Evohome quick actions: when does 1 day end?

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  • IvanOpinion
    Automated Home Jr Member
    • Dec 2015
    • 48

    Evohome quick actions: when does 1 day end?

    I want to use an IFTTT recipe to switch my Evohome to Away for 1 day from, say, 11am. Does 1 day mean 24 hours from when it was switched, so 11am the next day? Or does a day have a standard start time, such as midnight?
  • Mavis
    Automated Home Ninja
    • Oct 2014
    • 322

    #2
    I am almost certain that it is midnight if you use the controller. So if you set a quick action for one day at, say 10pm, it will only work until midnight so you will need to set 2 days to get it to work for a whole day. If you use IFTTT you can set it for a number hours though.

    Comment

    • IvanOpinion
      Automated Home Jr Member
      • Dec 2015
      • 48

      #3
      Originally posted by Mavis View Post
      I am almost certain that it is midnight if you use the controller. So if you set a quick action for one day at, say 10pm, it will only work until midnight so you will need to set 2 days to get it to work for a whole day. If you use IFTTT you can set it for a number hours though.
      Thanks. The IFTTT action instructs you to use hours for Eco and days for all the other quick actions. Are you saying that you can in fact use hours, even though the app doesn't allow this? That would be perfect.

      Comment

      • Mavis
        Automated Home Ninja
        • Oct 2014
        • 322

        #4
        I have just checked one of my geofencing recipes and changed it from economy to away and it still gives me the option to set either days or hours.

        Comment

        • IvanOpinion
          Automated Home Jr Member
          • Dec 2015
          • 48

          #5
          Yes, the option is there, but I'm wondering if the system will treat it as hours, or perhaps assume you mean days. I've set a trial 3 hours this afternoon, to see what happens.

          Comment

          • IvanOpinion
            Automated Home Jr Member
            • Dec 2015
            • 48

            #6
            I did a test and did a recipe to switch it to Away from 2pm today, for 3 hours. So it should have finished at 5pm, but it didn't. It is still saying Away Active until 15 Dec.

            So, looks like it just interprets 3 hours as 1 day (not 3 days).

            Comment

            • Fursty Ferret
              Automated Home Sr Member
              • Oct 2014
              • 84

              #7
              The IFTTT action instructs you to use hours for Eco and days for all the other quick actions.
              Some quick actions will take a time / date finish time and some just a date. It's a restriction in the controller software, unfortunately - it doesn't matter if you pass a finish time in the API call, only the date element is used.

              Comment

              • IvanOpinion
                Automated Home Jr Member
                • Dec 2015
                • 48

                #8
                Originally posted by IvanOpinion View Post
                I did a test and did a recipe to switch it to Away from 2pm today, for 3 hours. So it should have finished at 5pm, but it didn't. It is still saying Away Active until 15 Dec.

                So, looks like it just interprets 3 hours as 1 day (not 3 days).
                The quick action had finished at 7am this morning, when I woke. So I think Mavis is right that all days end at midnight.

                If the Honeywell reps can add this to the wish list, it would be helpful to be able to set a quick action for a number of hours, not days. (And helpful for the manual to explain that 1 day could be as short as a few minutes, if you set a quick action just before midnight.)

                Comment

                • DBMandrake
                  Automated Home Legend
                  • Sep 2014
                  • 2361

                  #9
                  Lack of finer granularity for quick actions is indeed a limitation.

                  One feature that I miss from our "dumb" timer is the "advance" function, used to activate the next timer action (on or off) early but then continue with the schedule.

                  The classic example of when you would use this is going to bed early - we set our timer (both old and now the evohome) to turn the heating off at 11pm as that is typical bed time, however if we wanted to go to bed early with the old timer a single press of the "advance" button would advance the schedule so that the heating went off immediately (it would jump to the after 11pm mode) but resume as normal in the morning.

                  With the evohome system there is actually no "clean" way to do the same thing. Yes I appreciate that when every zone has its own schedule, and that schedule is set points not just on off, a simple "advance to next timed point" function like this doesn't make sense when every zone is independent.

                  However an "advance schedule X hours" or "advance schedule to xx:xx am/pm" function would make perfect sense. For example if I went to bed at 9pm I would like to be able to press "advance schedule" then choose either 3 hours or 12am, which would put me well into the night time part of my schedule, eg turn heating off. The zones could then stay in that state until the time is reached and then resume their normal schedule.

