Evohome - Tracking/Graphing Temperatures

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  • Andehh
    Automated Home Sr Member
    • Oct 2015
    • 52

    Evohome - Tracking/Graphing Temperatures

    I know this has been asked before & I know there are several work arounds, but just for the sake of continued pressure on Honeywell.... my parents who I installed & setup Evohome for have asked (& rolled their eyes at) having spent such money on the system, why are they not able to see what/when/why a zone is calling for heat & being able to track this from within Evohome.

    Their Ideal Logic boiler shows graphs & data for everything from flow rate, to gas rate, pump speeds, temperatures etc etc - which has them now wanting to know the same from Evohome.

    They are not massively tech-literate, but do see such an expensive/premium device as being a bit basic in being able to output genuinely useful data for why/when/how long the heating is being used.

    I can't help but echo & agree that for such an expensive system - it is lacking some very 'smart' features!!
  • Dan_Robinson
    Automated Home Ninja
    • Jun 2012
    • 347

    #2
    While I agree we need to be able to see what part of Evo is calling for heat (rather an urgent update in IMHO).... You have to ask yourself why you actually neeeeed the other features.

    The answer - you don't, so why spend resources developing it?

    One thing I have learned from installing hundreds of Evohome systems in properties ranging from 1 bed flats to 7 bed Tudor barn conversions, is that sometimes there is too much information. Most people think they know how to interpret the data, and nearly all of them don't. Giving too much information to a user is asking for trouble/costs/hassle that neither the installer nor, I'm sure, Honeywell wish to support.


    Just my thoughts.
    Kind Regards - Dan Robinson (Jennings Heating Ltd)

    Comment

    • Andehh
      Automated Home Sr Member
      • Oct 2015
      • 52

      #3
      You are not wrong! It isn't needed, but then a £1000 system to control the house heating isn't needed either - far from it.... but when you buy the Rolls Royce of something, you expect the Rolls Royce of feature sets along with it. Including the peace of mind of it working & showing off it's energy saving abilities. Tracking, updating and outputting the temperatures to a Rolls Royce degree of accuracy/energy savings seems only fair when you have spent Rolls Royce money!

      Average joe has no need for this data, but average joe doesn't buy this sort of thing. Evohome caters for a very tech literate, very cutting edge group of people (we are after all on an ''Automated home'' forums...) so it seems only sensible to cater for your target audience?

      Comment

      • Edinburgh2000
        Automated Home Guru
        • Dec 2016
        • 134

        #4
        Originally posted by Dan_Robinson View Post
        .... You have to ask yourself why you actually neeeeed the other features. The answer - you don't, so why spend resources developing it?

        Giving too much information to a user is asking for trouble/costs/hassle that neither the installer nor, I'm sure, Honeywell wish to support.
        You would never make a politician Dan. Much too honest!

        Was Evohome developed to appeal to end users, and to compete for their custom, or to installers, and to compete for their recommendations to the end users? If the product designers try to decide for themselves what the end users really need, then they will misjudge what the end users want and will pay for. Users don't need to upgrade their smartphones every two years, nor their cars, but they want to and will pay for it.

        The market will demonstrate what the end users want, as they will buy those products. My concern is that installers distort that market by trying to cut the end users out of the decision making and simply recommending products that make installers' lives easier.
        Last edited by Edinburgh2000; 8 September 2017, 09:20 AM.

        Comment

        • Dan_Robinson
          Automated Home Ninja
          • Jun 2012
          • 347

          #5
          I do try and be diplomatic .

          Honeywell also have segregated their markets too... Some features will overlap with things like Smile and Trend which mere mortals like me are not allowed to play with .

          But from the support point of view, I totally understand why they ommit some things. I'm working on a job that will have Evohome on 12 zones of underfloor heating across three floors in a new build house that A N Other plumber installed the plumbing and manifolds.

