[Released – ver. 5.10] Manual Control of Home and Away mode
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@AlexC, sure.
I created a "scene" in the Homekit Home app that turns off each zone. Then I created a Siri shortcut to run that scene. When it runs, it turns off all the zones.
Then, In IFTT, I created a Button Widget that triggers the tado "Return to tado Auto mode". Using the IFTT app on iOS, you can add that as a widget.
So, tap the Siry "Heating Off" button when we leave and then tap the IFTT "Heating On" button when we're heading home.
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What happens if you turn off the Bridge for many days or so? Not useful for winter in very cold countries cos of frost protection but would it not work as a home/away switch for most of us?
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I agree. I've just put in a Tado system on my Rayburn 480K. My Rayburn takes 7 to 8 hours to warm the house up from a few days of cooling down. I also do a fair bit of travelling and I cannot see how Geofencing can decide if I'm coming home, or just going to another in-between stop. A manual button (in fact the existing one modified!) just needs to stay on screen and toggle between switch to home and switch to away. A button to switch it on manually would maintain comfort levels, and we would be able to save heating oil by switching back to away mode a few hours (perhaps even half a day) before leaving! It would also mean that I wouldn't have to adjust the temperatures of all three zones in my house each time I go out and come back again.
Programming this would be trivial, so I cannot see why there are so many arguments on this thread about its implementation.
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It is a total pain, and if I fall under a bus my partner will have no idea how the central heating works, but I have now got IFTTT applets to lower the temperature for the house, and to restore it to auto on demand. It didn't seem to be working because, I suspect, the action is only triggered when a threshold is passed, not when the system is already in a zone (e.g. above 19C). Could be wrong about that.
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"So the further away from home you are, the lower it will set the set point, as you get closer to home it will gradually increase setpoint, with the heating kicking in if needed. Then when you get within your "home zone" it switches fully to your scheduled set point."
Can somebody confirm if this is exactly how Auto-assist works in the v3 version? I.e. step-increases as you get closer and step-decreases as you get further.
Or is it an automated version of "do you want to switch to xxx mode", simply bypassing the notification on app-enabled devices?
If it's the former I think that's actually worth £25 a year.
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Thanks jcwacky
Do we have any control over the distances of Eco, Balance and Comfort?
Both my wife and I work about 11 miles from our house; on Eco setting it wants to heat to 17 and this time of year means heat will be called for!!
Air Comfort is showing outside temps as 8 degrees C:
Downstairs zones are reporting 17.8 and 18, bedrooms and bathrooms are reporting 15. With Auto Assist in Eco mode all of upstairs zones would call for heat!
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Do we have any control over the distances of Eco, Balance and Comfort?
@ldoodle I don't believe so. Maybe Tado can adjust something on their side to make your "Eco" mode, even more "Eco" for you, but not quite "Off", to let the temp drop to something like 12ºC for you, it would obviously be colder upon your arrival then though.
Other than that, your main option is to disable the "Preheat before arrival" option.
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Is there such a thing as a Smart Switch which is battery powered and just makes or breaks? If there is, putting it in line between the Tado boiler control thermostat and the boiler would permit control for home and away? If I understand the tado system well enough, everything would continue to operate when the smart switch is off but the boiler wound not fire?
I have done a fair bit of searching but am not expert enough to evaluate the switches.
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@samd Yes Fibaro make such a thing that you could install behind the isolator switch for the boiler. It would work but it's a bit crude and not ideal for the boiler to have the power cut all the time.
This would also confuse tado if you do have geolocation and such as it would be requesting heat not seeing the heat come into play and would think your system is weaker than it is0 -
@dougie175 Many thanks for prompt reply. My Tado boiler control stat only has 2 wires and I had assumed therefore that it just makes a connection between those 2 to start the boiler not power the boiler. I, for example , have the boiler stat on frost protection permanently and let other devices call for heat . So by breaking the circuit through the smart switch would we not just be replicating the only function of the boiler stat?
The reason I thought in this direction was an earlier post, I think by @Vertigo who said that occasionally he took the boiler stat off the wall to mimic 'away' mode.
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One way that I overcome this problem is by using Apple Home. From there you can switch the heating back on, you can even do this remotely when leaving work. I’m actually going to use Apple’s shortcut app to trigger an event (when leaving work) to turn on the heating.0
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+1 for this suggestion.
A user friendly implementation would in my opinion be a "Master Mode" setting where you can choose between Normal (follow the normal schedules and geofencing) or other modes such as Home, Away and your own custom master modes, where you can manually set the temperature of each room to predefined custom temperatures with one click.
Until this feature is implemented I can honestly not recommend friends and family to buy Tado. I bought Tado because I assumed I would be able to do this and I am considering returning 12 thermostats.
Hope that you will implement this soon. Should be easy to code and a lot of people would be happier with your product and get more people to buy it!
Thanks!2 -
The GDPR compliance of only offering a GPS based option is interesting. It's definitely in the gray area of requiring to submit very personal data in order to have a basic function up and running. It would depend on how tado is using the location data, I'm guessing the long delays we see before it figures out you're home is related to this.
All this aside...
It's a basic feature to have a manual switch, just build it Tado... a manual switch should've been mvp, I get you're tying to sell a service, and the manual switch reduces chances of selling that, but it's time to just build it.1 -
@Edr that's a great point. I'm a privacy professional and am familiar with the GDPR and the processes for raising such concerns with privacy authorities.
I've just sent a request to Tado° to get their official statement on how this design is compliant with the GDPR. I will compare that to the text of the GDPR, and unless I'm convinced that they've actually got a valid justification/ balance, I will file a formal complaint with my national Data Protection Authority (Spain).
