False Low Battery
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@davidlyall Fair point but my real point was in my first sentence. I cannot accurately determine the time 'cos I went out for a while but I estimate 'twas around 3 hours between notification and turning off the rad. That seems weird when It had no work to do to stay on in very cold conditions?
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What is the current behaviour for this scenario?
- should tado° app indicate low battery status?
- should tado° follow up with a 'low battery' email?
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Not at all sure what you are trying to get at by asking for current behaviour and then two options!
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Just to report that I've been getting the 'phantom low battery' warnings since about 2 months now. Email is sent with low battery warning, but nothing visible in app (battery level reported good).
Today I was in the room exactly when this error occured, and it happened when the valve was being shut by the TRV's motor (as someone else suggested earlier on in this thread).
I think tado changes something recently which causes the low battery events to be sent out too early and/or the battery indicator inadvertently reverting to 'good' when it shouldn't. Hope this gets their attention?0 -
Touch wood. Not had any more falsies since reporting a few in November (touch wood).
Could it be that removing and refitting the batteries, as I did each time, has fixed each problem? i.e. Possibly a poor battery clip design.
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Same issue. I have 13 smart Tado radiator knobs.
At least 4 of them repeatedly give false warnings.
Noting wrong with the batteries.
I’ve been in touch multiple times with support who gave me a variety of excuses and nonsense troubleshooting.
1… badly installed, reset it and try again
2… dirt on the battery connector… clean it
3… “glue residue from the plastic you remove to activate the device”… clean it…
4… our vendors store the device in bad temperature range… leaving residue of the plastic
5… bad type of batteries (!!! I use the batteries they provide…!!!!)
6… I tried with Eneloop Pro… “you can not do that” “you need the regular eneloop”
Anyway, all nonsense as the warnings are false when checking and reading the batteries out… perfectly OK in battery level1 -
The reason mentioned by @jamese8 seems very plausible, but Tado support seems to have no clue about it…0
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I replaced my old programable TRVs (Terrier) with 15 tado TRVs just before Christmas 2022. Since then I have had three "Your Smart Radiator Thermostat needs new batteries" email notifications about one of the lounge radiators and one for a bedroom radiator. It didn't seem likely, as they were new, original, supplied by tado, batteries, less than a month old. Each time, I've checked the device via the phone app and found the battery showing as "Good". Neither valve has automatically shut down.
It's no more than a minor annoyance, but I thought I'd add it into this discussion in case anyone finds it useful/interesting.
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Similar here. 10 tado TRVs fitted winter 2021-22 with supplied batteries and then some Duracells. Seemed rechargeable would make more sense so bought eneloop 1900, as per tado spec, and a charger. Added all together and not the cheapest of purchases but bought into tado as a convenient way of controlling rads rather than a saving on energy costs (yeah, as if). A couple of my TRVs sometimes report low batteries as soon as a day after inserting fully charged ones; some request changing more frequently than others, even though the rad's not getting any more use, and some batteries are a tight fit - making for a bad contact? Maybe just annoying tech, bad contacts or dodgy batteries but considering tado prices this winter I've told interested friends to think twice; especially when seeing all the different types of comments on these forums.
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It'll be intersting to see what the TP-link system turns out like. They seem to be much the same as Tado for less than half the price. They don't yet have a room stat but are promissing to bring one out soon.
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I think quite a few of us are only using one TRV to request heat, so in that respect it’s not much difference. I’m considering replacing the Tado thermostat with the latest Vaillant thermostat in light of how I’m back to whole house heating at lower temps, rather than micro zoning. I’ll keep Tado TRVs to cap maximum temperature per room.0
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I have the same problem. 3-4 out of the 12 valve controllers I have report low battery, sometimes more than once per day. One of these reported constantly and then seemed to fix itself.. Two of the devices have actually had a low battery symbol on them. Opening and closing the battery compartment fixed the problem in both cases. I've been in contact with support and I don't really feel like I'm getting anywhere. I only installed the system a month ago. One of the valves that has reported a problem is only a few feet from the bridge.
