[Released – ver. 5.10] Manual Control of Home and Away mode

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Comments

  • Completely agree, today i woke Up and hour Early, needed a button to start heating, instead of manually starting All the RV thermostats
  • Hey Tado,

    When are you going to implement this feature ?

    Thanks

  • I requested this by email last year too! Seems such an easy thing to implement but no action :/
  • Geo-fencing is fine, but please, please, please let us override it. I attend things in my local community which are very close to my home, so I’ve have a very small geofencing zone. All I want to do is switch to Home mode as I set off, I have to wait until I enter ‘the zone’ to switch it to ‘Home’. Also I can’t set it to away as I leave, I have to wait until I’m out of the zone, and as I’m often driving - this isn’t ideal.

    This may be a shock - but I don’t always take my phone out with me. I need to be able to say ‘I’m out until...’. I have three thermostats and don’t really want to manually adjust them all, I was considering getting more - but this would be a nightmare.

    In general I’m very impressed with TADO - but this is really stupid. I’ve spent a significant amount of money and this basic feature is absent. I really want to recommend TADO to my friends - but they would be disappointed by the lack of an ‘Away’ feature.

    Thank-you

  • I just bought a Tado and discovered you can't set the Away/Home mode manually. That's really stupid. I'm supposed to wait for a notification and work in the app while I'm driving? Sigh. So much for the 'smart' in 'smart thermostat'.

  • By the way, this could also be implemented by way of allowing multiple all-zones schedules.

    That is, with a schedule that we would not coincidentally call "Away" all zones would be set to minimum temperature 24 hours/day. To switch to this "Away" "mode" we should be able to go to the website or app, click on a Schedules option, and click the "Away" schedule.

    As of now, it seems that only one schedule is available (or, two - home/away, which is of course the whole point of this thread - that's not good enough).

  • This feature is needed.

  • Has Tado ever respond about this feature?
    I bought the system thinking that it was included but I'm really disappointed. I will nor recomemd the system to my friends because of this. Maybe if the review on site like Amazon are not has good and point out this lack of features maybe they will address it.

    I hope...
  • It will for sure.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/25/amazon-meet-tado/
  • Upvote from me as well.
    We have another variation of this problem: my children's school is just around the corner, so Tado's automated geofencing based Away mode doesn't kick in when we leave for work and school (as Tado still considers my kids at home).

    ... and yes, I have minimized the 'Away distance' to a minimum but that's still not enough to trigger the geofencing.

    And disabling geofencing on my kids phones is not a good option as that would mean Tado doesn't switch to Home mode when my kids are the first to get back home (from somewhere further away from our house than the school, ie. sports, cinema etc.).

    So a manual Home/Away switch in the app would be much appreciated as I would then be able to force the Away mode to turn on when we leave in the morning.

    Best

    Rasmus
    Denmark
  • AndrewM
    AndrewM ✭✭✭

    Absolutely agree with this suggestion - it's the most frustrating and annoying thing with Tado, and not just for holidays but also days out during the winter ---- and pretty much anywhere you might be driving, as the geofence is effectively only 1 minute or 2 away when driving!

    The current only workaround is to remember to manually go and set each of the temperatures in your house separately with an override, a real pain when you have multiple thermostats (i.e. radiator thermostats)!

    I would like to see at least the ability to set "Home mode" from the Geofence tile (when in Away mode), which then stays in home mode until someone (in the tracked users) return home. Ideally this probably should also have the ability to set a maximum time for manual mode.

    The best would be if you could schedule this to a date/time, so that you can do it at the start of a holiday or day our (so you don't forget), although making the feature available through IFTTT so that you can setup a "holiday return" using their scheduled tasks would be a reasonable alternative for this.

    Another, even more intelligent option (although limited to car users, so would not work for everything) would be to have the ability to have a separate (and much larger) "car geofence" which could be triggered by recognising when the phone was connected to the car's Bluetooth. It would be great to offer BOTH of these capabilities so that Tado can keep ahead of the competitors in this space.

  • LonderJan
    LonderJan
    edited October 2019

    I just installed the Tado system and was actually shocked that I was unable to put my heating system manually in holiday/away mode. The thermostat that came with my heating system had this, any over the counter digital thermostat has that ... and I replaced mine with one that doesn't have it.

    Hugely disappointed including the skill fees. What a stupid way to make money off people that already pay a hefty price for the purchase of the hardware. Will not be advising people to buy into this.

  • Lukasz
    Lukasz
    edited October 2019
    I find the lack of this basic feature appalling. I know you read this and laugh at the sucker (me) who paid you all this money, but shame on you.

    I never recommended you, I have nothing but problems with your radiator valves, which turn themselves on randomly, and never keep the right temperature.
  • Looking for the feature as well. We have guests all the time and it is a pain to reconfigure manually.
  • I really wonder if anyone from Tado reads these postings. A simple way to override away mode is such an obvious requirement it beggars belief that it still has not been implemented. Perhaps someone from Tado might like to post a response on this forum explaining why they are ignoring this request.

    As regards implementation, I would like to see a single button which displays the current mode (away or home) and offers "Override" to the opposite state. This would continue until the next geo-fenced detection of people arriving or leaving.

