Develop a "basic backup schedule" mode for when Tado outage or loss of internet
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Just read that Tado smart schedule will not function without internet/Wi-Fi access and there is no back up service . We have dodgy internet access so cannot afford to take a chance on heating not coming on or not switching off when scheduled, so will be uninstalling and returning to seller. Really disappointed as I liked the product.1
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had a power outage today, therefore no internet... i already knew about always on internet requirement (after i bought lots of SRTs and Wireless Temp Sensors :( ), but what frustrated me the most was the fact that i had child lock on and was not able to manually control them. yes yes i know... take batteries out blah blah... do this for 10 radiators and for sure you'd want your money back
and another one... the bridge is wired only, so i had a power failure and my router went off (duuh!) but i had internet via my mobile... but there's no way (afaik) to connect wirelessly :(
so... I really like Tado, the app, the system etc etc... I have no issues with internet always on, it's a thing nowadays... BUT it sure needs an offline mode failback mode or something (pre setup or anything); it's nok like this
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@cezar Your boiler works without electricity?2
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A UPS , or just a car battery with an inverter, would fix that, but not 'the internet' being down in the entire neighborhood. The bridge could run on a powerbank.
But yeah, people probably forget their CH is like that DeLorean timemachine from the 1985 documentary, it needs both fossil fuel to burn and electricity for sparks, control and running the pumps..0 -
FYI my interim hot water bodge (Tado workaround).
I’ve woken up to tepid or cold water a few times in the last month, Tuesday being the last time. On this day I had to get an early train - I can tell you nothing ruins my day more than a cold shower in winter when I’m in a rush.
I can only assume Tado had issues (again), although who knows.. it could be an ISP problem, or perhaps my mesh dropped out, I’ll never know. But as long as Tado lacks any resilience I know I’m going to live in fear of the next time. It’s shouldn’t be like this, internet issues happen - it’s a fact of life.
Why oh why Tado can’t acknowledge that dependability is a desirable feature I’ll never understand.
Anyway the point of this post is that when Tado falls over, I’ve found it’s the loss of early morning HW that affect me the most. So I’ve bought a third-party HomeKit enabled 230v switch which I plan to wire in parallel to Tado’s HW control - it’s just a second relay control. If all goes to plan I’ll be able to use this switch to reliably manage the 4:30am hot water ON command, but Tado also remains in place for ad-hoc HW requests. Best of both perhaps? Let’s see.
Pretty mental that I have to conceive such workarounds, but here we are… it’s Tado and they seem to think they have far better features to spend their time on..
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If one used to have some sort of timer for HW control, and only disconnected it, not
throwing it away, it could be put in parallel (OR configuration) to try and ensure HW in the morning, or even in series (AND configuration) to force no heating at certain times, just in case tado goes crazy and tries to boil one's HW in the middle of the night due to a secret deal with the gas company...1 -
I have written several posts on my £30 workaround for the complete lack of control of Hot Water heating in Tado, check out my posts under the Hot Water threads.
Separately, I would make a couple of other comments, not to defend Tado who are doing a great job of ignoring this community much of the time (no disrepect to @Rob or @Jurian), but perhaps to help resolve some of the instabililty that some of you experience with your home networking and internet connectivity, or at least point you in the right direction.
Most people realise that Wi-Fi broadband routers have a limited capacity for client wireless devices, but the same is true for any wireless access point. When you use a meshed network, some of the client device capacity is "borrowed" to form the mesh with other nodes, the more nodes you have the fewer devices each mesh node can support. In my experience, in several different properties, of different construction materials and methods, mesh Wi-Fi is at best a sticking plaster for users with higher numbers of Wi-Fi devices. I'll assume that most people on this forum are experimenting with multiple smart technologies meaning lots of Wi-Fi devices that don't consume much bandwidth individually, but do join a wireless AP and contribute to connected client load. To note here, my home network currently reports around 150 devices in total at any one time.
