No heating this morning

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  • DBMandrake
    Automated Home Legend
    • Sep 2014
    • 2361

    No heating this morning

    Overnight it seems our Evotouch has got a bit confused about what the time is, and this has lead to the heating being off when I got up this morning more than an hour after the scheduled on time of the downstairs zones.

    I got up to make a bottle for a 2 month old and as that happens at a different time every day I was a bit disorientated as to what the actual time was... when I came down stairs and looked at the evotouch it reported the time as somewhere around 7:30am (can't remember exactly unfortunately) with the bedroom scheduled to 17 degrees and all other zones to 5 degrees, which is our overnight schedule. The boiler was off and the nearby radiators were cold.

    Again, I couldn't quite remember what time the downstairs was scheduled to come on on a weekend as I've changed it a couple of times in the last few months, so I assumed it was 8am which is one of the times it has been in the past. I thought about manually turning individual zones on but then thought why not use custom mode, but I couldn't remember what that was scheduled for either as I never use custom. So I checked that and found is configured to come on to 20 degrees at 7am for all rooms except the bedroom. Perfect.

    So I enabled custom mode and all the relevant zones came on. I walked away and then checked my phone, only to discover the time was really just after 8:30am and that the heating should have been on for at least an hour already. Huh ?

    I went back to the evotouch and turned off the custom quick action and all the zones remained on as they should have originally been and the time on the screen jumped forward about an hour to the correct time at the instant I cancelled the quick action. Hmmm... I took a photo of the screen just after I turned off the quick action:



    The Bathroom schedule for Sunday is 20 degrees from 7:30am to 10am then 16 degrees from 10am to 8pm. From that it's clear that the Bathroom should have been up to 20 degrees long ago - especially when I use optimal start. Concerned that there may have been a glitch in operation I decided to do a battery out reboot of the controller.

    The interesting thing is when it came back on the time was wrong once again, this time it had jumped to Saturday 11:09am - the previous day:



    After a few seconds I went into Settings, and at the moment I did that the time jumped back to the correct time and date, presumably by adjusting the time online as I have wifi time adjustment enabled. However, the zone set points remained at what they would have been for 11:09am on Saturday:



    It's not until I enabled then cancelled the OFF quick action that suddenly the set points were correct again for the current, actual time:



    So there seems to be a couple of things going on here:

    1) It looks like some time overnight the controller received a bad time update from the the time server(s) it uses, causing the time to be about an hour behind the real time. It's unclear whether the controller uses standard ntp protocol, whether it uses one or more public servers or whether it uses honeywell servers.

    2) Even after a later time update occurs that corrects the time, the set points do not change to reflect the corrected time until a quick action is manually actioned, or perhaps until a scheduled set point change occurs.

    Anyone else notice a problem this morning ? I'm tempted to turn off the wifi time update as I suspect that a bad time update was the cause of the problem, however the fact that the set points do not automatically adjust to the new time when the time is corrected again may be a bug.

    It's also a little worrying that the date and time was completely wrong after rebooting the device - does it have no real time clock and rely on the online time server to set the time after a reboot ? If I had wifi time update turned off would the date and time remain wrong after a reboot of the controller ?
    Last edited by DBMandrake; 19 June 2016, 10:42 AM.
  • DBMandrake
    Automated Home Legend
    • Sep 2014
    • 2361

    #2
    Just had this time jump problem happen a second time.

    I walked out to the hallway to make a timed manual override, and did a double take when I saw the screen claiming the time was 3:55pm - considering it was 7:07pm according to every other device in the house and pitch black outside!

    Last time this happened I found I had to switch screens for the time to update again, when I did this the time jumped to 6:57pm - an improvement, but still 10 minutes behind actual time. Out of curiosity I waited several minutes to see what happened - the time remained stuck at 6:57pm and even switching screens did not make it progress any further past 6:57pm.

    I rebooted the unit (batteries out while off the mount) and the time once again showed 6:57pm, however after waiting a couple of minutes (for Wi-Fi to connect) and then switching screens again it then jumped to the correct time, (presumably by NTP time update) which by then was 7:12pm. The reported time is now updating normally every minute.

    If this was only a cosmetic problem I would just be amused, however the whole point of this device is timed heating schedules, and I know from my previous run in with this problem described in my initial post that when it happened it affected proper functioning of the schedules - eg the house was cold at a time when the heating was scheduled to be on.

    On thinking about it, it seems almost as if the clock in the device stopped updating at 3:55pm and remained at that time until I noticed it, although as I didn't look at it between 3:55pm and 6:57pm I can't prove it.

    Am I the only one experiencing this problem ? Does everyone else have the time set to automatic (ntp network update) on their devices ?
    Last edited by DBMandrake; 1 October 2016, 07:51 PM.

    Comment

    • HenGus
      Automated Home Legend
      • May 2014
      • 1001

      #3
      My time is set to automatic (wifi update). No issues whatsoever.