          I spent all of yesterday tracking the heating with a thermal camera because the muppet hadn't labelled the manifolds. One of my guys is going there Monday to repair the leaks on two of the manifolds - there are some total nimrods in our industry and it costs companies and customers a lot of time and money dealing with their aftermath.
          Kind Regards - Dan Robinson (Jennings Heating Ltd)

          Comment

          • paulockenden
            Automated Home Legend
            • Apr 2015
            • 1719

            #6
            Can I mention a toggle between noddy / enthusiast modes again?

            (Perhaps if I say it enough times....)

            Comment

            • DBMandrake
              Automated Home Legend
              • Sep 2014
              • 2361

              #7
              Seeing what zone is calling for heat is a given - it is a must have feature both for peace of mind and troubleshooting. Even though I understand the workings of the system a lot better than the average end user and my system is on the whole behaving itself correctly I have still had quite a few occasions where the boiler relay has come on or has remained on when it absolutely should not have, and (short of an HGI80 and Domoticz logging) I have absolutely no way to identify which zone is to blame and where the breakdown in communications is.

              If the problem was consistent I could figure it out using laborious trial and error - which I have had to resort to in the past, however often these problems are transient so by the time you start down the road of trial and error the problem has righted itself and you are left none the wiser. A simple glance at a heat demand icon on the controller screen could literally save hours of trial and error testing and narrowing down the source of the problem in an instant. (and confirming its existence isn't just your imagination)

              First party graphing is something that will have to come too - I don't necessarily expect that on the controller interface itself, its not clear whether the hardware and OS of the controller is capable of large UI changes like that in a way that would not look and operate clunky by today's capacitive multi-touch UI standards, (no pinch to zoom, swipe to scroll etc...) but it should certainly be possible on the TCC portal (especially now that it has the new dashboard as a launching point) and/or iPhone app, which are both infinitely malleable and capable of such a feature change.

              Keeping it off the main controller UI is an easy way to avoid "confusing" those users who don't want any extra complexity - but it could easily be running in the background all the time on the TCC portal recording the data and making it available should they ever want to log in to look at it.

              I hate to keep mentioning Tado but they have absolutely nailed it on the latest iterations of their iPhone app (it might be the beta version, as my workmate is running beta versions of the app via testflight - which Tado make available on request) they have full graphing of each zone available with a nice swipe/pinch interface, you can see the set point, measured temperature and a translucent proportional heat demand bar all overlaid on the same graph and it makes it absolutely clear what is and has been going on in a zone recently.

              Having it in the iPhone app is nice but to be honest I'd even be happy with access via a web interface if it provides a way to see the live and historical heat demand data...
              Last edited by DBMandrake; 8 September 2017, 03:57 PM.

              Comment

              • radar2016
                Automated Home Jr Member
                • Mar 2016
                • 43

                #8
                [QUOTE=DBMandrake;

                Having it in the iPhone app is nice but to be honest I'd even be happy with access via a web interface if it provides a way to see the live and historical heat demand data...[/QUOTE]

                I cannot find anywhere on the iPhone app where it tells you which radiator is demanding heat, my iPhone must be too old I guess.

                I wish it had been possible the other morning at 3 o'clock, I went round feeling radiators looking for a warm one, after the boiler started up when there was no need for it.

                Comment

                • DBMandrake
                  Automated Home Legend
                  • Sep 2014
                  • 2361

                  #9
                  Originally posted by radar2016 View Post
                  I cannot find anywhere on the iPhone app where it tells you which radiator is demanding heat, my iPhone must be too old I guess.

                  I wish it had been possible the other morning at 3 o'clock, I went round feeling radiators looking for a warm one, after the boiler started up when there was no need for it.
                  You have Tado V3 with radiator controllers ?

                  My comment about the iPhone app was in reference to this. If you do but don't have the graphs you need to contact them to get the beta version of the iPhone app installed - that's what my colleague is using.

                  If you have Evohome then, well, it does't have that feature, which is what my post was lamenting!

                  Comment

                  • radar2016
                    Automated Home Jr Member
                    • Mar 2016
                    • 43

                    #10
                    Sorry No I do not have Tado, it now appears I can not read either.