It would get subrogated over to the German DPA for the land in which Tado° is established (Bavaria, the Bayern LDA, BayLDA). It wouldn't hurt to get others to pile on, if we can work up a reasonable case that Tado°'s current design violates GDPR principles.
Stay tuned.
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How exactly are we going to benefit if you prove that tados current method of geolocation isn't GDPR compliant?
That will just mean the tado team need to spend more time and money working out how to achieve the same results as we currently achieve via geolocation without breaking GDPR. This is turn will slow down any progress for future development requests like this.
All I can see is users either losing features or delays in progress by going at tado about gdpr. As someone with a half decent knowledge of gdpr I honestly can't see that tado are breaking any compliance issues.
I'm all for trying to get this feature from tado I just think this is the completely wrong way to go about it. We are willingly giving away our location data for tado to process this data and provide a service if you don't want them to have the location data them don't use the geolocation?0 -
Hi @dougie175
If indeed it is inadequate under the GDPR to require location services for such a basic function, Tado° will have to do the obvious and simple thing - give us the manual switch that many users are asking for. That's MUCH easier and cheaper for them than going through contortions to "show" "compliance" for non-compliant behavior.
So, step by step; let's see what Tado°'s reply to my request is.
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At what the cost of the geolocation? No thanks.
Do you have the same issue with a sat nav provider knowing your location? I honestly don't see how anyone can expect geolocation on tado to work without knowing where the user's are. I trust tado to ensure that data is safe and not abuse it. Providing they honor that trust I can see absolutely no reason for them not to have my location data it helps provide me with a very handy function. I just wish the geolocation came with a simple manual override switch for home or away when required1 -
Hi @dougie175 No worries at all - the existing location-based functions need not change. The non-compliance would be forcing people who DON'T want to use location based services to do so, in order to receive basic functionality from a thermostat. We only want to force Tado° to ALSO give us the manual Home/Away setting.
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Clearly we all have different thresholds to how much “personal” data is shared. Personally, I decided to trust tado that they use my geolocation data legitimately. I’d certainly not want the current functionality to go.
However, I do think their policy should be clearly available. I couldn’t find any reference to GDPR on tado’s site.
Hopefully, there’s a solution to all of this to keep us all happy:
- a clear opt in/out policy
- a manual override switch for home/away.
Tado, time to listen and act!0 -
@dougie175 there is absolutely no need to send GPS coordinates of every household member to tado, even for geolocation / dumb assist service to work. At most what is needed is the phone sending home/away status or possibly obfuscated distance or direction or ETA data. They do not need GPS coordinates at all. This information shouldnt be accessible to other family members either; when tado forces my housekeeper or babysitter to install tado app in order not to freeze in my house, I have no right to see their GPS location at any time, or vice versa. The tado API provides every user with that info nonetheless. Its completely unacceptable.
Lastly, even obfuscated home/away/distance/direction status information is private enough, that I very much prefer it be sent to my home, not to tado. Imagine someone hacking tado servers and getting address information, schedules and real time geolocation of everyone that lives there.
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The privacy discussion is interesting, but perhaps it could be taken to a different thread as it seems be a side issue, since this thread is purely about the missing functionality.
I set tado up in my house 2 weeks ago. 11 TRVs, 2 room thermostats, 1 extension kit for hot water. I was quite shocked to find that I could not manually switch to Away mode.
I've seen a few threads about this missing functionality, and in each one someone tells people "you're doing it wrong, you don't need this functionality, just leave it down to tado to preheat for you". Clearly this is not sufficient - and no matter how much tado improve the Preheat Before Arrival function, 3 AI modes will never be sufficient to cover everybody's individual situations. I doubt it would even cover 90% of users' needs.
Here's my issue with it - myself and my partner (the only ones using the geofencing) often travel. Sometimes it will be the other side of the world, but sometimes we will be staying 5 miles down the road for a few days. In this situation, Preheat Before Arrival keeps the house very close to normal Home temperatures, even on the Eco setting.
Customising the sensitivity of the preheat distance will not work for me, because often I'm 5 miles down the road and I do want it to stay warm for when I return. There's no way the AI can ever tell the difference between these two without me providing some input to tado.
I understand that having a manual Home/Away switch will make the paid service less attractive, so why is this functionality not part of the paid service instead then? I can't understand it.
One of the reasons I chose tado over competitors is that I thought it had a young, agile software development team. But so far I've been very disappointed to find some very basic functionality missing.
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Another vote for allowing manual control for following reasons:
1) Comfort mode does not work for hot water underfloor heating which takes a lot longer to warm up from a cool state
2) We often have guests in the house and its tedious to go through each room reseting the temp or the Smart program
3) THIS IS A SERIOUSLY EASY UPGRADE TO IMPLMENT - Come on guys JDI!
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This is ridiculous, I can set status to "away" manually, but never set it back to "home" ? It is like a key that locks your home but does not allow you to unlock it again. This is not going to work for me, sorry Tado.
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I am in the same boat. Confused as to why I can't set home or away or when I turn off geofencing that I lose the ability to set a schedule for my heating or have a global on off switch like even the cheapest house thermostat . I have left a review warning others on Google and Amazon hopefully this will prompt a resolution to this ridiculous problem .
Honestly I am so close to returning it all ....
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Sorry hadnt seen this 'new idea'.. I've just posted another one regarding Manual Home and Away selection.
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9 months later, the most popular thread and request by far, this trivial request isnt even acknowledged by tado. I would suggest everyone go give 1 star reviews on amazon and google play until tado solves this. If you do so, expect to get a response to your review inviting you to post your suggestion here. Oh the irony.
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+1 for this suggestion.
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Do tado respond to any requests? Do they care about the people they have already got a customers? Do I have to junk this system and buy myself a Nest or a Hive? Grrrrr.
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