Develop a "basic backup schedule" mode for when Tado outage or loss of internet
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Let me take some educated guesses. Tado will introduce a new thread/matter based internet hub in ‘23, and it will have some capabilities to work without cloud connection. It will probably be backward compatible with the existing radiator knobs via 868 mhz. The current bridge will possibly be updated to Matter but not Thread like the pending Matter update of the Hue bridge.
There will be new Tado radiator knobs introduced that will be thread end-points, enabled via 2.4 ghz that work only via the new internet bridge. In that way adding a threadrouter (by Tado or other brands) to increase range is easy. So range will be no more an issue in that situation.
But the old 868 mhz existing radiator knobs will not be upgraded to thread because they most probably have no 2.4 ghz antenna (or because of other hardware/software issues, and a thread network does not work via 868 mhz). So for current radiator knobs the range issue will not be resolved, unless a specific 868 mhz extender is developed which Tado did not do the last years. And to work without cloud you need to buy a new internet bridge.
Yes, a lot of money is coming to Tado, but I doubt money will flow to build an legacy extender which only part of their existing customers needs.
With the buying of aWATTar their focus wil be “whilst proving as a substantial business for tado across both hardware and SaaS subscription software services. tado offers time-of-use energy tariffs which enable customers to benefit from volatility in the energy markets.” They want to sell hardware and subcriptions to manage energy usage during the day. This will require major developments of hard- and software because only heating the boiler during the night or whenever energy is cheap will not cut it. You need to manage all major energy users in a home including a (car)battery and solarpanels. They want smart homegrid management devices, along with selling energy.
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I agree. It would be nice to have the 24 schedule instead om AM/PM.
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As far as I know @humle is correct. We show the time format of the device you're using. @GrayDav4276 is certainly correct; we are a German company. I am writing this from Germany and the am/pm thing is as foreign to us as it is to you. On all my devices tado° shows the 24h format.
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My phone is set to show 24 h format but the app. only gives me a 12 h clock, with no am/pm indicator!
What am I missing please?0 -
Those who says that with kids-prevention disabled allows us to manual operate the smart radiator valves, I am not sure… in my case I had to purchase a wifi thermostat to avoid false temperature from radiators on valves on every room, and it now measures the room temperature with thermostat instead of the valve. Because of that I think every valve is an slave of the wifi thermostat and if no connection to cloud, valves can’t even decide by itselfs to be opened or closed.
I know that it could be difficult to develop something on current hw, but please Tado, please! We beg you some kind of workaround. There must be a way… at least a way to avoid that missing 1 only minute of connection could make loss the instruction to turn on the heating and not being checked anymore until next schedule change.
Please Tado. I insist. We have invest too much money (Around 900€ In my case) so that you can leave us alone and the only solution is continue investing more money on new bridges or even a completely new set (like your advisement of buying some additional “cheap” wifi thermostats to solve the false measures from radiator valves)0 -
Completey agree with everyone here. I was between a Honeywell system and Tado, if I knew that the schedule is service based I would have gone with the Honeywell smart trv setup. That is basic functionality of the device that the Tado replaced......
Shocking to find this out now. Also considering now sending this back.1 -
+1
Do I need to say more?!
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I wish I’d read all of this before investing nearly a grand into a system that relies on the internet. Living in the UK I am used to regular internet outages, how annoying.0
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When I mentioned the problem to tado, i got this answer:
"You are correct, the Smart Schedule operates from the server. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to control it from the tado° app. If you have intermittent internet at home, we recommend you contact your ISP. Your tado° team"
Shame on Tado, they not only ignore customer needs, but they also state this easy task as impossible while communicating me as I were an idiot.
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@ahorvath73 There is a post here (if I am correct from Rob) confirming how this feature works and why is so difficult for tado° to implement local based automation etc.
I expect no change to this behavior for the current range ;-(
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Re this. Would I be correct in thinking that If I retrieved our old thermostat and switched over all our Tado valves to our old valves we'd simply revert to our old system? We don't have any problems with the internet and in principle I don't have a problem with the way tado operates, I just like to have fall back options. This bit of wizardry is beyond me but I'd get a heating engineer to do it if it was feasible..
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+1 this feature would be massively helpful. It would more the setup more highly available incase of outages.0
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Frustratingly, we had no hot water this evening for my children’s bathtime.
I’ve not used the tado app for months over the summer, but opening it today the app also tells me 4 rooms are offline (lucky I’m not using heating in the house yet!).
When troubleshooting, tado support tell me they have server issues today affecting device connectivity, so I assume this is why water is cold.