                    I completely missed the point about Tado and was getting excited about the prospect of that function on EVOHOME

                    Comment

                    • chrisgare
                      Automated Home Guru
                      • Dec 2013
                      • 182

                      #11
                      I went to the Screwfix show in Farnborough last Friday. I always make my way to the smart home vendors stands for obvious reasons. I usually berate Danfoss for not having an up-to-date Evohome type system but I found thay have introuced their Wiser sytem now.

                      Of course, the first comment I made was to complain about Evohome's lack of a zone demand indicator and the fist thing he showed me was that very feature in the form of a small flame icon! I won't comment on the rest of it's features except to say that it totally relies on a mobile phone controller and does not have a physical controller like Evohome. I don't like that at all. Interestingly, the actuators work on 2.4Ghz and they can talk to each other directly and extend coverage using this peerto-peer capability. According to the salesman that is. Oh, and the actuators retail at only £34 - now that is nice!
                      Last edited by chrisgare; 3 October 2017, 09:47 AM.

                      Comment

                      • HenGus
                        Automated Home Legend
                        • May 2014
                        • 1001

                        #12
                        Originally posted by chrisgare View Post
                        I went to the Screwfix show in Farnborough last Friday. I always make my way to the smart home vendors stands for obvious reasons. I usually berate Danfoss for not having an up-to-date Evohome type system but I found thay have introuced their Wiser sytem now.

                        Of course, the first comment I mad was complain about Evohome's lack of a zone demand indicator and the fist thing he showed me was that very feature in the form of a small flame icon. I won't comment on the rest of it's features except to say that it totally relies on a mobile phone controller and does not have a physical controller like Evohome. I don't like that at all. Interestingly, the actuators work on 2.4Ghz and they can talk to each other directly and extend coverage using this peerto-peer capability. According to the salesman that is. Oh, and the actuators retail at only £34 - now that is nice!



                        An interesting proposition. £229.99 for a system kit including an open therm module and 2 radiator thermostats.

                        Comment

                        • dty
                          Automated Home Ninja
                          • Aug 2016
                          • 489

                          #13
                          Originally posted by chrisgare View Post
                          Interestingly, the actuators work on 2.4Ghz and they can talk to each other directly and extend coverage using this peerto-peer capability.
                          The whole mesh thing is interesting (especially for me as I have quite a large house in which the Evohome signal struggles to reach the extremities), but it will kill battery performance because the radios have to be listening the whole time for messages to relay. Unless the entire system is synchronised, I suppose - a bit like the Evohome radiator valves known exactly when the controller will want to send a message and turn on just in time to receive it. You could have the whole mesh power down until a known time. But... then if you had something at the far end and it wanted to transmit (say a heat demand, or an override), it would have to wait for the mesh to power up before it could be certain of getting its message through to the controller.

                          Comment

                          • chrisgare
                            Automated Home Guru
                            • Dec 2013
                            • 182

                            #14
                            Originally posted by dty View Post
                            The whole mesh thing is interesting (especially for me as I have quite a large house in which the Evohome signal struggles to reach the extremities), but it will kill battery performance because the radios have to be listening the whole time for messages to relay. Unless the entire system is synchronised, I suppose - a bit like the Evohome radiator valves known exactly when the controller will want to send a message and turn on just in time to receive it. You could have the whole mesh power down until a known time. But... then if you had something at the far end and it wanted to transmit (say a heat demand, or an override), it would have to wait for the mesh to power up before it could be certain of getting its message through to the controller.
                            I agree but he also stated that the battery life was a minimum of 2 years like Evohome.

                            Comment

                            • huntajc
                              Automated Home Jr Member
                              • Sep 2017
                              • 22

                              #15
                              Originally posted by Andehh View Post
                              I know this has been asked before & I know there are several work arounds, but...why are they not able to see what/when/why a zone is calling for heat & being able to track this from within Evohome.
                              I hope I'm not hijacking the thread, but in the interests of not spawning another can anyone point me in the direction of these workarounds please? I haven't found reference to solutions in this forum as yet (still looking though).

                              Thanks.

                              Comment

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