Future-Proofing the current Evohome System

[HenGus]

Few would argue that Evohome is at the luxury end of the heating controls market. By way of comparison, it is worth noting what BMW's stance is on future-proofing its latest I3 electric vehicle (EV).

Quote: One pressing question in the BMW i3 community is the process of replacing a battery. We asked Guerrero about the battery replacement in case of damage, during accident or internal damage. “Yes. What’s great about our strategy is what we learned from the Active E where replacing a battery is upwards of 20 to 30 hours,” says Guerrero. “With the i3, we wanted to put something in place where a car comes in like all the BMWs, hook it up to a tester, perform diagnostic, drop the battery, replace the individual module, not the entire battery, put back in the car and back on the road. We’re looking now at 3 to 4 hours.”

This keeps the repair costs as low as possible, and it’s a complete shift from the Active E and from what other manufacturers are doing it. “We knew that not all BMW centers would have electrical engineers, so we had to reverse-design to get every center to replace the individual module,” added the product manager. “We’re very proud of this.”

BMW says the i3 is a scalable for the future, a car that won’t rust and people will likely keep this car well into the future. “So how do we keep this car relevant,” says Guerrero, “when technology is changing so quickly.” BMW says they are investigating how to keep it relevant, either through software updates and battery replacements. BMW sees the battery replacement as a potential money maker as well. Unquote

Source: BMWBlog

[Rameses]

Hengus

Thanks for this (and all the other posts) - we do improve evohome as much as is possible via firmware updates sent to the gateway and improvements via the app and 3rd party partnerships.

[HenGus]

Hengus

Thanks for this (and all the other posts) - we do improve evohome as much as is possible via firmware updates sent to the gateway and improvements via the app and 3rd party partnerships.

A good starting point would be for the Gateway to report faults as they appear on the Evohome Controller. For example, a loss of communication to actuators or, indeed, the problem that I had late last week relating to the controller's battery. At the moment, the Gateway is nothing more than a very expensive communications link to the Evohome controller. Users also need some form of permanent fault log as a system re-set - either by the user or the controller itself - results in the log being wiped. For me, Evohome is proving to be the most unreliable piece of electronics that I have ever had installed. I appreciate that I might just be unlucky but I do wonder about manufacturing quality control.

[The EVOHOME Shop]

At the moment, the Gateway is nothing more than a very expensive communications link to the Evohome controller.

The evohome Controller operates at 868mhz so without the RFG100 the evohome system would not be able to communicate with the BB router and smartphone, tablet or smartwatch control would be rendered useless... Most of my customers say the RFG100 it is an essential device? Also at £49.75 Inc. VAT I personally don't think it is expensive - most people will spend that on a meal for two at a nice restaurant without thinking about it.

I have evohome in my home and office and TBH it ranks low on my list of concerns. Reading the majority of the posts on here anyone would think a device now costing £163 owes everyone a very long term favour. The BMW i3 costs £29,950... If I spent that sort of money on evohome then I would expect more but the fact is the 'brain' part of evohome costs 184 times less than the i3 so how could anyone expect the same level of service (even though two guys from Honeywell on here go out of their way and exceed the service I have ever been given at BMW)?

[HenGus]

The evohome Controller operates at 868mhz so without the RFG100 the evohome system would not be able to communicate with the BB router and smartphone, tablet or smartwatch control would be rendered useless... Most of my customers say the RFG100 it is an essential device? Also at £49.75 Inc. VAT I personally don't think it is expensive - most people will spend that on a meal for two at a nice restaurant without thinking about it.

I have evohome in my home and office and TBH it ranks low on my list of concerns. Reading the majority of the posts on here anyone would think a device now costing £163 owes everyone a very long term favour. The BMW i3 costs £29,950... If I spent that sort of money on evohome then I would expect more but the fact is the 'brain' part of evohome costs 184 times less than the i3 so how could anyone expect the same level of service (even though two guys from Honeywell on here go out of their way and exceed the service I have ever been given at BMW)?

