Support multiple schedule configurations such as spring etc..

ChrisJ
ChrisJ ✭✭✭

It is very common to want different sets of heating parameters for different occasions. A typical example might be a different set for summer versus winter. Or for when guests are staying versus not.

It would be great if the Tado system supported the ability for user's to create multiple named configurations and switch between then as required.


--- original message above, tado edit below, Feb 7th 2024 ---


The suggestion for having multiple schedules, for example for summer/winter or shift workers and so on, have been suggested to us multiple times and for a long time. We know. We have 2 things to add this:

1.

Such a feature is, to some extent (and admittedly not super intuitively) already available. And has been for years. For each room you can save 3 seperate weekly schedules. You can easily switch between them. More information about this feature is found here under "1. Select the days for which you want to set a specific schedule": https://support.tado.com/en/articles/3387209-how-do-i-set-up-my-tado-room-smart-schedule#h_cefd90c4e9

It gives you 3 scheduling options. Mon-Fri ,Sat, Sun and Mon-Sun and Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun. All three are saved. You can use one for winter and the other for summer, for example. I realize it is not exactly what is being asked here, but it can be used as having multiple schedules.

2.

The idea of having multiple schedules was researched by our app development team with a number of test customers in 2023, when we improved and simplified the whole UI of the schedule. I think you've seen the results in the app.

Our app development team assigned time to try making this idea happen (also because of these topics in the forum) but when we ran our prototypes with customers we discovered that only power-users could really master this idea of having active and inactive schedules for the same room. Other users already struggled with even getting the basic schedule set up and adding more functions made it even more difficult for them. We therefore decided to focus on making the schedule more useful and intuitive for the largest group of customers, and kept it simple as a result.

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  • [Deleted User]
    edited May 2019

    Hi mw9342,

    This is already possible, at least sort of - you can set three different schedules per room and toggle back and forth as necessary. I am referring to the Mo-Su schedule, the Mo-Fr Sa Su and the Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su schedules in your Smart Schedule on your app.

    Best regards,

    Frank

  • mw9342
    mw9342 ✭✭✭
    Hi Frank - how do you do that? When I look at my settings I can’t see anywhere where I could create additional schedules nevermind switch between them.
  • I believe they are saying the "Schedule Days" option works as three different schedules, so you could theortically switch between different ones that way. But you would be restricted to the preset groupings, so you couldn't have the same grouping of days for each schedule.

  • mw9342
    mw9342 ✭✭✭

    Ah I see - not really what I was asking for; the MON-SUN group is not suitable for me, and neither is the MON-FRI,SAT,SUN grouping (see also make it easier to setup more relevant schedules for different days) so I only have one grouping available to me and therefore switching is not possible.

  • DLuckcock
    DLuckcock
    edited May 2019

    An excellent idea for the home ChrisJ.

    In a similar vein I have to change the settings each week for multiple time slots and zones using Tado to control the heating in the church rooms that are occupied by different groups. If we could create pre-programmed weeks 1, 2, 3 & 4 it would make life a lot easier. Regards

  • This is something I would really like to see as my building turns off heating during summer, so I just want to turn off all my radiators from a specific date as there is no reason for them to adjust themselves during this period.
  • Sands
    Sands ✭✭
    I agree this would be really helpful!
  • Now this is a good suggestion.

  • Agreed. We need multiple schedules, with each schedule being able to include specific zones, and be able to manually or automatically switch among schedules as we wish.

    For example, I have two homes, 100km apart, in different climate zones, and I spend weeks at one, then weeks at the other. This means that whichever house I'm not in may get quite cold. Particularly the one in the mountains may require more than a day to come up to comfortable temperature as the inner wall surfaces get very cold.

    For that, I need to be able to remotely switch from "Away" to as-if-I-were-there-so-that-it's-comfortably-warm-when-I-arrive, something for which geofencing is useless, as it needs to start heating hours or days before I even set off for that house.

  • Agreed, my scenario is divorce and having the kids about half the time. I am currently experimenting with multiple zones ie one per room and keeping the kids bedrooms off when they are at school. But I also work from home, so I'd like the zones to each accept different home/away parameters or have alternate schedules that are easily switched eg Home 1, Home 2, Away

  • Agree a great idea. Multiple pre-defined policies that can be applied with a click would cover it. They could be applied for seasons, guests, etc
  • Is this type of control even needed? I have Tado TRVs on every radiator so the heating for each one would only come on if needed. I.e. room 1 temp is 30+ degrees C in the summer and the smart schedule is set to heat to only 21, so it would never be needed.

    In the winter when the ambient room temp is say 12 and the schedule calls for heat, it heats to 21. So isn't this already allowed for automatically?

    If you don't have Tado TRVs on each radiator, I think a better way would be an external piece that gets actual temps (instead of data-provided ones) and acts as an auto-offset, and takes over if needed. I.e. external temp is 30 = do nothing or external temp is 5 so call for heat.

  • Agreed. As a retired teacher, I would have also wanted the ability to save and switch between different schedules for term time and holiday time. Now I'm retired, I'd like to switch between saved schedules for early and late starts (grandchildren visiting and us home alone!)

  • So it's the 30th December, a Tuesday, and I've booked the day off and got family staying, so rather than get up at the normal 6am for a Tuesday we got up at the more leisurely 8, spot of breakfast then showers for 4.

    The issue, tado was set up for a Tuesday weekday to not hear hot water past 8am as if we were here on a normal Tuesday we would be working from home and unlikely to be looking to take a shower, yet alone twice the normal number.