This kind of load is patently too much for a small ISP router, both in terms of client connections and IP address assignment reliability. Mesh Wi-Fi might solve the client connection problem if you have enough nodes, but it will still rely on the router to do DHCP and DNS as well passing Internet traffic. The first thing to do is to try and get some clarity on how many devices you really have connecting to Wi-Fi and how they are distributed amongst the mesh nodes - too many clients connecting to a single node is the same problem.
Secondly look at your ISP service. Both BT and EE offer 4G connectivity backup on their broadband service, or consider adding a second 4G/5G service to your home, Three offer first three months at half price right now (£10/month) - especially attractive if you are in a rural area where mobile signal is OK but wired broadband services are slow and unreliable.
My personal solution to avoiding Mesh Wi-Fi and creating a resilient and reliable Internet connection is to use TP-Link EAPxxx access points connected to TP-Link switches, managed using their Omada SD-LAN/WAN platform. It's cheap enough to get started, each AP has an ethernet backhaul to the core network and TP-Link's router can manage multiple Internet services. I can create a dedicated IOT SSID on the access points and only allow 2.4Ghz on that SSID to make the installation of smart devices easier. The APs can mesh automatically if the backhaul is lost or you just need to extend the Wi-Fi quickly without dragging a cable, but Powerline Ethernet can work as a CAT5/6/7 or fibre substitute very happily.
My message is that it's easy not to notice the growth in the number of wireless devices connecting to your home network, and then to blame the instability on the broadband provider. Build a stable and scalable home network if you're serious about this kind of stuff, the number of devices connecting is growing all the time. That doesn't mean that Tado and others shouldn't be planning for days when the Internet or the servers that run things are down in their product design and implementation, but make sure that your problems are definitely not inside your own property and reduce the likelihood of an outage.
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Thanks @XKRMonkey good points.
I’m semi rural but with a pretty stable FTTC 80mb/20mb link, we’re close to the cabinet so get near to that with a low ping. Sadly no reliable 4G to speak of, but we are rumoured to have some community fibre (FTTP) options in the near future which could be interesting.
I have a 5 node Deco P9 system serving as my mesh network. I’m aware it’s only WiFi5 but have just 20-30 indicated connected devices.
I’m loathe to create a more complex network at this time and take your points on board but don’t think we are anywhere near power users yet. I’d be very surprised if Tado is hitting home network limitations given our current usage, especially at 4am.
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You could use Tado with home assistant without internet access. Don’t know if anyone already wrote this. Add the integration „homekit controller“ in HA and then it is possible to add the bridge. This way tado can be controlled offline via home assistant. Not the best solution, but it works. And i also agree: an offline mode is a must. It such a shame, from all tvrs tado in my opinion looks the best, but the the always on mode is a total deal breaker. If i wouldn’t be able to add it via home assistant and homekit, i would have gotten rid of them ages ago. Tado would be able to sell so many more devices, if it only had an proper offline mode. I alone had to tell at least 8 people not to buy tado just because of this one stupid reason.0
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Smart control of your heating and hot water?
Not so smart after all if all it takes is loss of internet and you turn in to a caveman with no heating.1 -
@Flow Thanks for your comments, assuming that your app can show you distribution of clients per AP, then you're in a good place.
The device creep is insidious though, we now all have smartphones, tablets, laptops and wi-fi connected wearables (watches, fitness devices etc), probably 4 devices per family member. We may have kids with consoles (PSx/XBox) so a few more devices there, streaming devices for TV, Smart Speakers. Newer consumer appliances (TVs, fridges, microwave oven even coffee machines) just for software updates, printers, doorbells, live feed cameras. Finally the growing smart footprint of things such as the Tado bridge, light switches and smart plugs or sockets and all the rest.
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I've just come across this issue whilst researching Tado v Hive v something else and as a result of it I can't consider Tado unless someone can tell me it's now solved. Even if I have one or two internet outrages a year it's simply not good enough for such an expensive piece of kit running an integral household function.