Richard, an Evohome controller should work for more than 3 weeks! I should have perhaps expressed more concern when my specialist installer said that the replacement controller kept re-setting when he mounted it on the wall. I know, and I can understand why, you are fiercely defensive of the Evohome system but after 4 installer visits - and probably another one to come - I am fast losing my faith in this system despite its obvious advantages. FWiW, SONOS also had a dedicated wifi network and for many years it required a dedicated gateway connected to a router. SONOS has now done away with this requirement and the system is controlled via a free app which has full system diagnostics. Given that the cheapest SONOS sound system costs £169, I am not sure that your analogy stands up to close scrutiny. In terms of heating controls, Evohome is at the expensive end of the systems currently available. I am not expecting it to last forever, but I would like it work without fault for more than a month.

[G4RHL]

Richard, an Evohome controller should work for more than 3 weeks!

Am not sure the controller should actually stop working unless the batteries were dud. There are no moving parts in it, like most things electronic, if it is going to go wrong because of a fault it appears very early on in life. Simple Sale of Goods Act stuff says it should be expected go work for several years and the manufacturer should be liable if it does not. Surprising how many manufacturers try to wriggle out of that one if they can. Like software, it does not wear out yet look how many software suppliers try to limit their liability! (..and they get away with it in the Public Sector!) However, my Evohome Controller works fine. Been operational now for 4 months. I have noticed mine reset when I put it back on to its wall plate but only on a couple of occasions and nothing was lost as a result. I think, but not sure, the sudden connection to power may be producing an overload causing it to reset. Some devices prefer to be switched off before power is applied but you cannot do that with this controller.

[The EVOHOME Shop]

Richard, an Evohome controller should work for more than 3 weeks! I should have perhaps expressed more concern when my specialist installer said that the replacement controller kept re-setting when he mounted it on the wall. I know, and I can understand why, you are fiercely defensive of the Evohome system but after 4 installer visits - and probably another one to come - I am fast losing my faith in this system despite its obvious advantages. FWiW, SONOS also had a dedicated wifi network and for many years it required a dedicated gateway connected to a router. SONOS has now done away with this requirement and the system is controlled via a free app which has full system diagnostics. Given that the cheapest SONOS sound system costs £169, I am not sure that your analogy stands up to close scrutiny. In terms of heating controls, Evohome is at the expensive end of the systems currently available. I am not expecting it to last forever, but I would like it work without fault for more than a month.

I am aware you have had 'problems' with your evohome system but I question how many of them have been installer created (obviously the battery terminal breaking cannot be blamed on the installer)?

I have sold literally thousands of evohome units and personally installed hundreds of Honeywell wireless products over the years and reliability for me is not in question. The fact that most installations are not being carried out in accordance to manufacturers guidelines is probably the biggest issue we have with the evohome product. I forget the amount of people that have contacted us about RF issues, only for me to request/receive a photo of BDR91's right next to each other or literally sitting on the cylinder/boiler. I agree the manual is not an installation bible, but everything is in there. I am sure it is one of many things in the process of being improved... The fact is improvements take time and money.

By comparison the SONOS system is a very basic piece of technology, so comparing it to evohome is not apples for apples either. You would have to compare something similar to evohome and if this is comparison is for instance was the Lightwave RF multi zoning product - even the LWRF forum users have been replacing the product with evohome and then saying how good it is in comparison.

FWIW when I set-up The EVOHOME Shop I did not expect the popularity of the evohome product and I suspect neither did the evohome guys at Honeywell. I do find however, people are criticising a product which was a big step into the unknown - The Connected Home. Gaining the level of control people now have over their heating systems is unprecedented and vast.

All feedback we receive is always passed on and I know for a fact Honeywell are not a closed shop - they are listening and learning just as I do constantly. I also pass the wealth of my evohome knowledge and do's/dont's freely to people who want my mind full of useless information and with the coming web-chat I suspect Honeywell are trying to do the same.

Our new website when it is launched in a few weeks time will be an improvement on what we currently do and fingers crossed my unique installer perspective will go on to help new users to the evohome system get the correct information from the start and then my personal technical backup over the long term be it on the phone, email or on here.

[G4RHL]

I am one who looked at the LightwaveRF system. I am a great fan of LightwaveRF but after over 2 years of waiting for the heating system that was said to do the same as Evohome, when it was released it was nowhere up to it. The TRV controllers look big and clumsy, the noise they make is horrendous but worst of all it did not do what was promised and the individual zone control was not there. I returned the goods, got a refund and bought Evohome. Cost me about £250 more. Regrets? None.

