Help needed re: Evohome actuator faults and email notifications

[Arrghh!]

I have Evohome installed in my house and also in my mother's house who lives an hour away. It's been very useful for me to monitor her heating remotely and make adjustments where necessary, as she had no experience of central heating until a year ago and quite frankly doesn't understand how it works and would never cope with the concept of having a thermostat.

Both systems have thrown up various comms fault errors in the last 12 months but I haven't spent a lot of time investigating them as they haven't stopped the system from working and we haven't really had the heating on until recently anyway, but 2 days ago my mother calls to say the bathroom radiator isn't coming on and when I look on the app, that actuator isn't reporting a temperature, just "--".

I've taken the batteries out of an HR92 here to try and replicate the problem. It took about 3 hours to register the comms fault on the controller, which surprised me a little but now it's also showing "--" so perhaps batteries are all it will be.

Is there anything more I can do remotely to diagnose the problem before I go to my mother's and check it out?

The other issue I have is that I set up immediate email notification for error reporting from both locations, but haven't received any emails about these faults.
I did however get an email alert a couple of weeks ago telling me I attempted to remotely implement a change to a zone, when in fact I hadn't done anything with the controller that day!
Is email notification reliable and is there more I can do with the app or the system setup to make sure I'm notified if there's a fault?

[DBMandrake]

I have Evohome installed in my house and also in my mother's house who lives an hour away. It's been very useful for me to monitor her heating remotely and make adjustments where necessary, as she had no experience of central heating until a year ago and quite frankly doesn't understand how it works and would never cope with the concept of having a thermostat.

Both systems have thrown up various comms fault errors in the last 12 months but I haven't spent a lot of time investigating them as they haven't stopped the system from working and we haven't really had the heating on until recently anyway, but 2 days ago my mother calls to say the bathroom radiator isn't coming on and when I look on the app, that actuator isn't reporting a temperature, just "--".

I've taken the batteries out of an HR92 here to try and replicate the problem. It took about 3 hours to register the comms fault on the controller, which surprised me a little but now it's also showing "--" so perhaps batteries are all it will be.

Is there anything more I can do remotely to diagnose the problem before I go to my mother's and check it out?

Check my thread over here about battery contact issues in the HR92:

http://www.wordpress-1219309-4387497.cloudwaysapps.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?4957-HR92-battery-contact-problem

I had one HR92 that died altogether (funnily enough, also the bathroom one) that turned out to be just a lack of tension on the battery contacts under the battery. Adjusting the tension on the contacts fixed the problem.

The other issue I have is that I set up immediate email notification for error reporting from both locations, but haven't received any emails about these faults.
I did however get an email alert a couple of weeks ago telling me I attempted to remotely implement a change to a zone, when in fact I hadn't done anything with the controller that day!
Is email notification reliable and is there more I can do with the app or the system setup to make sure I'm notified if there's a fault?

Unfortunately email notifications will not alert you to any comms faults between controller and other devices such as HR92 and BDR91 that you would see on the Fault log on the controller itself. That is a significant gripe that people have with the email alerts.

All you will be alerted of is if the system loses communication with Honeywell servers or zone/mode changes that you attempt to make using the iPhone/Android App don't get applied properly. (As you have seen)

[Arrghh!]

Thanks, that's something I'll check on all the actuators when I go there.

There are just a few obvious (to me) features which Evohome doesn't have which would make life so much easier, especially for people like me trying to manage the heating of a remote location.

[paulockenden]

Email notification of comms problems and low batteries would be brilliant, but I don't think the current API (which the controller uses when phoning home to Honeywell) supports this. Which is a shame.

I've also had HR92s go flat with no warning on the controller. They look OK (setpoint on the display, etc.), but there's no comms. And when you flip the battery they don't come back to life. I'm gradually replacing all of my batteries with Lithium AAs - hopefully they'll last for ages!

[DBMandrake]

I've also had HR92s go flat with no warning on the controller. They look OK (setpoint on the display, etc.), but there's no comms. And when you flip the battery they don't come back to life.

Are you sure you weren't bitten by low battery contact tension ? Different brands of batteries have slightly different dimensions so you might have installed a new battery that was 1/2mm longer and thus had better tension when adjusting the contacts might have been all that was needed. Something to consider next time you have a "sudden death" problem like this.

[paulockenden]

Are you sure you weren't bitten by low battery contact tension ?

Quite sure. I've never seen this problem. All of my HR92s have good battery tension, and a positive 'click' when I close the clip.

[Arrghh!]

I checked all the HR92s at my mothers house today. The one which failed had flat batteries and another one was giving battery low errors in the log. This is barely 12 months after installation, so I've replaced all of them with new lithiums in the hope that will keep them going a bit longer next time. No sign of the battery contact issue so I'm hoping things will settle down during the cold weather so I'm not fault finding too regularly!

[DBMandrake]

I checked all the HR92s at my mothers house today. The one which failed had flat batteries and another one was giving battery low errors in the log. This is barely 12 months after installation, so I've replaced all of them with new lithiums in the hope that will keep them going a bit longer next time. No sign of the battery contact issue so I'm hoping things will settle down during the cold weather so I'm not fault finding too regularly!

Battery use seems to vary a lot between different zones so I wouldn't assume that because two were low that all the rest were - I have one HR92 that did 18 months before I started to get low battery warnings, and the rest of my HR92's are now about 15 months old (installed later than the first one) with the original Alkaline batteries still fitted and are still showing 2 bars with no battery alerts on the controller.

Did you remember to change the battery type to Lithium (type 1) in the HR92 settings ? If you forgot they will work, but will start reporting low battery warnings either too soon or too late. (I can't remember offhand the voltage differences between alkaline and lithium when discharged to know which way around the warning will be wrong)

[paulockenden]

so I've replaced all of them with new lithiums

Did you remember to change the setting so that it knows it has Lithium power? 9-1 in the menus, if my memory serves me right.

Edit - I see Simon got there first!

P.

[Arrghh!]

Rats! I knew there was something else I had to remember to do!

I'll do it when I'm there again next week...

Something else I noticed was that I had disabled the actuator dials originally but when I changed the batteries, it seemed to reactivate them even though the controller still said they were deactivated.

[DBMandrake]

Something else I noticed was that I had disabled the actuator dials originally but when I changed the batteries, it seemed to reactivate them even though the controller still said they were deactivated.

That's correct.

Removing the batteries is your "get out of jail" card if you were to bind an HR92, set it to local override disabled, then remove the binding at the controller end or do a full controller reset. If removing the batteries didn't re-enable local control you'd be in serious trouble then, unable to regain control of the HR92 even to re-bind it.

However are you sure that it didn't re-lock the HR92 after a few minutes when they established communication again ? It takes an HR92 a while to receive all its settings again like set points after changing batteries - as much as 10-20 minutes. You may find that it would update its lock status after a while due to a periodic update from the controller, or after the next set point change is sent to the HR92. I don't think it would remain permanently unlocked if it was still bound to the controller.

(I'm curious to test this myself to see what happens actually)

[Arrghh!]

I suspect they may have done that but I'll check next week and that does all make sense.

The original idea was to lock everything down because my mother has her sister staying with her, who has dementia and fiddles with anything which has a dial, button or switch on it. That's why this system is so good for a situation like mine. They both only understand the concept of a heater being 'on' or 'off', so I know they would have been turning whatever heating control they could find fully up or down all the time they felt a change in temperature and causing complete confusion for everyone! I know I could limit the adjustment of the actuators to a narrow range, but the way it's been working has been fine up to now and they're always warm, which is gratifying to know.