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Hi forum. A couple of days ago I purchased and set up an evohome system in my property, consisting of an OpenTherm gateway, the new WiFi controller, and 10 HR92 actuators. Since then, I have noticed on three occasions that I have had a lost comms fault on the guest bed actuator. There is nothing unusual about the guest bedroom. It's on the floor below the controller, the actuator is maybe 6 metres line of sight, and it's one of the shorter distances in the system. The only nearby metal object is the radiator itself - I'm not aware of the walls being constructed of foil backed board, and there are no other metallic objects, other evohome components or electrical accessories nearby in the room.
Thinking it may be a fault with the actuator itself, I have swapped said actuator with another room and re-bound both devices. The actuator that was in the guest bedroom is now in the master bedroom and operating without problem, but the actuator that was previously working fine in the master bedroom is now throwing comms faults in the guest bedroom. On re-binding the devices, the red fault icon on the controller for the guest bedroom does not disappear. It seems that the only way to clear this is to pull out the controller batteries, put them back in and let the controller re-discover all the HR92s. It will then operate fine for a good few hours before the comms fault comes back.
Running an RF check, the signal to the guest bed HR92 shows as 'excellent', though if I walk in front of the thermostat (blocking the signal) it changes to 'good', and on one occasion I did actually manage to block the signal to the point where I got a 'not received', but I was stood literally a quarter of an inch from touching the controller with my chest. I have also noticed that the numbers after the various signal strengths on the controller RF test page are only ever 1 or 0. I assume they are supposed to count the number of excellent/good/poor/etc signals received, but if that's the case, there must be a bug in the software, as they don't work.
Operationally, the guest bed actuator works fine. It seems to respond to demand from the controller and is sending back temperature data for the room, so I really can't understand the comms fault. What also isn't made clear in the manual is how these comms faults are supposed to be cleared - once it rears its head, the only way to clear the fault seems to be a complete power cycle of the controller.
Interestingly, Fletch79 seems to have the exact same problem in his post from a couple of days ago.
I know that Honeywell have a bit of a presence on here, and I'd be interested to know exactly what's going on inside the controller when it throws this error. For example, does the controller poll the HR92s every few minutes and expect a response? Does it poll them continuously and then throw an error if it goes more than a few minutes without a response? I know that the actuators only switch on their radio every four minutes or so to conserve battery power. I guess what I'm trying to establish is how many times a comms fault must occur before it's flagged by the controller. If once is all it takes, perhaps the controller firmware should be changed to allow a couple of errors before going to fault? I'd also be interested to know how and when the fault is supposed to clear, if at all. There's certainly no button to clear the fault logbook.
Thinking it may be a fault with the actuator itself, I have swapped said actuator with another room and re-bound both devices. The actuator that was in the guest bedroom is now in the master bedroom and operating without problem, but the actuator that was previously working fine in the master bedroom is now throwing comms faults in the guest bedroom. On re-binding the devices, the red fault icon on the controller for the guest bedroom does not disappear. It seems that the only way to clear this is to pull out the controller batteries, put them back in and let the controller re-discover all the HR92s. It will then operate fine for a good few hours before the comms fault comes back.
Running an RF check, the signal to the guest bed HR92 shows as 'excellent', though if I walk in front of the thermostat (blocking the signal) it changes to 'good', and on one occasion I did actually manage to block the signal to the point where I got a 'not received', but I was stood literally a quarter of an inch from touching the controller with my chest. I have also noticed that the numbers after the various signal strengths on the controller RF test page are only ever 1 or 0. I assume they are supposed to count the number of excellent/good/poor/etc signals received, but if that's the case, there must be a bug in the software, as they don't work.
Operationally, the guest bed actuator works fine. It seems to respond to demand from the controller and is sending back temperature data for the room, so I really can't understand the comms fault. What also isn't made clear in the manual is how these comms faults are supposed to be cleared - once it rears its head, the only way to clear the fault seems to be a complete power cycle of the controller.
Interestingly, Fletch79 seems to have the exact same problem in his post from a couple of days ago.
I know that Honeywell have a bit of a presence on here, and I'd be interested to know exactly what's going on inside the controller when it throws this error. For example, does the controller poll the HR92s every few minutes and expect a response? Does it poll them continuously and then throw an error if it goes more than a few minutes without a response? I know that the actuators only switch on their radio every four minutes or so to conserve battery power. I guess what I'm trying to establish is how many times a comms fault must occur before it's flagged by the controller. If once is all it takes, perhaps the controller firmware should be changed to allow a couple of errors before going to fault? I'd also be interested to know how and when the fault is supposed to clear, if at all. There's certainly no button to clear the fault logbook.
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