An Alternative Perspective

[G4RHL]

I have been going through the irritating process of trying to get the batteries in the controller to accept a full charge. Something that I do not think the user should be expected to do. As part of this and to check it has worked, I have had the controller off the wall for some time and have taken the opertunity to see if the location has any affect on the loss of comms with the HW sensor. I have been unable to force a loss of comms, no matter where I place the controller in relation to the tank and pipework. It does not therefore look as though this is the cause of my occasional loss of comms. Maybe the sun spot hypothesis needs further investigation.

Aye, but the problem with the hypothesis is it affects long wave and short wave frequencies more and not so much VHF, UHF and microwave frequencies which is up where we are with this sort of gear. After 5.5 years I have not had a battery issue with the HR92s, nor really with the HW sensor, other than one HR92 needing its batteries changing every three months. I suspect the circuitry is faulty and not reading the amount of residual power in the batteries correctly as the batteries are fine when I take them out. Put another way, after three months the power drop, albeit slight, is enough for the HR92 to think the batteries need replacing when they don’t. Where I have had an issue is the control panel. In the early days they often showed little or no power. Minor bending of the contacts resolved that but they don’t hold their power for very long when you discount mains power from the panel.15 minutes if one is lucky and then, if not before then, it bleeps and shows little power left. I have not got round to replacing them with new rechargeables. I ought to.

[DBMandrake]

Ah yes I do recall seeing that in the manual now you mention it. Ah well, I'll forget any idea of future firmware updates then!

Nobody else finding that the maximum of 12 zones is limiting, if wanting to go for a one zone per room approach?

Not me, I only have 8 rooms!

[DBMandrake]

Aye, but the problem with the hypothesis is it affects long wave and short wave frequencies more and not so much VHF, UHF and microwave frequencies which is up where we are with this sort of gear. After 5.5 years I have not had a battery issue with the HR92s, nor really with the HW sensor, other than one HR92 needing its batteries changing every three months. I suspect the circuitry is faulty and not reading the amount of residual power in the batteries correctly as the batteries are fine when I take them out. Put another way, after three months the power drop, albeit slight, is enough for the HR92 to think the batteries need replacing when they don’t. Where I have had an issue is the control panel. In the early days they often showed little or no power. Minor bending of the contacts resolved that but they don’t hold their power for very long when you discount mains power from the panel.15 minutes if one is lucky and then, if not before then, it bleeps and shows little power left. I have not got round to replacing them with new rechargeables. I ought to.

Has anyone running the current beta firmware experienced a hot water comms issue since updating to the beta ?

[filbert]

Nobody else finding that the maximum of 12 zones is limiting, if wanting to go for a one zone per room approach?

I'm bumping my head against it with 12 zones, one per room. I did want to add another at one point but, for the life of me, I can't remember why.

[CT1]

Aye, but the problem with the hypothesis is it affects long wave and short wave frequencies more and not so much VHF, UHF and microwave frequencies which is up where we are with this sort of gear. After 5.5 years I have not had a battery issue with the HR92s, nor really with the HW sensor, other than one HR92 needing its batteries changing every three months. I suspect the circuitry is faulty and not reading the amount of residual power in the batteries correctly as the batteries are fine when I take them out. Put another way, after three months the power drop, albeit slight, is enough for the HR92 to think the batteries need replacing when they don’t. Where I have had an issue is the control panel. In the early days they often showed little or no power. Minor bending of the contacts resolved that but they don’t hold their power for very long when you discount mains power from the panel.15 minutes if one is lucky and then, if not before then, it bleeps and shows little power left. I have not got round to replacing them with new rechargeables. I ought to.

Batteries back to full charge. Just find it irritating that a product at this price and at least 3 generations in, requires undocumented, fiddly work arounds for something as simple as battery charging and battery contacts. The system is complicated enough for the nontechnical user as it is. When I ended up in hospital for 6 weeks 3 years ago my wife had the HR92 swapped out for the old TRVs and reverted to a dumb system. I doubt that EvoHome will ever be suitable for the nontechnical user. Not one of my friends or family have ever been tempted to adopt it and I usually have to help boiler service engineers with basic functions to enable them to test the boiler. If I did not need the totally independant zone control, I would not bother with EvoHome, and if I was not around, my wife would have it ripped out a.s.a.p.

If the sunspot hypothesis is out, maybe need to investigate quasars and quantum instability to explain the HW comms. There again it could be a suboptimal design?

[G4RHL]

Has anyone running the current beta firmware experienced a hot water comms issue since updating to the beta ?

Good point perhaps somebody running the beta version can advise.

[killa47]

Just find it irritating that a product at this price and at least 3 generations in, requires undocumented, fiddly work arounds for something as simple as battery charging and battery contacts. The system is complicated enough for the nontechnical user as it is. When I ended up in hospital for 6 weeks 3 years ago my wife had the HR92 swapped out for the old TRVs and reverted to a dumb system. I doubt that EvoHome will ever be suitable for the nontechnical user. Not one of my friends or family have ever been tempted to adopt it and I usually have to help boiler service engineers with basic functions to enable them to test the boiler. If I did not need the totally independant zone control, I would not bother with EvoHome, and if I was not around, my wife would have it ripped out a.s.a.p.

If the sunspot hypothesis is out, maybe need to investigate quasars and quantum instability to explain the HW comms. There again it could be a suboptimal design?

All points well said, CT1. I think there's lots of Evohome users on your wavelength here.

[smar]

Has anyone running the current beta firmware experienced a hot water comms issue since updating to the beta ?

Good point perhaps somebody running the beta version can advise.

Yes, I'm still getting them. Last one was two days ago.

[smar]

Ah yes I do recall seeing that in the manual now you mention it. Ah well, I'll forget any idea of future firmware updates then!

Nobody else finding that the maximum of 12 zones is limiting, if wanting to go for a one zone per room approach?

Yes, I've found it a bit limiting as well. 16 or more would have been perfect.

[benwillcox]

Yes, I've found it a bit limiting as well. 16 or more would have been perfect.

Thanks, sounds like there are a few of us thinking the same.
I can't see that the limit is due to technical reasons such as RF channels and device IDs etc, as there is the ability to bind more rooms/HR92 etc than there are zones. So it seems like the limit of 12 is just an arbitrary number that was decided at some point in development.
I think lots of houses would be close to or over the 12 room/zone limit, and personally I prefer it when software limitations like this are well above what would be 'average' use cases.
Upping it to 24 I think would cover all but the largest mansions, UI changes would be easy as it's just a couple more pages of 6.