Reading this has been useful though as I'll check out the Drayton Wiser and think more about Hive despite the negative reviews on that too for other reasons.. and maybe just wait a few more years as it seems as if the technology is still too basic.0 -
well, it happened again, Virgin Media Broadband offline again, and this mean NO Hot Water control, THANKS TADO˚ for not allow me to change my hot water temp while offline, Looks like i'll be having a cold shower tonight!!!!
@Jurian Tado get your *naughtyword* together and FIX THIS CRAP!!!!!!
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@andyblac Shouldn't you be directing your ire at Virgin Media?
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To be fair, I'm with @andyblac, it's ridiculous.
@andyblac Might be too late, but you can turn on the hot water directly from your extension kit, which would at least allow you to have a warm shower! https://support.tado.com/en/articles/3387246-how-can-i-control-my-heating-system-when-the-radio-link-between-the-smart-thermostat-and-the-extension-kit-is-lost
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@jcwacky yeah, i know about the button, but my issue is I have a combi boiler with opentherm and hot water control enabled, so i can schedule the temp for different times of the day, 40˚c during the day, so water is hot enough to wash up and I don't need to add cold water to it, and at night for showers etc, to 48˚c, the shower mixer tap need higher temp as the mixer has built in anti-scalding so always add some cold. ATM with no internet there is no way for me to change the temps and it is locked into 40˚c. So with no internet i have no control over hot water temps.
Does anyone know of a Smart Thermostat system that allows TRV's to call for heat like tado˚ all the one i have looked at just seem to open / close the TRV valves, It also needs to support OpenThem.
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@andyblac you can set the hot water temperature on your Tado thermostat manually - you won’t be able to set a schedule but you can still control the temperature.0
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@what_a_tado outages inevitably happen, often at the worst times.. as I found recently when my phone line/internet was damaged by workmen.
Pure and simple, Tado has the most basic vulnerability that they have shown no interest in resolving.
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@Flow Sure outages happen but @andyblac said that Virgin Media Broadband was offline AGAIN. Personally, I would look at switching broadband provider if that was a regular occurrence.
With regards Tado's lack of interest in resolving the issue, their representatives have stated more than once on this forum that they are unable to introduce a basic backup schedule on this iteration of their hardware. Whether people wish to believe that or not is up to them but if it is a major issue for them I would suggest that they look at an alternative thermostat which offers an offline solution e.g. Hive.
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@what_a_tado
V3+ now, so there has been many opportunities to address this vulnerability along the way. Tado just haven’t.
V4 has been rumoured for well over a year, and despite staff members highlighting other new features in this thread, there is no word on developing basic offline scheduling.
Based on track record.. it doesn’t look good does it?0 -
@johnnyp78 don't see a way too, if i press the button on any of my Wireless Thermostats all I see is Room temp. How do you set Water Temp then ?
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If you look in settings > hot water, it should tell you which thermostat is set to control your hot water1
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@jcwacky correct, and with no internet, this mean no control over hot water, it is beyond stupid. Internet is still off, really need to find a replacement I'm done with tado˚. I have been on my phone most of the trying to find one, but all the other are either Google shite or alexa I don't want either as I want full local control.
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@andyblac look at what @johnbur wrote. One of your thermostats should be set to control hot water.1
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@GrayDav4276 Based on the hints we've seen, and reading between the lines, I'm optimistic that a new version will include a local fallback schedule, and I expect it to be out within the next 12 months. As for whether existing users will just be able to purchase a new bridge, or if we'll need to replace all our kit, I feel it could go either way, but obviously hope it isn't the latter!
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@jcwacky given that the two Tado members of staff who gave these hints many months ago have now abandoned these forums, I don't have your confidence, and I sit firmly in the cynics camp, but I hope you are right!1
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@jcwacky from memory the only hint we have received is that this issue is ‘a priority’? Whereas other features like better integration and stronger connectivity had actually been witnessed in dev by the moderators?
And on the contrary, we had a fairly honest comment from one of the mods highlighting the cost/benefit analysis required for new features - it was not clear in this case whether Tado see this vulnerability the same way we do.
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So this all leaves the big question "Are there any other better options out there ?"
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