Launch a range extender or upgrade to mesh network
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Had Tado for 1year, plug and play it is not. Long thin house with 500mm thick stone walls, so definitely challenging. Have managed after much trial and error to get an optimum bridge position, centre of house upstairs and pointing down, reaches all TRV’s and stats apart from intermittent drop out on one edge case TRV at end of house. But what I cannot get is the wireless receiver to work (what calls for heat to the boiler), it’s in same room as TRV’s that happily connect to the bridge, but whenever I pair the receiver (which it seems to do successfully) I just end up with no remote connection and all devices have no remote connection shown in app (but work from previous set schedules). I basically have to hardwire the heat on command to boiler and just run the TRV’s independently at the moment. Tech support seem no help, just keep asking me to re-pair and reset.
any ideas?
by the way wholeheartedly agree with all comments about need for extender or handling two bridges for one home in backend architecture. Let’s face it, stable and comprehensive connectivity is THE basic requirement for any IOT system. The length of time this thread has been running speaks volumes of Tado’s commitment to its customers. everyone on here has spent as a minimum +£500 on a smart heating system, it’s just not good enough Tado.
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@Elizabeth
I'm concerned that your batteries are only lasting 2 weeks with poor communication TRVs.
Some of mine communicate poorly but the batteries still last 6+ months.
I'm wondering if it is worth switching the TRV with another (closer to the bridge). 2 week battery life sounds like it might be faulty.0 -
@badfly
I had this problem.
Set zone controllers to 'independent' for ALL TRVs and stats. Then reset and pair the extension kit, then reassign the zone controllers.
This resolved it for me.1 -
@badfly During one of my many contacts with tado over my problem, they suggested that the TRV might be too close to the bridge - perhaps yours is too close to the receiver?
@Pete I've swapped it out (I have a couple spare) and it doesn't help - it just flattens the batteries and after that it will periodically work for a bit until nothing.
Hey ho.
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@Pete @Elisabeth thanks for the tips, actually I can get the receiver to pair successfully and even update the wireless receiver to latest firmware 89.1 when in line of sight +3m of the bridge I.e, in same room. I can see everything in app working ok as well, but as soon as I move the internet bridge back up stairs, after about 30mins I lose wireless receiver connection and then of course cannot see anything else in the app. I know I can make them independent of the wireless receiver to see them again, but that makes the boiler control part redundant as I have to have it forced on. I am now buying 3m Ethernet cable and usb lead to give more flexibility with positioning bridge upstairs to see if I have a sweeter sweet spot to get stable connection to receiver.
It a none sense really, all this faffing about. Imagine buying a car and then having to take advise on how many bricks to put under one wheel to make sure the fuel in the tank can reach the engine. That’s how fundamental the connectivity requirement is for IOT.
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@badfly
I've positioned my bridge in the loft with a foil wrapped board 150mm above it (that made a massive difference).
The passive repeater helped to improve signal further but did not fix it completely.
I also tried soldering a longer antenna onto the bridge circuit board but managed to break the antenna all together so had to buy a new bridge (which took ages to get working). I'm going to try soldering a new antenna again but this time extending the existing antenna rather than replacing existing antenna.0 -
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Couldn't agree more with the comments. Range extender is badly needed. I've moved theBridge around the house but it always misses one or two of the radiators. Please sort this out extender or mesh required.
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We’ve setup Draton Wiser in my brothers house a month or so ago including their range extenders. So far so good.
If no range extender materialises from Tado by the end of this heating season then I’m switching our house over too in the spring, assuming all going well with Drayton. Already too chilly to have any boiler down time this year!0 -
As per my other discussion on here I managed to solve my range issues by orienting the bridge horizontally in parallel to the width of my bungalow.
In my previous house that was a 3 storey town house I had to position it vertically on the bottom floor to get full coverage.2 -
All my range problems are now fixed too following support from tado.
Hallelujah!
I've found that if I position the bridge at 72degrees from vertical, orientated in line with the equator. I then just reposition any problematic radiators on flexi-hoses so they are aligned with the lunar trajectory for 2021 (will need a minor adjustment next year).
As long as ambient radiation levels stay below EU recommendations and my neighbours park their cars in conjunction with a simple plan I provide them then my tado system works perfectly!
If only others took these small steps we could drop this nonsense talk of needing range extenders.7 -
Can we turn this thread into suggestions for alternatives to tado that actually work, I live in a 40sq meter apartment and can’t get it to work properly (my apt. is basically a square evenly divided into 4 rooms) I’ve tried a bunch of things, different angles, locations, …
I can easily return it and get my money back (the website I’ve bought it from has excellent customer service) I’d just like to know if any of the alternatives are better. So far I’ve found netatmo to be offering the same deal (that is radiator valves and a wall thermostat controlling the boiler)0 -
I haven’t tried installing my bridge in my upstairs neighbors apartment facing down, that might be it 🤔2
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@Pete what's the orientation of your house? I could ask the landlord to turn the building 4 degrees...🤔2
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A month later and my 12 TRVs and Wired Thermostat are still working correctly, no gaps in the graphs. I don’t know if it’s a combination of the magnetic forces over Berlin having aligned with the tectonic plates but I am so damn happy it’s finally working as (mostly) advertised, 12 months after first switching. I wish I could provide more useful info but the Bridge hasn’t moved, nor has my router. This may all be down to the firmware updates released in the last months.
