[Released] Launch an external temperature sensor for the Smart Radiator Thermostats
Comments
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So after purchasing numerous Tado TRV’s and them being rendered useless because of the temperature issue I have waited over a year with them in a box for some kind of solution.
I see on social media finally Tado have listened and are launching an external temperature sensor to solve this only to find the insane price of £69.99 each!!!!!
This is hugely disappointing when it was your product that was at fault in the first place and makes me question whether this whole thing was just an money making exercise. There is a reason why it is one of your “most requested products” because the TRV’s don’t work without it in most cases!
If the price was half of this I would have happily purchased 5 on launch.
Surely a good idea would be either make them cheaper or offer a hefty discount on them for already aggrieved Tado users?
For those in the know, will the coding on the app have changed for this new hardware to allow for a much cheaper third party device to be used?3 -
Sorry Tado but this is a cop-out. You've marked this as released but clearly from the feedback you missed the brief.
No one wanted a gutted thermostat that costs 2/3 the price. Beyond the price people don't want the unit on the wall.
I found this when I was researching - which is what we were probably all after:
https://www.vpsunderfloorheating.co.uk/product/heatmiser-wireless-air-temperature-sensor/?ppc_keyword=&gclid=EAIaIQobChMItsqA1pOF7AIVSM3tCh2tkwCsEAQYASABEgL0xPD_BwE
Even if you'd doubled the price of this people would have still been happy.
Between this and the childlock I find myself questioning why I have gone down the Tado route (extension kit, 2 x thermostats and 8 radiator thermostats)5 -
£69.99?!?!
Tado, have you been reading these comments? This is more expensive than the actual radiator thermostat itself, why release a product that’s more expensive just to make your original product work as intended. Seriously considering ditching the whole system and going to nest2 -
This really needed to be released as a small coin or small sized temp only sensor that was sub £20 to compliment the system.3
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I totally agree. Tado you are failing here. I have 8 TRV installed and they are more and less useless as without an external temperature sensor. As the winter season soon will start I'm considering changing back to my old fashion termostats.
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I agree with everyone about this being an expensive cop out. This tells me I should not invest in the products of a company that treats its customers as idiots and has no desire to innovate and improve.
I think I will at some point write off my Tado products and replace them. The question is: with what product range?
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Very insulting from Tado. Great way to alienate many of us who've invested heavily in the Tado ecosystem 👏.
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I don't know if tado reads this community or this specific discussion. It would be nice to have an acknowledgement.
Also... I know that when you are inside the business it is hard to see things clear sometimes and you just have a tunnel vision and your "mission" is the only thinng that counts.
So.... Tado.... what is your mission here? What is your primary goal.
Because even without being a genious
- sensors so close to the radiators are clearly not precise and the end result is that a room could take more time than expected to reach the right temperature or never reach it. The offset trick is not a trick as you know it just shifts the problem causing other problems and you are either so stuck in your tunnel that you don't see the simplicity of the problem or you don't want to properly receive the feedback
- how difficult could it be for you to really develop a small cheap dump temp sensor that you can use as the room sensor?
- Despite the fact that in a room you can only have one reading sensor you are forcing your customer to buy "useless" sensors when a thermostat is present or more than one TRV is present or when someone also has the recently introduced sensor.
- You want to overcharge for a dummy sensor.. ok you are welcome but why don't you release also TRV without sensors then? just dummy valves at this point are sufficient.
- Your new sensor is upsetting in many ways the price is only one... some other reasons are the point above. The TRV temp sensor issue is something that everyone is experiencing even if they don't know. You thinnk you are pleasing a small group of people with that sensor in reality you are making things better for everyone but it doesn't look like you understand this. That price is so high that the adoption won't be as high as it should (I've ordered one for one room when in reality I wanted to order one for each room but I won't. I won't untile the price won't be a reasonable honest one). It doesn't look like you are listening and I don't know exactly who you want as a customer. This is the most upsetting thing about your sensor.
