What happens if the internet fails when I am not at home?

johncpw

If I go away for, say, a fortnight and home internet is down, what will my heating do? Obviously I would like it to fall back to some kind of frost protection mode. My internet is 4g based so I sometimes unplug and take it with me.

Same question for hot water. It would be nice if it's not stone cold when I get back but not the end of the world.

With my old system I just turned the thermostats down. Dead simple. That's all I need really.

Andreplusplus

@johncpw the tado system will follow the smart schemes you have set, as long as internet is avaialable. If Internet connection is lost, all devices will be stuck at their latest setting. When the ‘net returns, smart schemes will drive the valves and thermostats again.

To be on the safe side (I don’t know how often you have internet outages) you can set everything to what you want as the default (frost protection or some low temp like 15 degrees).

If internet connection is present you can use the app (when away from home) just before you return. Then your house is heated up on arrival 😉

johncpw

Thanks @Andreplusplus
So that means if the heating happens to be on when internet is lost it will carry on running, keeping the house at 21 degrees or whatever, night and day until the tado units connect with the tado cloud once again? Likewise the hot water will either be kept at the tank thermostat temperature or left to go cold depending whether it was in an on or off phase of the schedule?

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Albert_64

Ganz genau, da die ganze Regelung über den Tado Server läuft, bleibt ohne Internet alles auf dem zu dem Zeitpunkt eingestellten Wert.

Wenn du also dein G4 mitnehmen willst, musst du zuerst die für den Zeitraum gewünschte Temperatur, und Wassertemperatur einstellen.

Tado ist wie alle cloud basierende Systeme auf eine funktionierende Internet Verbindung angewiesen, um zu regeln.

johncpw

Ok that's quite straightforward. If I leave the house empty for a week or two I may as well just turn the boiler off as well as the internet. That way zero gas usage is guaranteed.

When I get home I can turn everything back on and go to the pub for a couple of hours. This is what I do when I go to my holiday place in the winter. (pandemics permitting of course😂)

johncpw

thanks @Albert_64 (sorry only using google translate, I don't speak German)

Cloud based services are still a fairly immature idea for most people. The great majority of cloud service providers realise this and regard locking customers in and exploiting their data as part of the value proposition. This means they are dis-incentivised from making their service functional in stand-alone mode. This is entirely feasible from a technical point of view for something like a heating control system. The controller just needs to cache the schedule data and have enough built-in intelligence to use it. This is how my THIRTY YEAR OLD Danfoss FP75 works, which I just replaced with Tado.

Stand alone isn't provided simply because they hope to make more money that way. I think as consumers get wise to this demand will grow for proper stand-alone functionality and if cloud service providers are wise too they will provide it. Time will tell.

Incidentally, the Danfoss has been 100% reliable for that entire time. The only thing that has ever stopped it is power cuts, which also take out internet access of course. No cloud service on the planet can match that reliability but it might be good enough so I will find out over the coming months.

Rob2

While it is correct that the schedule could be downloaded into the thermostat, the advantage of the cloud solution is that it can affect the schedule not only in a simple day or week rhithm, but also with more advanced calendars like holidays, planned vacation, a work schedule, etc. Unfortunately Tado delivers us only the disadvantages of a cloud schedule, and not the advantages. The name "smart" is a gross misnomer for the schedules we have now.

Andreplusplus

Driving the system from the cloud also gives the advantage that you can do that away from home. But it is a design thing. It also keeps hardware complexity and cost for the tado devices down.

You see that a lot, design is usually based on the happy flow, with assumptions like ‘always internet connectivity’. But real life has always some surprises, so if that’s not taken into account, this is what you get.

johncpw

True, but I wouldn't overestimate the hardware costs. The electronics will be the cheapest part of these units, compared to relays, sensors, etc. The extra logic would probably run on the same part and a few MB of flash memory to cache the config is pence.

Rob2

But it would require a real-time clock, backup battery for that, and it would move more functionality into the device which means more frequent firmware updates (with each update having the risk of bricking the device).

Sure it can be done, others do it, but there is a lot to be said for doing this all in the cloud. What makes it s*ck is that they implemented only rudimentary schedule support in the cloud and then all but halted all further development. A cloud solution is the ideal platform for advanced applications, multiple options, user configurability, integration with other cloud platforms (like google calendar), but Tado has nothing of that.

johncpw

All true, but we're still talking pence.