      Comment

      • top brake
        Automated Home Legend
        • Feb 2015
        • 837

        #4
        One for the support team, would you please log a call with them?
        I work for Resideo, posts are personal and my own views.

        Comment

        • DBMandrake
          Automated Home Legend
          • Sep 2014
          • 2361

          #5
          What is the best way to do this ?

          Comment

          • HenGus
            Automated Home Legend
            • May 2014
            • 1001

            #6
            Originally posted by DBMandrake View Post
            What is the best way to do this ?
            Nice new website.

            Comment

            • Dean
              Automated Home Jr Member
              • Feb 2016
              • 11

              #7
              You are not alone. Had the same issue on Saturday afternoon.

              Switched the heating on around 6pm via the mobile app and then later noticed that the zone temperature had not changed 45 minutes later. Then I noticed that the central clock was showing 17.01pm. After pressing the screen to show all zones, the temperature updated and showed mobile icon, but the clock in the top right was now showing 18.34 whereas it was 18.45.

              Went into the settings to check clock and toggled wifi clock setting off/on. This did not make any difference, after leaving the display for a while and when the display returned to home screen noticed that the central clock was not changing. Went back into settings, switched off wifi clock and manually amended the time and switched wifi clock back on. Decided to take the unit off the base unit and when I did the whole system froze and then reset itself. After restarting, placed back on the base unit and unit reset again.

              Controller was still not updating clock or temperature so took unit off base again, this time the low battery warning displayed on each press so removed the batteries and reset again. The batteries were not loose and correctly positioned. (Batteries were only discharged and fully charged less than 4 weeks ago, seems to be an inherent design fault on the battery backup not keeping charge) After placing controller back on the base unit it took approximately 10 minutes to display temperature of the first zone on the unit, another 10 minutes for the second zone and eventually after 1 hour, maybe longer all zones were showing temperatures again. Seems very strange that if the HR92's communicate every 4 minutes why it should take so long to resynch with the controller after a reset.
              Last edited by Dean; 3 October 2016, 10:47 PM.

              Comment

              • DBMandrake
                Automated Home Legend
                • Sep 2014
                • 2361

                #8
                Originally posted by Dean View Post
                You are not alone. Had the same issue on Saturday afternoon.

                Switched the heating on around 6pm via the mobile app and then later noticed that the zone temperature had not changed 45 minutes later. Then I noticed that the central clock was showing 17.01pm. After pressing the screen to show all zones, the temperature updated and showed mobile icon, but the clock in the top right was now showing 18.34 whereas it was 18.45.
                Sounds like you saw identical symptoms that occurred during the same time period on the same day as me. Too much to be a coincidence I think, to me it suggests that there could have been a bad time update received from the time server (a large forward, or probably backwards time jump) that confused the OS in the device requiring a reboot for it to right itself.

                It's unknown whether Evohome uses standard NTP protocol or something proprietary, and even if it uses NTP it probably uses Honeywell servers specifically. When I get a chance one day I'll set up a proxy wifi network so I can run tcpdump on the server traffic from the evohome - while most of it (account related stuff) is probably TLS encrypted, if it does use ntp for time that probably isn't encrypted.
                After placing controller back on the base unit it took approximately 10 minutes to display temperature of the first zone on the unit, another 10 minutes for the second zone and eventually after 1 hour, maybe longer all zones were showing temperatures again. Seems very strange that if the HR82's communicate every 4 minutes why it should take so long to resynch with the controller after a reset.
                Yes it does take a long time for temperature updates to start being shown on the controller after a controller reboot - not sure why when as you say temperature sensors send out updates about every 4 minutes.

                A tip when you're in that situation and feeling impatient is that if you go around and press the button on all your HR92's after the controller has rebooted they will all sync within about a minute or so of pressing the button.
                Last edited by DBMandrake; 3 October 2016, 10:13 PM.

                Comment

                • Dean
                  Automated Home Jr Member
                  • Feb 2016
                  • 11

                  #9
                  Originally posted by DBMandrake View Post
                  Yes it does take a long time for temperature updates to start being shown on the controller after a controller reboot - not sure why when as you say temperature sensors send out updates about every 4 minutes.

                  A tip when you're in that situation and feeling impatient is that if you go around and press the button on all your HR92's after the controller has rebooted they will all sync within about a minute or so of pressing the button.
                  Thanks for the tip.

                  Comment

                  • paulockenden
                    Automated Home Legend
                    • Apr 2015
                    • 1719

                    #10
                    Are you both using the same ISP?

                    Only some ISPs proxy NNTP (time server) requests on their own network. And I'm wondering whether your systems were both seeing the same broken server?

                    P.

                    Comment

                    • DBMandrake
                      Automated Home Legend
                      • Sep 2014
                      • 2361

                      #11
                      Originally posted by paulockenden View Post
                      Are you both using the same ISP?