Surprisingly all the batteries are still the originals, only 1 is reporting low battery now (in the kitchen, where it usually is the coldest due to the tiles).1 -
Please make an range extender, or at least allow us to link a second bridge to extend the range of the system. Thank you!
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Lately I have constant stable connection to the TRV that normally has connection problems.
But now I have other TVR's with connection problems. It seems that the bridge sometimes can't connect with all the TRV's at the same time. There's always one left behind. And one of the TRV is not too far away from the Bridge. Very strange.
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Hi . Just bought 3 weeks ago a set of TADO .
We all have the same issues. very dissapointed.
Why can't TADO open THREAD protocol like EVE https://www.evehome.com/
This can bring a real solution to everyone.
Worse TADO seems not to offer any good solutions to that issue since years.
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If it’s with 28 days you can return it under distance selling regulations. Go get a better system as tado seem to have no plans to fit their broken product.
Maybe we should try a class action like they do in the US? As their product has flaws that they do not tell new customers about and that they clearly have no plans to fix?
Steve0 -
@wafergold Quite frankly I’d be amazed if Tado wasn’t actively looking at adopting Thread - I seem to remember seeing somewhere on here a mention from them of new hardware in the works.
The problem is the complete silence from Tado means unhappy existing customers thinking they are shafted with a product that doesn’t work left thinking about leaving Tado for another setup, and potential new customers being put off.1 -
It’s so cold today when I arrived home. 3 out of 5 rooms were offline… No matter how I position the hub, the valves are never online all together at the same time.
Tado, please, develop a range extender that can communicate with the hub over a wired network. Please!0 -
yes to a wired network!! that would make me very happy!
Also, I've just noticed that you can no longer change the temperature offset in the app. When did this vanish?
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@Elisabeth temperature offset is still there for me? (Android)0
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I also suffer from poor connectivity at the ends of my house.
Please, tado add an extender or second bridge to the base system.
This has been a long term request and it's about time that tado delivered!
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@johnbur found it.. it's not where it was the last time I looked (which was probably 3+ years ago)
Also... I got my hands on some Duracell Optimum AA Alkaline Batteries 1.5 V LR6 MX1500 today and tried them out. They connected first time (unusual) and so far (ok all of around 6 hours) haven't dropped the connection once - despite me constantly changing the temp, schedule etc. On normal form, the trv should start dropping connections in a few days and be dead within a week - we'll see.
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@Pete Thanks for your comment. You made my day!
We are still monitoring the situation.
As with any wireless device, range can be impacted by many factors. What our data shows is that the vast majority of our customers (even when connecting many tado devices) do not have significant (or none at all) issues with the radio connection.
The best way to do something now is to rotate, change orientation, and move your internet bridge.
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To address some of the comments and give a bit more context:
- Prevalence, 1. We have tested our hardware in many homes and have hundreds of thousands of customers. The vast, vast majority have no significant range/connection issues. A very small but significant minority does have range issues, which are very real and which we do take serious. This forum thread might make it appear as if it's super common, but customers who have no issues will not show up here. Still, people who have range issues have issues that are very real. We know this.
- Prevalence, 2. This is easily the most common issue our customers have with our product, so it is very much a concern to us.
- Pre-Purchase. If you do have connection issues, they will show up on day one. Typically performance does not degrade over time, if your home/walls block our signals too much you notice this within the first day or two after installation. This is most common in UK homes with very thick rock walls, or very large homes. Sometimes it's something else, like a non-tado device that broadcasts at a similar frequency or a Faraday cage-like construction. If, after some simple troubleshooting, it is not resolved it is clear your house and the current tado° hardware are not compatible with each other. This is something you will notice within days. The common advice is then to return it to the store where you've bought it, which is always allowed in the EU within a few weeks of purchase. No questions asked. I don't think Brexit changed much in this regard in the UK, so you should be able to do the same there.
- Troubleshooting. See the link above and Jurian's posts in this thread.
- Improvements for current hardware. We are working on improving the performance of the current hardware. We have released some updates to the firmware this year to address range issues, and will continue to do so in the future. As the already existing hardware itself is a constant, these are software/firmware based improvements. This can improve performance by some percent, but it will not do miracles. If you have minor issues, our current and upcoming firmware improvements might have a very noticeable effect. If you have major issues, the firmware improvements will simply not be enough. Firmware updates are installed automatically.
- Improving the Internet Bridge. The Internet Bridge as we offer it right now is already at the legal limit of its signal strength, so simply offering roughly the same device with a more powerful antenna is not an option.
- New generations of hardware will be designed to be able to deal with range issues in a much better way. If this will be a thread based system or something else I cannot confirm at this point, as a final decision has not been taken. We have been evaluating different options for some time now. We clearly are aware of the issue and want to resolve it the best we can. You can be sure we do care about unhappy customers, as even the biggest pessimist will understand it hurts our bottom line.
I understand we are not offering a short term solution to the issues many have. However, I think it's important that we are transparent about the issue, put it in context, show the possibilities and tell you about the real things we are doing. We don't want to make a promise that cannot be kept.
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