                  At the moment my only options are:

                  1) Manually override every zone to a low temperature. Not such a big deal at the moment while I only have 2 zones but eventually I will have 9 so this will become kludgy and unworkable, not to mention poor WAF.

                  2) Put the system into timed away mode. There are several problems with this:

                  a) It's non obvious how to do this - I know to hold down on the away action to do a timed away, but I'm not the only one who uses the controller. This is a little bit more intuitive from the smart phone app.

                  b) Timed away mode can only be timed to a day granularity, to the nearest midnight. That works OK for us as our normal bedtime is before midnight but for anyone whose normal schedule stays on until after midnight this is pretty much useless. (Being able to specify hours in timed away would help here)

                  c) Typical away temperature is 15 degrees - if we go to bed fairly early some zones may actually drop that low before midnight and bring the heating back on for a while - and as there is only a conventional TRV on the bedroom at the moment this would start heating up the bedroom while we're trying to sleep, but even if not this is wasteful of energy.

                  d) Any zones who are programmed to remain below 15 degrees (unused bedrooms etc) would actually be turned ON by activating the away action. (This is a more general problem with the Away action - it should not turn ON rooms that are already set to a lower temperature than away mode...)

                  Timed Off (until after midnight say) would be another option except for the fact that you can't time the off quick action. (why ??)

                  Even the custom action isn't much help here because it too only has day granularity.

                  Basically the very very common scenario of going to bed early is not well handled by the evohome user interface and programming, and certainly not in a user friendly way.

                  How do other people deal with turning the heating off or on early ?

                  The best solution I can think of is a quick action that lets you advance the timed schedule as I described above, either by a custom amount, or to some predefined times. For example you could have "bed time" and "early up" presets that were set to 12am and 8am respectively. (or whatever times best suited your timed schedule)

                  Hopefully honeywell can take this idea onboard along with finer granularity for quick actions (hours and minutes, not just days) and being able to time the heating off action as well.
                  Last edited by DBMandrake; 15 December 2015, 01:46 PM.

                  Comment

                  • Newtothistuff
                    Automated Home Lurker
                    • Dec 2015
                    • 7

                    #10
                    Originally posted by DBMandrake View Post
                    Lack of finer granularity for quick actions is indeed a limitation.

                    One feature that I miss from our "dumb" timer is the "advance" function, used to activate the next timer action (on or off) early but then continue with the schedule.

                    The classic example of when you would use this is going to bed early - we set our timer (both old and now the evohome) to turn the heating off at 11pm as that is typical bed time, however if we wanted to go to bed early with the old timer a single press of the "advance" button would advance the schedule so that the heating went off immediately (it would jump to the after 11pm mode) but resume as normal in the morning.

                    With the evohome system there is actually no "clean" way to do the same thing. Yes I appreciate that when every zone has its own schedule, and that schedule is set points not just on off, a simple "advance to next timed point" function like this doesn't make sense when every zone is independent.

                    However an "advance schedule X hours" or "advance schedule to xx:xx am/pm" function would make perfect sense. For example if I went to bed at 9pm I would like to be able to press "advance schedule" then choose either 3 hours or 12am, which would put me well into the night time part of my schedule, eg turn heating off. The zones could then stay in that state until the time is reached and then resume their normal schedule.

                    At the moment my only options are:

                    1) Manually override every zone to a low temperature. Not such a big deal at the moment while I only have 2 zones but eventually I will have 9 so this will become kludgy and unworkable, not to mention poor WAF.

                    2) Put the system into timed away mode. There are several problems with this:

                    a) It's non obvious how to do this - I know to hold down on the away action to do a timed away, but I'm not the only one who uses the controller. This is a little bit more intuitive from the smart phone app.

                    b) Timed away mode can only be timed to a day granularity, to the nearest midnight. That works OK for us as our normal bedtime is before midnight but for anyone whose normal schedule stays on until after midnight this is pretty much useless. (Being able to specify hours in timed away would help here)

                    c) Typical away temperature is 15 degrees - if we go to bed fairly early some zones may actually drop that low before midnight and bring the heating back on for a while - and as there is only a conventional TRV on the bedroom at the moment this would start heating up the bedroom while we're trying to sleep, but even if not this is wasteful of energy.

                    d) Any zones who are programmed to remain below 15 degrees (unused bedrooms etc) would actually be turned ON by activating the away action. (This is a more general problem with the Away action - it should not turn ON rooms that are already set to a lower temperature than away mode...)