- You are a relatively new company born in the IOT era. Your application is the proof of that where all your devices are connnected and talk to each other and your business is based on that. Despite this you offer no open/supported API and you try as much as possible to maintain a closed system when you know that people want to integrate/automate more things and the options are A) a drawer full of cables a raspberry PI and a moltitude of sensors scattered across the house and garden or B) being patiente and trust the company to offer some elegant solution in the near future. (PS your IFTTT integration is a joke , very nice when you try to take time while developing something more serious but you cannot continue to say that that's what you are offering ... it is not enough).
- PS the point B) above is the reason why so many people are now offended or furious or sad (or a bit of everything)..... The concept of what you need to do is so easy, you already have the technology, the know-how and the market. It wasn't easy to upset people and yet.. here we are... well done.
- You were asked multiple times if you are investing in other sensors to cover other areas of home automation and your answer was no. I understand that you don't want to lose focus but it actually seems that staying focused is not helping much.
- While you consider your marked a closed ecosystem people live in real life and they want to see all these different aspects of their life connected... why don't you facilitate that if you are not interested in that field at least offer some other company to allow that (so back to the API point). You are keeping a lot of people hostages of your shortsigh vision or greedinness.
- There are so many super-simple sensors (some really dumb boolean 0-1) that you could release and they could improve the experience with your system. Water leaks, water shutoff valves, windows open) that could benefit from your already running ecosystem.
- To summarize this .... I bought a sensor to try it. You upset me with that stupid price and the fact that it is unreasonable to have at least £130 worth of sensors in a room considering that onne sensor (TRV) won't even be used. It could have been nice just to have a signal that you tried to do something nice for your customers instead of sending the opposite signal..."pay and shut up!" because you know that the sensors are needed in some cases and some will buy them. I will resist. I won't let you win on this.
You had one big opportunity here and I don't think you managed it that well...
I hope to see more positive signals in the future.... I don't know what are the next milestones in your road map ... I hope there are some exciting things and you will handle it better.
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This company is just typical German really... Lack of support or even any remote sniff of innovation.
They have basically done nothing in the past 2/3 years other than try and force their customer base onto some BS subscription service...
Witch just seems to be the standard lazy tech model these days.
Adding new sensors for room temp and outdoor, adding in weather compensation etc is simple...and these sensors cost pennies, literally!
I've built a system with an Arduino and some sensors from eBay and the whole thing cost about £20.
These kind of products do not command the prices these idiots are asking... It's just a plain ripoff!0 -
It all really boggles my mind that a IT company can ship a product with such a bad market fit. I'm a Product Owner myself in "TOP50" startup in Europe and I would get fired straight away if I would deliver something like the new sensor. They are receiving feedback for it for the last couple of years, they even got the FORUM where users share and vote for their needs, yet they are doing completely different.
I don't know how an Agile company can fail like this, when they've got all of the major customer needs placed like on a plate on this forum. I would kill to have a similar access to feedback while working on my product, but I have to spend a lot of time researching, and talking with customers to deliver something that meets BOTH customer expectations and business goals...
I've picked Tado as an alternative to Nest, which API got killed by Google but now I'm really starting to regret my decision. I would rather have a nice ecosystem that you can "cheaply" expand than what Tado offers right now.
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The best thing we can all do is put Tado behind us and research replacement systems. Tado get away with bad products and customer service because we buy them and complain. If we stopped buying them because there was a better commercial, retail product then they would either change their ways or go out of business.
Given that this forum clearly contains very able, knowledgeable posters who have not suggested alternatives we can buy, then I guess there are none.
If there are, then let us share them here with two goals in mind: shame Tado and provide ourselves with an exit path.
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Unfortunately there does not seem to be anything currently available that ticks as many boxes as Tado. This is even taking the known limitations of Tado in to consideration.