                      Only some ISPs proxy NNTP (time server) requests on their own network. And I'm wondering whether your systems were both seeing the same broken server?

                      P.
                      I'm on Virgin Media.

                      However I'm not aware of ISP's transparently "proxying" NTP protocol queries that are not directed at their own servers ? When did this start ?

                      If the Evohome queries a specific NTP server run by Honeywell the ISP should not be interfering with this request in any way, and I can't see why they would want to. I've certainly not encountered any NTP issues with any other devices such as Raspberry Pi's that rely on connecting to Debian NTP servers to set the time in the whole time that I've been using Virgin.

                      More likely the server that the Evohome is configured to query had a temporary problem with the time it reported that may have only lasted a few minutes, and only those devices that were unlucky enough to send their regular time update query during that time window were affected. It would also require a bug in the NTP client code in the device such that once it receives a wildly wrong time something crashes and it is not able to recover without a reboot. Otherwise it would have righted itself once the server was fixed.

                      Of course everything here is just educated speculation.
                      Last edited by DBMandrake; 4 October 2016, 10:22 AM.

                      Comment

                      • paulockenden
                        Automated Home Legend
                        • Apr 2015
                        • 1719

                        #12
                        Originally posted by DBMandrake View Post
                        However I'm not aware of ISP's transparently "proxying" NTP protocol queries that are not directed at their own servers ? When did this start ?
                        There was a case a couple of years back. I don't remember the ISP concerned, but there was a big hoo-ha because their customers were all a few seconds out. You might find the story on The Register - that's my usual source of stuff like this. Daft really because NTP requests are quite small. But I guess millions of small requests all add up.

                        Of course we don't know whether the EvoHome box does use NTP for time services, or some component of it's handshake/API connection to Honeywell's cloud. Perhaps time to fire up wireshark...

                        P.

                        Comment

                        • Dean
                          Automated Home Jr Member
                          • Feb 2016
                          • 11

                          #13
                          Originally posted by paulockenden View Post
                          Are you both using the same ISP?

                          Only some ISPs proxy NNTP (time server) requests on their own network. And I'm wondering whether your systems were both seeing the same broken server?

                          P.
                          I'm with BT - going to log the issue with Honeywell and a couple of others such as BDR91 intermittently running for two additional on/off cycles after all zone temperatures have been lowered either scheduled or via mobile app (i.e. way below zone temperatures and no zone is calling for heat) which is wasting energy and gas as the heat is going through the bypass loop as HR92's are closed. I really wish there was an event logging system in this device which I am sure would also assist engineers that come across problems that records the controller actions, such as BDR91 on/off, zone request change/confirmed, zone temperature etc or even if this information was just sent to Honeywell servers which could be accessed in the online portal/mobile app (which would be preference).

                          Another issue I notice as the controller is directly in my line of sight is that during the hour, the EvoHome Controller Internal Temperature sensor drops by 0.5c for exactly one minute 2-3 times an hour and then back to previous temperature (e.g. shows 19.5c then drops to 19c for one minute then back up to 19.5 again multiple times, also occurs at different temperature settings), with or without heating on, no draughts, various times of the day/night, controller in middle of the room and separate thermometer next to controller shows a stable temperature. At first I thought it was due to the controller trickle charging the batteries, but the same effect is seen out of the base unit.

                          Comment

                          • DBMandrake
                            Automated Home Legend
                            • Sep 2014
                            • 2361

                            #14
                            Originally posted by paulockenden View Post
                            There was a case a couple of years back. I don't remember the ISP concerned, but there was a big hoo-ha because their customers were all a few seconds out. You might find the story on The Register - that's my usual source of stuff like this. Daft really because NTP requests are quite small. But I guess millions of small requests all add up.
                            That is pretty disgraceful behaviour. I really hate it when ISP's do things like that. Just a couple of days ago I had a virgin media survey intercept the page I was trying to load... and I'm pretty sure it is virgin media doing it because I've seen the same survey about 4 times this year so far across different PC's and in every instance it was a different, completely unrelated website I was going to at the time I was intercepted.
                            Of course we don't know whether the EvoHome box does use NTP for time services, or some component of it's handshake/API connection to Honeywell's cloud. Perhaps time to fire up wireshark...

                            P.
                            Yes, we're just speculating at the moment, it could well retrieve the time over the API connection to their servers. I have a spare AP and a switch that supports port mirroring so when I get time one day I could set up a Wireshark session too. I'm quite curious to see what if anything can be seen (presumably most/all of it is encrypted) but its just a matter of finding the time to do these things...

                            Comment

                            • paulockenden
                              Automated Home Legend
                              • Apr 2015
                              • 1719

                              #15
                              Never forget that Virgin was the UK ISP initially very keen to get into bed with Phorm.

                              Comment

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