  • Vertigo
    Vertigo ✭✭✭
    edited October 2019

    This This This.

    I have a workshop in my garden where Im working on a project. I spend entire days there. its not going to trigger geofencing, and there is no way for me to turn down the thermostat that doesnt involve 20 minutes of adjusting all zones. This is ridiculous.

    My current work around? I pull the wall thermostat from the wall. Yeay home automation!

    BTW, two modes, "home" and "away" isnt enough for me. I would really like additional profiles. One when Im working in my home office (office should be warm, rest can be cooler), one when Im not (living room should be warmer, office can cool down a bit). I dont work on fixed hours, I cant schedule this. I may be able to solve that with third party software, but I really shouldnt have to.

    Whats worst, is that I believe this is not an oversight. I fear this may be deliberate to force us in to paying for automatic geofencing. When its easy to manually set home or away mode, perhaps fewer people will bother to pay for that to be done automatically.

  • FWIW - I'm in exactly the same boat - amazed Tado doesn't do this. appauled at them ignoring requests for it.


    I'm wondering if something can be done to speed up the manual temperature change of all rooms by using a macro recorder for a phone, or perhaps as a IFTTT routine or similar...

  • I raised the question of how to manually set home or away via support recently and they didn’t even seem to know this thread exists.

    Very disappointing. Totally agree with other comments here - this is a simple, simple thing to implement and desperately needed. Use cases abound.
  • Bonkers. The home zone seems to be a maximum of 4km. It takes my house an hour to warm up in winter if I've been away all day, or 12 hours if I've been away for a long weekend. From 4km I''d be home in an hour on foot or in 5 minutes by bus or car. Totally can't see the point unless we can manually set it.

  • jcwacky
    jcwacky ✭✭✭
    edited November 2019

    @gwr That's not how it works. The heating isn't just "off" in "away mode" and "on" in "home mode", it's much cleverer than that.

    When in "Home" mode it uses your set temperature schedule. When in "away" mode, it looks at your temperature schedule and also looks at how far away you are from home (i.e. how far outside of the "Home area"), it then lowers the set point temperature to an appropriate value which it calculates based on your "Preheat before arrival setting".

    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.

    It's not perfect, but in my experience the house is at a good temperature when I get home, whether I've been away for a day or a week.

    I'd recommend keeping the recommended 400m "Home Area" setting. Even if you are outside of this, the heating will still come on as you get closer to home.

  • Thanks jcwacky, that's interesting. I still think Tado may be trying to be too clever. When I'm travelling home I may use a ferry, an overnight train, a plane or a car. Without Tado reading my emails (not going to happen) it is impossible to predict how quickly I'll get back. Would rather control it myself. As others have said, a range of profiles would actually be useful to avoid having to fiddle with a lot of different room settings.

  • Vertigo
    Vertigo ✭✭✭
    edited November 2019

    @jcwacky what you describe may be how it works when you use the optional auto assist. But without auto assist on V3+, you can only switch between home and away, and once switched to away, you can only switch back to home mode when you actually ARE home. So if it takes an hour to heat your house, thats an hour of cold. If you left your phone at the office, you are out of luck completely, you cant even override the away mode using the web interface.

    Of course you can manually override all zone temps individually but who wants to do that for 5 minute while driving...

    Simply being able to cancel the "away" mode whenever you want, like when you know you will be getting home in an hour, would solve it. But like I said, I suspect the reason we arent given that option is that it would make auto assist only marginally useful.

  • @Vertigo That's true, I've had Tado from when "Auto Assist" was a standard feature that you didn't have to pay for, so not familar with how it works if you don't have it. Although I have heard it's a bit odd. Couldn't imagine having to manually turn on/off the heating now I'm used to it doing it automatically. It's one of the main reasons I went for Tado.

  • I've achieved this using IFTTT buttons one to 'Away Mode' and 'home mode'

  • @Brew Does that ifttt method work if you use geofencing? The reason I ask is I use geofencing and it works perfect.

    But sometimes I need to set tado to home when there isn't a "user" here. i.e someone is here looking after my children
  • @Brew How did you manage that? AFAICT, there is no method to set to away mode in IFFT (or anywhere else, except maybe apple home?). You can set all zones to a predefined temp though, but thats not really as good.

  • I agree with Vertigo as far as I can see all you can use home and away for on IFTTT is the IF part of the statement not as the THEN part.

    You can build something that say If Tado switches to Home Then do such and such

    But you cannot make something that says If such and such done Then set tado to home / away

    Please correct me if I am wrong but I cannot see how you have achieved this

  • Hi Guys, wonder if you could help:

    Both my wife and I leave for work around 8am in the morning. The last one out is told by the Tado app if we would like to put the heating on 'Away mode' We always say 'yes'. But when my wife gets home around 2.30pm the house if cold (18 degrees) and she is then prompted to put the system on 'Home mode' She says yes but it then takes quite some time for the house to heat up. Why does the app not have a 'switch away mode off' feature that she can use at, say, 2pm. So. that by the time she gets back home the house is warm?


    Thanks, Bud

  • Because tado wants you to purchase the auto assist subscription, which does it for you as you approach the house.... there is no manual way to override "away" mode as long as you are away :(