Improved thermostatic AC control

drc38

The tado device and app are well made and designed which lead me to purchasing one to try out, it is a pity the "smart" features are not quite there yet.

The following features would make the product much "smarter" in my view:

• an "auto" mode that can switch between heating and cooling for autumn/spring periods where you may need heating in the morning to take off chill then cooling in the afternoon
• use the heat pumps inverter capability to provide a more comfortable and slower transition to the set temperature by setting the heat pump to say 1C above or below the set temperature +/- offset. I currently achieve this in a round about way through the setup by rather than specifying the maximum heating or cooling when learning commands to using temperatures closer to my room set point
• improve on the above by adding AI learning (to set PID parameters) with a standard PID control loop so temperature does not overshoot and tado can compensate for the difference between tado temperature measurement and the termperature set point required to be sent to the heat pump to achieve the desired set point (this should result in less on/off cycles of the unit)
• a boost function, where you can manually or through the schedule set the unit to maximum heat/cool
• integration with 3rd party apps to be able to use it for demand response (ie reduce power if requested by utility or as part of incentive programme)

I am signed up to the beta programme and I hope the product will continue to be developed to a point it offers more by way of smart features.

drc38

Also, implement a fail safe so that if the IR command is not successful it is resent after say every 10s until the temperature returns to within the set parameters. Currently if the temperature overshoots the boundary temperature to turn off (and the IR command is unsuccessful for whatever reason) the tado will keep heating or cooling to an uncomfortable level.