndrewM
    AndrewM ✭✭✭
    edited January 16

    My comments from that topic were:

    Really would like this --- and potentially also have this all integrated with an optional external thermometer feed (see https://tado.vanillacommunities.com/en-gb/discussion/5387/outdoor-thermometer). This is the one major shortcoming with Tado at present.

    I would go a little further to suggest the ability to have MULTIPLE profiles (ideally up to 10), which can then be attached to dates, to events from IFTTT and other home automation systems, and/or to external temperature sensing. This could also be tied into another request I've seen about individual geofencing.

    I would also want to see the "open window sensing" process configured in each of these - during the summer, then often the temperature indoors will drop simply because the doors are open - you therefore would want to have a different "open window sensing" behaviour during these times. Especially good if the option of an external thermostat was there, so you could have logic such as "outside temp more than inside target temp never switches heating on, even if open window has been sensed".

  • S_Horwill
    edited January 16

    At work I run a couple of bespoke commercial building management systems. Tado actually mimics a lot of the functions from the systems I'm used to using but this is an area that Tado is lacking.

    I suggest summer/winter changeover thresholds. One to cut off the heating in spring if the external temperature exceeds X, and another to begin heating in autumn if the external temperature falls below Y. These need to be set at different levels in my view to account for acclimatised comfort perception (spring cutoff at 18, and autumn start at 13 are what I find works). On the days that are borderline, the system will run (or not) to feather the heating through the changing season depending on external temperature.

    This could either reference the predicted weather or run off an external thermostat.

    Just my thoughts...

  • greendog79
    edited January 16
    Having had the system for a few years, this is something I would welcome.
    The only time I ever change the settings in my daily heating schedules is when switching between seasons.
    If I could save seasonal schedules that would save a lot of moving back and forth between what are basically presets each season.
  • mcdave1983
    mcdave1983 ✭✭
    edited January 16

    I like this idea, especially when programming the smart A/C controllers in order to be used in both summer and winter.

  • S_Horwill
    edited January 16
    I had reason to check our heating systems at work yesterday and noticed a mistake in my previous. Spring cut off should be 13 and winter start should be 18. The theory and intention remains the same though :-)
  • +1 for this! =) :)