    So what would be ideal is a simple way to tell tado to treat a weekday as if it was a weekend day. On the simplest level just need to be able to input annual leave into a diary and have it follow a change of behaviour each day to look at either the weekends schedule or a specific holiday schedule.

    More advanced tweaks could look at national holidays for the location the unit is, and or a personal calender integration to pull the data automatically.
  • I would like to see something similar.

    The schedule I have setup currently aligns with the biggest part of the year when we are working and the kids are at school.

    When we are on holiday and stay at home, that schedule does not work anymore.

    It would be great to make 2 (or more) different schedules at least to switch between the normal schedule for when we are working that week and another one for when we are at home for the week.

    It should not be to difficult to implement as you already have the schedule system. Just make a toggle to active on of the configured ones.

  • Good idea this. I'd find this useful also.

  • This is a brilliant idea, definitely use it

  • Yes, this would be a very good idea, to have up to three or four sets of programs (optional use).

    A Seasonal programme setting would also cater for situations as we have now, with warm sunny days each day, and little need for heating in the evenings as rooms have been warmed by the sunshine.

    Another bonus with home working at the moment would be that the normal low temperature daytime settings could be replaced by an all-day comfort setting, as we are all at home all day every day, so rather than messing with our usual schedule we could apply the "at home" schedule instead.

  • A very good idea as I'm currently using a lot of gas because my doors to the garden are open a lot. When it's sunny and 16 degrees outside my living doesn't need 19 degrees.

  • WouterF
    WouterF ✭✭
    edited October 2020

    Please also like my idea to improve the early start in the winter: https://community.tado.com/en-gb/discussion/5369/improve-early-start/p1?new=1

    Tado wastes 1 hour of energy each day because the early start doesn't work as it should.

  • Really would like this --- and potentially also have this all integrated with an optional external thermometer feed (see https://tado.vanillacommunities.com/en-gb/discussion/5387/outdoor-thermometer). This is the one major shortcoming with Tado at present.

    I would go a little further to suggest the ability to have MULTIPLE profiles (ideally up to 10), which can then be attached to dates, to events from IFTTT and other home automation systems, and/or to external temperature sensing. This could also be tied into another request I've seen about individual geofencing.

    I would also want to see the "open window sensing" process configured in each of these - during the summer, then often the temperature indoors will drop simply because the doors are open - you therefore would want to have a different "open window sensing" behaviour during these times. Especially good if the option of an external thermostat was there, so you could have logic such as "outside temp more than inside target temp never switches heating on, even if open window has been sensed".

  • +1 for this! =) :)
  • I have a feature suggestion that would make tado even more useful. We have a spare room that stays cool most of the time, but it would be useful to have a 2nd schedule to switch to when people are visiting. Also, it would be useful to easily switch to a 'weekend' schedule on Bank Holiday Monday. I'm sure there are other examples when a second or third 'saved schedule' would be useful, either for individual rooms or for the whole house.

    Is this something already suggested? Is it something other people would find useful? I certainly would.
  • GrayDav4276
    GrayDav4276 ✭✭✭
    Please read through some old threads and you will see that this has been suggested/recommended by many other users....you are not alone in thinking this way.
    ps there are currently 3 ways to set a schedule per Tado room.
  • Is it possible to create separate Schedules and store them in 'Banks'?
    E.g. Individual, separate heating profiles for the entire system. You could then recall a Winter/Summer/Cold Day or simply a 'I only want the bathroom rad on' schedule, without having to change all the radiator settings!
    Thank you.
  • GrilledCheese2
    GrilledCheese2 ✭✭✭
    edited June 2021

    My wish list for improving the smart schedules.

    1) Allow users to create 10+ smart schedules

    2) Allow smart schedules to exist in their own right without association to a specific room.

    3) Each smart schedule can be logically linked to many rooms. Perhaps a drop down menu is provided to select the required schedule used by a room.

    4) Edit a smart schedule and all rooms linked to that schedule will follow the revised time/temps.

    5) Give smart schedules meaningful names that can be edited.

    6) In the app increase the width of the smart schedule window when the phone/tablet is in landscape view.

    7) Introduce ‘special’ time blocks for hot water control. For each time block allow the user to define the maximum time the boiler is called to heat the cylinder. For instance if I am at home between 5PM and 9PM I want to heat the water cylinder, but I don’t want to re-heat it for 4 hours - 1 hour of heating is sufficient. When occupants arrive home at 5PM then hot water heating starts at 5PM and stops at 6PM. Occupants arrive home at 7PM then hot water heating starts at 7PM and ends at 8PM.

  • @GrilledCheese2
    There is/are a lot of common sense points in your post....and I totally agree with you that better integration of user configuration is the future........However I can't see Tado going down this path anytime soon, as it will require a lot of time and investment (of Tado people resources) I personally don't think that Tado are equipped to provide this level of customer service.
  • @GrayDav4276 did you read the edit at the top of this post from Tado. They are starting a project to improve the the smart schedule and want user feedback, hence my list of what I’d like from the app. I’ve mentioned most of these items before, but thought it best to reiterate in a new comment.

  • cbd20
    cbd20 ✭✭✭
    @GrayDav4276 @GrilledCheese2 worth seeing the post here by Jurian: https://community.tado.com/en-gb/discussion/9551/feedback-request-improvements-to-the-smart-schedule#latest