                    Timed Off (until after midnight say) would be another option except for the fact that you can't time the off quick action. (why ??)

                    Even the custom action isn't much help here because it too only has day granularity.

                    Basically the very very common scenario of going to bed early is not well handled by the evohome user interface and programming, and certainly not in a user friendly way.

                    How do other people deal with turning the heating off or on early ?

                    The best solution I can think of is a quick action that lets you advance the timed schedule as I described above, either by a custom amount, or to some predefined times. For example you could have "bed time" and "early up" presets that were set to 12am and 8am respectively. (or whatever times best suited your timed schedule)

                    Hopefully honeywell can take this idea onboard along with finer granularity for quick actions (hours and minutes, not just days) and being able to time the heating off action as well.
                    Forget the heating go to bed naked!!!

                    Comment

                    • Mavis
                      Automated Home Ninja
                      • Oct 2014
                      • 322

                      #11
                      My heating in most rooms goes 'off' at 22.30 but I have a blank timing point set for midnight. This means that if someone is staying up late then they can set an override for the living room either through the app or manually on the HR92 and it will automatically 'switch off' at midnight.

                      If we were up later, I wouldn't want to extend the heating for the whole house though.

                      I do have optimisation off switched on but our house does take a while to cool down in the evening hence why I have it set for 22.30.

                      The one thing I do miss about the heating system in my old house was you could just 'boost' the heating for 1, 2 or 3 hours.

                      Comment

                      • IvanOpinion
                        Automated Home Jr Member
                        • Dec 2015
                        • 48

                        #12
                        Originally posted by DBMandrake View Post
                        How do other people deal with turning the heating off or on early ?
                        What about hitting eco mode? (for going to bed early)

                        Comment

                        • sharpener
                          Automated Home Sr Member
                          • Jan 2015
                          • 78

                          #13
                          Originally posted by DBMandrake View Post
                          Basically the very very common scenario of going to bed early is not well handled by the evohome user interface and programming, and certainly not in a user friendly way.

                          How do other people deal with turning the heating off or on early ?
                          i've left the original 7-day timer in circuit (ironically also a Honeywell) precisely for this reason. Also it controls the h.w. perfectly satisfactorily, so saving the cost of a second BD91 and its attendant ills.

                          The zone timings extend into the small hours (with a dummy setpoint at midnight as Mavis suggests) so if we go to bed early or late one button press will curtail or extend the heating to suit.

                          Also, having a slide switch to choose whether to have the heating on during the daytime, and the ability to press the Change button if we go out for a walk knowing it will automatically come on again at 1600 beat the evotouch UI hands down for convenience!

                          Comment

                          • DBMandrake
                            Automated Home Legend
                            • Sep 2014
                            • 2361

                            #14
                            Originally posted by IvanOpinion View Post
                            What about hitting eco mode? (for going to bed early)
                            Better than nothing I suppose, but still a bit clumsy.

                            If you were going to bed half an hour early, maybe OK, but if we went to bed an hour or two early the living room would easily drop by three degrees before the normal off time, bringing the boiler back on - also keep in mind that TPI will start to cycle the boiler on at a low duty cycle even 1.5 degrees above the 3 degree lower setpoint...

                            If the "Off" option had the same 1 hour level of timing control that eco mode does, (or indeed any ability to time it) so I could say "switch to off mode NOW for 3 hours" knowing that 3 hours will easily extend far enough into my night time schedule, that would be quite usable for the case of going to bed early. It wouldn't solve what to do if you get up early before the scheduled on time though. (An issue on the weekends where getting up time can vary greatly...)

                            It seems that the simple and obvious use case of switching the heating off or on early has not been thought through by the UI designers.

                            Comment

                            • IvanOpinion
                              Automated Home Jr Member
                              • Dec 2015
                              • 48

                              #15
                              Originally posted by IvanOpinion View Post
                              The quick action had finished at 7am this morning, when I woke. So I think Mavis is right that all days end at midnight.

                              If the Honeywell reps can add this to the wish list, it would be helpful to be able to set a quick action for a number of hours, not days. (And helpful for the manual to explain that 1 day could be as short as a few minutes, if you set a quick action just before midnight.)
                              Now I'm puzzled. I set Away at 1.30pm on 15 Dec for 2 days, so I expected it to finish at midnight last night, but it was still going this morning. So perhaps it would have run until 1.30pm today? (I've had to switch it off manually, as I need it on today.)

                              Comment

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