I guess it’s the time of year when I get p***** off that I invested in the tado ecosystem all over again….0 -
With the proliferation of more capable smart phones Im sure a more capable Tado APP would be able to provide this function.
The lack of this function is one of Tados Achillies heels
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+1 for a basic schedule or any remaing logic when an internet connection is lost.
I think it is also unacceptable that you aren't able to have a nice bathtime when an internet connection is lost. That doesn't make the thermostat very smart.
If the thermostats needs to keep minimal (due to battery use) I hope this logic can be done by the bridge.
I hope that Tado can come up with a good solution. :-)
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It would be a major architectural change to try to add that kind of function to the app. Also, relying on someone's smart phone being at home when their Internet goes down is not such a great idea.
This functionality belongs in the hub/bridge, and it is a huge design mistake by Tado that they didn't include it. I have smart lighting and power from a different vendor, and all of the scheduling etc. is handled in their bridge and works fine even if the Internet is down (by design). It isn't hard to do, but Tado decided up front not to and now they are faced with how to retrofit an obviously 'must have' feature into their current low powered hardware.
Personally I'd happily pay a reasonable price for an upgraded bridge that supported this capability.
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Good to see the chat on this and @Rob's responses. Yes it's a design fault and hopefully we will get a new bridge at some point that is backward compatible with our TRVs etc. I do have a question right now though - with an outage like yesterday, will Apple Homekit (which connects directly to the bridge) actually control the heating and hot water manually without reference to Tado's servers? I've seen this mentioned here before but it woudl be good if Tado can come back and confirm this?
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@thefern HomeKit does work with the Tado devices when the Internet is down, but unless you set up your own HomeKit automations (which would then conflict with what Tado itself is doing) then:
- HomeKit only reports the room temperatures
- HomeKit allows you to manually adjust the temperatures (same effect as a Tado manual adjustment on the device or in the app)
- HomeKit does not know about hot water control in Tado at all.
So unfortunately, HomeKit is not really much of solution to the 'Internet down' issue.
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@Rob Yesterday's issue with your servers yet again highlights why an updated bridge is essential. It is crazy that after all this time, I had no hot water or heating because of an issue at your end.
Years of kicking the can down the road does not help us when we are about to enter another heating season, and unfortunately you do not seem to have the clout to get the message through to the Tado decision makers.
I, like many others have said would be happy to pay for a bridge that protects us from the vagaries of your servers or Internet outages - this has been a known issue for years now, and sadly I can never recommend Tado to anyone because of it.0 -
If Tado could make HomeKit aware of hot water control, this would remove a lot of my annoyance over internet vulnerability.
HW scheduling in my house is twice a day, every day. So I could have HomeKit permanently control that simple schedule via my local network.
Then when there is an outage or server problem like yesterday, we’d only have to worry about manually adjusting radiators for room heat (although with child-locked TRV’s maybe that’s also a task for HomeKit). Anyway I’m much less inconvenienced by that, seeing as I can put on a coat, and a room can heat fairly quickly on demand.. unlike a hot water tank.
Clearly, I can’t finish this post without venting again about how absurd it is that my smart system can be so dumb!2 -
@Flow Unfortunately that is a HomeKit limitation. HomeKit simply has no notion of a 'water heater' device so it is hard to model it. Maybe submit a suggestion to Apple (good luck with that!). We switched to using an electric immersion heater for our hot water. Not only does it save us money (electric water heating is way more efficient than gas) but now I do indeed have it completely controlled with HomeKit and 'it just works' regardless of what my Internet connection may be doing. All you need is a HomeKit compatible 16A switch or relay.
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There is a request here: https://community.tado.com/en-gb/discussion/comment/41560#Comment_41560 so suggest upvoting it.
@ChrisJ Homekit might not have a hot water device but could expose a simple 'switch' integration. Doesn't have to be hot water. This is possible today and should be added.
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@thefern I don't personally use Homebridge. I did set it up a year or so ago but found it a bit flaky and also overkill for my needs, so I turned it all off again :-) HomeKit's own automations are fairly powerful, especially if you use third party app such as 'Controller for HomeKit' to access some of the capabilities not exposed via Apple's own Home app (yes, I know...). I don't currently use those to control the heating (that is what Tado is for of course) but I do use it to control Hot Water (via an electric immersion heater with a HomeKit compatible on-off switch). That means that my hot water control is now totally independent of Tado (and the Internet).
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@Flow @thefern A simple 'switch' control might work for HomeKit (that is a question for Tado). certainly HomeKit (of course) already has those. Tado determine how their devices get exposed to HomeKit so they could expose a simple on/off for Hot Water and they you could automate it with HomeKit (or HomeBridge) as desired. I guess that is another feature request for Tado...
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