Upgrade from Hometronic to Evohome

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  • SiliconPixel
    Automated Home Sr Member
    • May 2007
    • 52

    Upgrade from Hometronic to Evohome

    Hi,

    I have a current Hometronic system supplied by Sensible Heat, running 16 zones with the following kit:

    1 x Hometronic manager
    1 x HGi80
    16 x HR80 (some doubled up in a zone)
    1 x UFH controller HCC80R
    3 x HCW82 (for manual overide of the 3 x UFH zones)
    3 x wireless relay switches for controlling aircon in one zone

    I understand that the evohome only supports 12 zones and I would need to add a second to support all 16 zones. Actually that's good as I need more than 16 zones anyway.

    So how well do 2 evohome controllers work together - are there any disadvantages or problems running 2? How does this work with the apps etc? Any tech details anywhere detailing running 2 together?

    Thanks,

    Paul.
  • SensibleHeatUK
    Moderator
    • Feb 2009
    • 228

    #2
    Hi Paul

    There are two things you can consider if you upgrade to Evo.

    Firstly there is a "mode" when registering multiple devices to one zone to set the zone as "multiple rooms in one zone". This means that each room within that single zone co tiniest to use its local room sensor to measure and control the room, but all the rooms within this zone share the same setpoint. With HR80s you could still locally adjust them using their dial, but changing the setpoint from the Evo Touch or App would see all rooms within that zone change to that new setpoint. So this gives you an opportunity to see of the 12 room limit could be met by linking some rooms that a,ways run at the same time and at the same setpoint.

    Secondly, for rooms with AC, you could use these on a separate Evo Touch so that they do not interfere with the boiker-based heating controls or get affected by using the Evo Quick Actions - unlike with Hometronic Lifestyles you cannot choose which zones are affected by "Away" mode for example, you can only choose what common setpoint is used for this action. Therefore if you choose to turn down the heating in "Away" mode and you AC is on the same Evo, then the cooling zones will "see" a low setpoint and potentially turn on the cooling! If the cooling is on a separate Evo you can set up the Custom Quick Action to use a high setpoint and rename it "Cooling Away" for example.

    With Evo you would need to replace your HS30s with BDR91s as the HS30s uses the 433MHz radio frequency whereas Evo is 868MHz only.

    The only other issue when using multiple Evos is that they appear as separate locations within the App, so you would not see a single list of all your zones. However this is not a major issue for most users, and gives some additional flexibility when you've got a more complex installation to control such as we are discussing here.
    Sensible Heat
    SensibleHeat.co.uk

    Comment

    • SensibleHeatUK
      Moderator
      • Feb 2009
      • 228

      #3
      One last thing I forgot to add about single zone/multiple rooms, in this case the Evo Fouchscreen and App will show the room sensor for the first room in the group that is registered, so you cannot "see" the room sensor values for the additional rooms that you add to the shared zone.
      Sensible Heat
      SensibleHeat.co.uk

      Comment

      • SiliconPixel
        Automated Home Sr Member
        • May 2007
        • 52

        #4
        Thanks for that - I'd rather not have multiple rooms in one zone if I can help it - that's something I always struggled with on the Hometronic - I really like to have very granular control with means more zones!

        So I could set it up as ground floor and first floor and then run the second evo as loft / studio?

        Do multiple Evo's work really nicely together then when viewing from the app - but like you said, they show up as separate locations? Whether that would work OK or not I suppose depends on how the app looks etc - is there a demo of it somewhere?

        Cheers!

        Comment

        • SiliconPixel
          Automated Home Sr Member
          • May 2007
          • 52

          #5
          Ah - I see that the app has a demo mode - so each Evohome controller would appear as a separate location i.e. you can't add a location and pick zones from multiple evohome controllers I guess?

          With two evohome controllers, do you need two mobile access kits - or does one connect to multiple controllers?

          Thanks.

          Comment

          • SensibleHeatUK
            Moderator
            • Feb 2009
            • 228

            #6
            You do need one gateway per Evo, and the zones from a single Evo/gateway are then shown for that location. You cannot assign zones to different locations in the App. If you follow the thread where Evo server comms has been reversed engineered then it would be entirely possible to create a separate browser-based custom setup to aggregate the zones, but this would be an manufacturer-unsupported diy approach.
            Sensible Heat
            SensibleHeat.co.uk

            Comment

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