[Released – ver. 5.10] Manual Control of Home and Away mode
Comments
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The lack of response to this thread from tado is very telling. The disdain they show for their customers is made clear. This is a logical and obvious feature yet they ignore their customers.
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Yes I totally agree Tado you need to listen and act as I for one will NOT buy anymore tado equipment until you do.
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Hi folks,
I feel so disappointed as well regarding this lake of home/away manual switch. I contacted the support which ended up giving me workarounds like you. Basically configuring manually each device of the system.
I'm a software developer and I can ensure you that there are no technical reason to not implement this feature. In our case, Tado clearly want to force us to share our location in order to track us. This can be related to all massive surveillance revealed by the NYT last week (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/location-tracking-cell-phone.html). Considering Amazon has heavily invested in tado, you can imagine where your data goes.
What can we do? Give a lot of feedback to Tado and publicly (App store, play store, Amazon) regarding this issue. It is nowhere mentioned that setting home/away mode requires sharing constantly our location when we bought those devices. That could help us to raise the issue with the GDPR concerns.
The behaviour of tado regarding this issue clearly doesn't inspire any trust in how they process our data.
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I too need the feature where I can turn on Home mode even though I am away. The lack of having this option is extremely annoying!0
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Just installed the system. It's taking some getting used to. However:
Before I bought it, I was aware of the subscription and the geofencing options. And was under the impression, that the system would work fine without geofencing.
People should be able to choose how deep a level of automation they want. Now it appears the system is crippled - deliberately- to force you onto the subscription service.
Look at all the privacy- and energy- eating settings you need to change on your phone:
Besides that, I prefer some more manual control, which is much more convenient than the geofencing.
I'm sure you're reading along, TADO, listen to your customers!
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Totally agree. Cleaner, babysitter and grandparents all freeze when we are not home unless I remember to alter all the time blocks. A simple manual override would be easier.1
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+1 for this. just had a phone call from my parents who are home babysitting asking if they can have the heating back on. Luckily I'm not in a meeting or on a plane! Invested a huge amount in Tado (17trvs + thermostat etc) but missing the ability to click into home mode. I'd also like to be able to group the trv's, so for example in the morning just the bedroom and kitchen get heated, evening just the lounge & kitchen. My wife works shifts so whilst I can do this with individual settings, its 17 settings to change every day, which just means it doesn't get done...3
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@pebrey you can group TRVs in zones. This bit works quite well (subject to other improvements suggested on other threads and so far ignored by tado). This also makes it easier to manually override away mode until we get a global override button.
You could also leave an iPad with the tado app on it to allow anyone else to control the heating assuming you want them to have this control and can teach them how to use it. Just ensure its location based control is off under Settings/People/Mobile Devices.
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I just want to chime in with a +1. It’s ridiculous that there is no way to toggle Home/Away manually. There are a myriad of reasons why deciding solely based on geofencing could be inappropriate for a user.
The fact that you can decide to ignore the notification and keep tado in Home mode when leaving, but you can’t return to Home mode after you’ve clicked the button is just infuriating.1 -
I'm actually working on software to provide functionality like this via a third party tool for Apple HomeKit users.
It's not finished yet, but it can be found on my Github page: https://github.com/itavero/homebridge-tado-presence
I think it would also be possible to create a separate smartphone app for this.
The method I've figured out adds a fake mobile device and updates its location to be within the geofence (or outside, depending on the presence mode you want to activate).
That way Home mode can be activated, even though your real smart devices are not at home.
Since I'm not actively monitoring this forum, please post questions and suggestions on Github in the issues section, then I can keep track of the project in a single place.
When the software has been released and is generally available, I'll post another message here.3 -
The deliberate omission of a simple toggle button to switch from AWAY to HOME really spoils a fantastic application. My house takes a day to warm up so when I was returning from Austria I had to keep stopping to set the temperature to overide the AWAY temperature.
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Like many others I have just installed tado, attracted by the concept of a simple way to switch between normal heating schedule and an away schedule. Firstly I must go on record to say the product quality is excellent and the customised install instructions are outstanding in every way. 11/10 to the tado team for the detail and attention put in there. There is no reason to call in a professional installed for any part of it which puts tado head and shoulders above it's competitors.
BUT... this issue of not being able to manually set home and away is a blocker. What I find most disappointing is that the instructions do not mention this limitation anywhere. And I only learned about it when I stumbled on this thread.
Luckily I only bought a single room thermostat and no TRVs. I am not faced with the nightmare users with one or more TRVs face operating it nor the disappointment that the much of the £50/valve investment may be compromised.
In my case I would have happily signed up for the £2.99/month subscription to use geolocation if manual switching to home mode worked. Tado have lost a subscription sale and many others will have done the same. Much of the valuation of tado is based on long term subscription revenue to this NOT what the investors want to hear.
But I love the product and see no value in sending it back. That is just cutting off your nose to spite your face.