They do have on their side -
HomeKit support
TRVs (even with the noise and sensor issues)
Hot water support
OpenTherm support
and eBus support (unique to Tado) meaning it works with Vaillant and Worcester Bosch
If only they would provide a temp sensor as discussed here, allow more than 10 TRVs and remove the need for asking them to do certain setups by making these accessible in the app.
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It's a shame...All Tado needed to do was release a device like Google, in the same price point and we would be happy.
I'm sure if the electronics from the TRV where reused, with a button cell or AAA battery a cheap outcome could have been achieved. It may be cheaper to reuse the casing from the thermostat to avoid increased production costs but the cost is still high.
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But the worse thing is it's not even a "new" sensor. It's just the old room stat likely with a less populated board in the exact same housing!
They haven't even had to design anything they just stripped functionality from an existing product and charge a premium for their lazy *naughtyword* work... As an engineer I'm just embarrassed for them!4 -
That’s just the start of it @onis_uk
Even more embarrassing for Tado is they already had/have a cheap standalone external temp sensor: https://community.tado.com/en-gb/discussion/comment/6644 - it was part of their v1 kit.
It makes their newly released offering - something they had already developed that existed many years ago - even more pathetic.2 -
Has anyone noticed they removed the offset option in the app?0
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I (iOS)still have it in the "rooms & devices" section, within the Room heading.
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Me too, I just couldn’t find it, thanks0
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If Tado customer care aren't responding to questions about this sensor. I wonder whether a message directly to their CEO might help
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Hi all,
Not for the first time, Amazon are selling 4 x TRV's for £120.99 today for Prime members.
So is an opportunity to get yourself the workaround "external sensor" for £30 each.
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It is £97 pounds on amazon prime and £67 on Tado store. 😕
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So just to confirm before I spank a bunch of money on some prime day Smart Thermostats, I can use these as a wireless thermometer no problem in a room with a smart TRV and just tell Tado that the Smart thermostat is the master temp sensor for that room? Will the controls on the Smart Thermostat let me adjust the temperature for that room (i.e. control the smart TRV) or does it just become a dumb temp sensor?
The call for heat would still come through the wired Smart Thermostat for that zone?
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Yep, it doesn't make any sense that I can buy 4 TRV's for £120, but four of the new sensors cost £268!4
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@NellyFurtado All true. You can set any device in a zone to measure the temperature. The controls on all devices control the temperature in that zone. Connection to boiler still taken care of by your wired stat.
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Offset function is still there in devices section. Select name of your device instead of the thermostat.0
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Morning all, Amazon is now selling the external sensor for £46.99 as Prime Day offer, today only (even though not in stock until 1st November).
Still is too expensive, but I think I will buy one and see how it works.
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Reality check needed here, I think. They have listened, and released a suitable sensor. They were never going to release a £20 cheapie.
£79? Too much for me personally. £46? OK - just ordered 3. Like all the Tado kit I've bought over the years, I get them when the offers are there.0 -
The initial post stated
<quote>Either that or Tado need release a small, cheap (~£30) temperature sensor that can be placed in the room away from the radiator to give much better results. I know you can use a Tado Smart Thermostat, but at £100 these are too expensive to put in every room.</quote>
Instead Tado released a slightly cheaper controller that contains a temp sensor.
Even when they drop the price i would not buy a big controller as an external temperature sensor for the same reason I wont buy an extra TRV
No @johnbur they did not listen.
They listened to marketing not their customers.
Also a controller has a suitable place and a temp sensor has a suitable place in the room and they are NOT tha same place at all.
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This is just silly... I paid 400e to actually get my radiators to STOP working after mounting these because they can't get over 25deg?? What?
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@Arvid they did listen, and actually improved on the original suggestion in my opinion by incorporating a controller as well.
These new sensors are perfect for guest bedrooms for example - solve two problems - the original issue of the trv sensor being too close to the heat source, and an easy way for guests to adjust the room temperature without having to stoop down and fiddle with the trv and often disconnecting from the valve by mistake.
My only issue is the price - £75 is ridiculous, but £46 as they were on Amazon recently is just about acceptable to me.0