When something goes wrong we are quick to shed the blame on the equipment, it can't be me is the thought. Most problems are human in origin. However, the quality is high, occasionally there will be the odd failure. Then we tend to broadcast such a failure as if it is common, par for the course, yet there are many thousand more happy users. Have been reading, and learning, from these pages, for some months now, and it seems to me that when people have written in with problems the vast majority are as a result of bad installation or incorrect set up. Cured from the advice herein given.

Have said it before, blaming one's equipment is more a male trait. At my age though I am entitled to do so!

[erik]

blaming one's equipment is more a male trait.

Not in my experience All the women at work who blame their keyboard when they mis-entered their password for the 10th time...

[Mavis]

Ok, ok, ok, I can't bite my tongue any longer ...... a lot of problems could be avoided if men read the manual

[G4RHL]

Ok, ok, ok, I can't bite my tongue any longer ...... a lot of problems could be avoided if men read the manual

I really thought you would rise to that one!!

RTFB.

[HenGus]

Having flown high performance and, latterly, large transport aircraft for 35 years, I am well aware of the quality of Honeywell products with MTBFs well in excess of anything that one could buy on the high street. That said, a high MTBF does not mean that any given component will not fail for 'X' years. Some components may fail on the day that they are fitted; some years later and some will never fail. I also know from my experience that they are pilots out there who do not have enough fingers to count the number of engine failures that they have had over the years. In nearly 10,000 hours in the air (10 different aircraft types), I never had a single engine shutdown.

My experience with Evohome has undoubtedly been out-of-ordinary. I minimised risk by selecting an Evohome Specialist installer so I had no need to read the installation manual or Evohome course notes. My installer has worked closely with the Evohome Technical team to track down the issues that I have encountered which, to date, have resulted in 4 BDR changes; 2 BDR re-locations and a replacement controller. If you are in the fortunate category of never having had an Evohome problem then you may not appreciate some of the limitations of the current firmware. For example, the fault log is wiped if the controller re-sets which, from a diagnostics point-of-view, is short-sighted. Secondly, there is no remote reporting of communications faults between the controller and the actuators, and of any error messages in general. The fact that a terminal bracket has snapped on the latest controller is unfortunate but suggests to me that battery removal/re-insertion is hardly a robust way to re-set the controller.

None of the above makes Evohome a bad product; however, in my view, it does prove that Evohome is far from perfect - hence, my question about what Honeywell intends to do to support legacy systems?

[crh]

i've worked in ultra high end home automation for nearly 15 years now and evohome is very good product. it's a big leap from the first gen product and it's nearly there although there are a couple of things missing

ability to backup the schedules and optimisation on the controller
external weather sensor
create custom quick actions
a new in room wall sensor that dosent look like it belongs in a commercial office think nest
reporting functions so you could see how the room is behaving

The honeywell guys should get a pat on the back because i can't seen any reason why you would want a NEST system over evohome. People just dont get the zoning concept in the uk though it's like it's ingrained in them that they must have a single temp sensor that heats the house to that setpoint

there's a lot of potential with what they could do next with it

[erik]

the Round Wireless is a sensor that doesn't look like it belongs in a commercial office.

[top brake]

i've worked in ultra high end home automation for nearly 15 years now and evohome is very good product. it's a big leap from the first gen product and it's nearly there although there are a couple of things missing

ability to backup the schedules and optimisation on the controller
external weather sensor
create custom quick actions
a new in room wall sensor that dosent look like it belongs in a commercial office think nest
reporting functions so you could see how the room is behaving

The honeywell guys should get a pat on the back because i can't seen any reason why you would want a NEST system over evohome. People just dont get the zoning concept in the uk though it's like it's ingrained in them that they must have a single temp sensor that heats the house to that setpoint

there's a lot of potential with what they could do next with it

thanks for the helpful positive feedback

some nice ideas there:
ability to backup the schedules and optimisation on the controller
reporting functions so you could see how the room is behaving

on the other points:

you can create a custom quick action already, is there something about it you would suggest changing?
the external temperature sensor was dropped - it reports weather in the App now

As Erik suggests checkout the Single Zone Thermostat which can be used as part of evohome

http://www.honeywelluk.com/products/Thermostats/Room-Thermostats/Wireless-Thermostats/Single-zone-Connected-Thermostat/