So i have decided to disable geolocation for all the users I had originally set up and will simply use the function to remotely turn off my heating manually when my partner and I are out of the house. Not very elegant but for someone like me that is too long in the tooth to learn IFTTT programming it is the only reliable option.
To those users threatening Armageddon on tado under GDPR, please be realistic. It will not get you what you want nor will it go down well in Bavaria. If you want to make them pay attention look at the trades description act or whatever legislation applies in your country about misrepresentation. From the hundreds of posts here it is clear they are misrepresenting the capability of the product in this area. There are substantial fines that would make investors very nervous.
Let's just hope that one of the VC investors reads a few of the posts here and intervenes to keep this group of enthusiastic users on-side.2 -
@MHUHX Is there any reason why a manual Home/Away switch couldn't be part of the subscription service?1
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@Will True but that would be a piss take when every other manufacturer has it for 'free'. Tado's business model is all about the cloud and data gathering/selling/using. Looks like they might be struggling to finance the cloud part just from hardware sales and third party partnerships ( boiler repair with home serve) hence the subscription ( pure speculation on my part).
The stagnation in development of App and features is actually worrying. What are they investing time and money in?
Hope it all comes good for them as I've invested a few bob in their equipment, they need to start to compete on features and listen to their user base.
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Well it would appear that they are not listening. Perhaps the stagnation is a sign that they've already given up with developing the system. Perhaps they have realised the game's up. Why else would they continue to blatantly ignore a fairly hot topic on the very community forum they created for discussion and feedback. Disgraceful.
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Hi, I cant use Geofencing as my spare room is often rented out and I'm not getting all my guests to install the Tado app. However, when the flat is empty and I'm not coming back, I want to be able to turn off my heating - can you not make this a standard feature please? I want to be able to switch it back to my programmed mode then once I or a guest is coming back to the flat. I cant follow the logic of making me go in and change all my settings if I just want to switch everything off for 18 hours while the flat is empty. Thanks.
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Amen!!
TADO you guys are doing great, this should be an easy fix! It will give you better reviews=more customers!
This manual selection could be automatically reset when someone WITH a registered smart phone comes back home. This would help us, because we have a babysitter on different days and because of that we cannot select geofencing OFF on set times of day in the smart schedules.
Perhaps manual temperature selection on ANY (radiator) thermostat can ALSO be used to trigger HOME mode when no registered smart phones are present.2 -
I intstalled Tado devices yesterday in my home just to find out that I have no control over the home/away feature except when I enter or leave the pre-defined geofence. This program behaviour is not solving a problem but it is rather creating one for various reasons that are nicely described in this forum already. The one-touch adjusts all button is crucial for basic home automization.
It's very sad that Tado doesn't seem to respond on any of the requests here. The thermostates are goreous and I was really looking forward to using the system to make life more convenient. Instead, I am now seriously considering to pack it all up again and return it for refund.
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Tado...... is there anyone there?!!! Pathetic lack of response to this thread. I initially sang the prises of Tado to friends and family but now I tell them to avoid it simply because of this lack of function. You're killing your own products.
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Tado are currently advertising for an additional iOS developer to "push their app to the next level": https://apply.workable.com/tado/j/645B843601/
Hopefully this means there are plans for improvements in this area (and others).
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Yeah, that's funny. Quote:
Team values:
- We build apps with a strong focus on our customers, aiming to deliver new features and improvements to them on a bi-weekly basis
Well... Give us those home/away buttons already! It's extremely clear this is the most wanted feature and had been for a long time now!
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I'm equally disappointed to find how impossible it was to put our new Tado system to holiday mode. I thought all half decent controllers have a holiday mode on these days. Many did 10 years ago! Geofencing doesn't cut it for us as we have underfloor heating at that takes hours to warm up. Will just have to remember to cancel the overrides for each zone individually the morning we're on our way home.
I'm wondering if this amounts to mis-selling. The way it was advertised I was sure this feature would be included.
Have you made any progress on this yet Tado?2 -
I too sang Tado's progress to friends and family. I hope none of them listened to me.
As for Tado making progress on this, their absence of commenting on this forum confirms their arrogance and ignorance of their customers. As for them employing an additional iOS developer that wont help those of us using Android, even if they do add this feature. Some hope.....
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tado are conspicuous by there silence on this issue many of us have directly contacted them and they totally sidestep the question.1
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+1 ........................................
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Without a manual override function for the Home/Away setting, I cannot make use of the basic geofencing feature.0
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Just read some of the other posts. Depressing lack of response. I suspect the only way to get Tado's attention is to start rating their app with a low rating On the various app stores. That's where I heading now.0
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WSS.. I'm not even convinced Tado will even react to low ratings. It's like they just don't care.
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Also agree. I work 2 mins from home so the geofencing is only good to turn the heating off when I leave. I have to manually turn each room to manual (if I remember, many times I forget which is annoying) an hour or so before I finish work for it to be warm when her home.0
