My Evohome control just went completely dead

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  • bruce_miranda
    Automated Home Legend
    • Jul 2014
    • 2307

    My Evohome control just went completely dead

    Today I had a strange experience. My Evohome home controller was sitting on the wall stand completely blank. I took it off the wall stand, took out the batteries and put in new batteries. The panel came back to life. So I thought the wall mount's power supply was dead. But when I measured the voltage, I did get some! Put the panel back on the wall mount with the new batteries and everything seemed fine.

    So what could have caused the panel from going dead?

    There is absolutely no faults logged for a week in the fault log.

    Do I need to make sure the replacement batteries are of a certain chemistry and rating? I've put in some Eneloop Pro, would the panel be OK with those?
    Last edited by bruce_miranda; 28 September 2016, 09:07 PM.
  • bruce_miranda
    Automated Home Legend
    • Jul 2014
    • 2307

    #2
    Put the original evohome batteries in a separate smart charger and they appear to be fine too and fully charged. So am still scratching my head wondering why it suddenly went dead when everything is working. What I did notice was that removing the panel in its dead state from the mount and reseating it multiple times, didn't bring it to life. It came back to life only when i removed the batteries and put new ones in. After that when I put the panel back on the mount the battery symbol disappeared, showing that the power supply was running the panel. So assuming the original batteries were dead, why did the power supply not run the panel as normal. Really strange. The good thing is that all my settings and pairing were fine when we resumed things.

    Comment

    • DBMandrake
      Automated Home Legend
      • Sep 2014
      • 2361

      #3
      Sounds like it had a software related crash. Removing it from the dock still leaves it powered from battery so removing the batteries as well would be necessary for a hard reboot.

      Hasn't happened to me before and I think you're the first person to report this problem on the forum ?

      Comment

      • HenGus
        Automated Home Legend
        • May 2014
        • 1001

        #4
        Out-of-interest, one of the selling points for the V3 controller was the ability for Honeywell to push firmware upgrades. It would be of interest to know if there are any such plans in train? By way of comparison, the Nest thermostat has had 5 firmware upgrades so far this year: mainly to improve performance.

        Comment

        • bruce_miranda
          Automated Home Legend
          • Jul 2014
          • 2307

          #5
          In fact it was the only selling point. For me so far I have just moved backwards since I upgraded. Needed to spend more money to upgrade the wall mount, multiple connectivity errors and the loss of individual zone optimisation and my Outdoor temperature sensor. I have gained nothing yet.....except a reduction in the usage of a router port and a power socket.

          Comment

          • DBMandrake
            Automated Home Legend
            • Sep 2014
            • 2361

            #6
            Originally posted by HenGus View Post
            Out-of-interest, one of the selling points for the V3 controller was the ability for Honeywell to push firmware upgrades. It would be of interest to know if there are any such plans in train? By way of comparison, the Nest thermostat has had 5 firmware upgrades so far this year: mainly to improve performance.
            Your guess is as good as anyone's... Honeywell seem to play their cards very close to their chest and seem ultra conservative about updates, especially adding any features.

            In over a year that the Wifi model has been out there has only been one update released and apart from assumed bug fixes (the nature of which have not been disclosed) the only "user visible" features I'm aware of that got added are the ability to use a boiler relay (third relay) in an S plan configuration, which I only heard about by accident here on the forum, the local override display option which some would argue should have been present all along, (and in the process a couple of bugs were introduced including zone overrides sometimes reverting to the previous temperature) and the ability to clear fault log entries by pressing a button.

            No changes to the user interface design, structure or layout, no other new features, no improvements to quick actions etc. If it sounds like I'm complaining I am, but only a little bit.

            I didn't buy Evohome on the promise of what it "might be" one day, I bought it for what it is today and what it's current feature set is. And in that regard it does very well. The overall functionality and ease of use is good and the interface is fairly clean and simple. As far as how it controls the radiators and boiler I think it's great. The control algorithms are very good.

            The quick actions are a bit limited though and just not that handy and that is my main beef with the system. For various reasons, the away, eco and custom quick actions are all pretty useless to me, as described in detail in another thread I posted in, so I won't duplicate that here.

            Honeywell seem very "old school" in their approach to updates - slow, very cautious, very reluctant to change the UI design or any major functionality. A bit like Apple were on very early versions of iOS where they tried to keep everything as absolutely minimalist as possible. Compare that to so many other products these days including Smart Phones that receive many updates per year, some of them providing major new functionality, complete user interface overhauls etc.

            I do feel like there is a lost opportunity for Honeywell here, and that if they stand still others who are constantly iterating their software will pass them by. While I am happy with the product as it is (quick action complaints aside) there is so much more that could be done in terms of new functionality new UI design and so on.

            If they were to release any radical changes then they would need to change the update process though - at the moment it appears to be a completely silent process where the user is never even aware that an update is available, can not choose to accept or defer the update, and can't even tell if it happened, unless they happened to be looking at it when it rebooted. Nothing appears in the log after an upgrade, the version number is hidden behind a secret 20 second long press of a button and is only useful if you took note of what the version was previously.

            In short, any major user interface or functionality overhaul would really need a smart phone like "Updates are available" prompt to the user where they can read the changes, decide whether to go ahead and update or to defer/decline the update. Until something like that is in place I think Honeywell would be too afraid to silently drop a whole new UI design on people...

            Comment

            • killa47
              Automated Home Guru
              • Jan 2016
              • 123

              #7

              Question for DBMandrake


              Off original topic but can you advise what the third relay capability can do? I always wanted two heating relays serving upstairs and downstairs on separate two way valves and a third for the DHW. I was advised the Evohome could only do a single heating circuit and the DHW. Will this third relay now allow two heating circuits.
              Thanks.

              Comment

              • DBMandrake
                Automated Home Legend
                • Sep 2014
                • 2361

                #8
                Originally posted by killa47 View Post

                Question for DBMandrake


                Off original topic but can you advise what the third relay capability can do? I always wanted two heating relays serving upstairs and downstairs on separate two way valves and a third for the DHW. I was advised the Evohome could only do a single heating circuit and the DHW. Will this third relay now allow two heating circuits.
                Thanks.
                S Plan mode on the Evohome uses one relay to control the central heating zone valve and a second relay to control the hot water zone valve. Previously you had to rely on using the limit switches on the zone valves to fire the boiler in this configuration, but it's now possible to add a third relay to directly control the boiler instead.

                The advantages of doing this are (1) you can set cycles per hour and minimum on time for your boiler, which you can't in a 2 relay S plan configuration and (2) it allows for hot water overrun, where the boiler relay switches off immediately when the hot water reaches temperature (and central heating isn't required) but keeps the hot water zone valve open for a specified number of additional minutes, which helps transfer latent heat out of the boiler heat exchanger. If you're firing the boiler from the zone valve limit switches this isn't possible.

                What you're talking about with multiple heating zone zone valves isn't possible as far as I know - in the three relay configuration you still only have one heating zone valve.
                Last edited by DBMandrake; 30 September 2016, 10:22 PM.

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