Going-to-bed-now mode for Evohome

[philchillbill]

I normally schedule Evohome to warm to up the bedroom, bathroom, and a closet room from 10PM for a while before going to bed. Yesterday I decided to go to be early and it occurred to me that there was no possibility to select a 'scene' as such in Evohome to just request those 3 zones to do their magic NOW. I could have a custom-schedule of course which e.g. uses an earlier time for these zones to warm up, but it would have to be a fixed/predetermined clock-time to be a custom-schedule. It would be nice if you could pull in a schedule is some way without having to edit the zones individually. You can select economy-mode any time you like and it kicks in instantly. Why don't we have a going-to-bed mode that kicks in from now onwards?

I'm going to code it up as a script in Domoticz so my HGI80 will do it (at Alexa's behest even) but I'm curious if anybody else ever coded something like this up. After all, we HA types use the scene concept for many things...

[Dan_Robinson]

Can't you just override the room? Seems a lot of hassle for the odd occasion.

[Edinburgh2000]

......there was no possibility to select a 'scene' as such in Evohome to just request those 3 zones to do their magic NOW. ............Why don't we have a going-to-bed mode that kicks in from now onwards?

DBMandrake has suggested a simple "Advance" feature that would advance the schedule to a future time and then stay there until real time catches up. That would be very useful if it could be engineered into the firmware.

[mtmcgavock]

Yes I have to agree, a simple advance feature that just brought it on till the next time would be great. The other day I wanted just to bring my zones on a few hours early. Without setting a custom schedule or changing them all manually I couldn’t do this.

We’ve gone backwards a bit for the end user as you’ve lost the +1 and advance buttons from the old style clocks. Add in the fact now you’ve got 12 zones to control a advance feature would make more sense....

[philchillbill]

Can't you just override the room? Seems a lot of hassle for the odd occasion.

It's for 3 rooms at a time. If it was just one I'd agree with you but overriding 3 is a different baby.

[paulockenden]

Alexa is the best way of doing this. You don't even need to buy the hardware, just use the web interface!

You can put several zones into a 'group' (e.g. upstairs rooms), and then just tell Alexa to turn that group to 22 degrees, or whatever. You'll then get an over-ride on those zones until the next scheduled setpoint.

[Dan_Robinson]

It will take 18 seconds instead of 6 (I just tried it ). Having watched Alexa in action the other day, it'll take longer to tell her what to do than do it .

[paulockenden]

All depends how many zones you want to over-ride at once. I can ask Alexa to turn the whole house up by one degree, for example. It would take ages to do that with the controller (and especially with the horrible mobile app).

[Karrimor]

I use the the Reverb app on Android, along with the Amazon Alexa App. Reverb is really a way to find out what you think of Alexa without buying a new device.

https://reverb.ai/ which lets you "Use Alexa wherever you are. Reverb connects to Amazon Echo services and works on macOS, in your browser or on your tablet or phone."

Reverb appears as an Amazon Alexa device in the Amazon Alexa app. In the Amazon Alexa app, make sure that the Reverb device's "Temperature Units" are set for metric or your temperatures will be in Fahrenheit.

[DBMandrake]

Alexa is the best way of doing this. You don't even need to buy the hardware, just use the web interface!

You can put several zones into a 'group' (e.g. upstairs rooms), and then just tell Alexa to turn that group to 22 degrees, or whatever. You'll then get an over-ride on those zones until the next scheduled setpoint.

"Alexa! Set the dining room to 21 degrees".

<Flashing lights for a few seconds>

"Hmm, dining room is not responding".

Ho hum. It was working a couple of weeks ago. So I must remove and re-add the skill yet again ? It shouldn't be this unreliable...

Disappointing, I was about to set up some groups to try your idea but first I have to fix whatever broke.

It reminds me of "Hey Siri" on my iPhone 6 that turns itself off every single iOS update even minor point releases, so when I actually NEED it while driving the car it isn't working until I retrain it, which I obviously can't do while driving...