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I just ignore all warnings until the room doesn’t heat. At that point I change the batteries. Tado miss reports so often that batteries could last another 3 months or more before they give in.0
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I had a warning yesterday for a SRV (which I normally ignore as most have been false). It was for a spare room. Looked at the app last night and the room was at 26c! Looks like I got the battery warning and they died within a couple of hours leaving the valve wide open.
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Odd, they are supposed to close when the battery is deemed dead. Mine have always shutdown before giving the battery flat icon.0
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Yep, I'd had similar in the past. I had become a bit relaxed about the low battery error as often they run (when real alerts) for a good few daya.
When I took the SRV off the black bit was fully recessed so it put the rad valve fully open.
I'm guessing the alert was messed up somehow and the batteries didn't have enough juice to close the valve.
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Also had this on/off recently. All rooms right now report 'Good'. No batteries changed in ages.
I use ones that tado recommended (non rechargeable)0 -
Despite changing nothing on my controllers since 25-1 I haven't had a single battery warning. Tado support has said that the supplied batteries are not meant for the full heating cycle..! I only installed the system just over a month ago.
I suspect Tado are making server and maybe even firmware changes on the fly.. If this is the case then they really should have a page telling users/owners about what they are doing.
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@GrayDav4276 agree 100% with this.
Communication about anything is absolute minimum and definitely nothing about updates and changes which is not helpful.
The system does not work how they claim and is extremely erratic and they are either incapable or unwilling to fix it.
I love how if anyone flags faults it's always "how the system is supposed to operate" even if it doesn't make sense.
I'm replacing my system as soon as I can afford to.
The fact that the plans to make Tado a public company failed after a shell company pulled out shows that they didn't see a profitable future.0 -
Out of the blue started getting the same false emails yesterday. Had 2 so far warning of low SRV batteries when the app shows "good". Firmware on all of them is v95.1. Most annoying.
Tado need to sort this, as if it's giving false readings then how will we know when it's actually low? Is the app the definitive truth here?0 -
Most mornings I have an email saying that one of my TRV's has a low battery but by the time I look at the app the status is back to good battery. I even got the suggested eneloop batteries to see if that would make a difference. I have enjoyed my tado maintaining a rooms temperature better than a traditional TRV but for the most part, like most smart devices these things just don't work as expected.
I had to replace the batteries that came with the TRV's after a month which was ridiculous considering they claim something like a year running time.
We are talking about a company that know the auto window detection is garbage because there is no way for software to know if a window is actually open or closed based on temperature, but they will never give us a physical sensor because they want you to pay for their useless subscription.
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During the night I received 3 emails from the battery flagging as low. This morning it's fine. This is getting ridiculous.
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I think I wasted £400. False alarms are cluttering up my inbox. Stripped out 'Nest' gave less trouble.
As a Systems Engineer my slogan is 'Complexity is the enemy of Reliability' and that certainly seem true here.
I think Tads software doesnt work. Either that or they have the worlds worst battery compartment connections
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Just to balance this thread, I have 7 TRVs installed since late 2019 and have changed the batteries on them all only twice in that time. I have changed the batteries a third time on two of the TRVs. I did get sporadic alerts for those two TRVs but they eventually became permanent at which time I changed the batteries.
I suspect Tado have changed the algorithm for battery status checks so when they are getting low and the valve moves, the drop in current is registered and triggers an alert. The battery then recovers a little and the warning goes away. This is why I think folk are getting the "false" alerts. Essentially they've become an early warning
Not sure why folk are getting continuous alerts that don't show in the app but I would suggest making sure you're on the latest firmware and if not, ask Tado to force an update
The problem with battery life is that there are so many factors at play.
For me, Tado works really well. It's not perfect but I don't believe a perfect product exists yet.
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I had a number of very early battery failures when installing in Sept 22. I assumed old batteries but they checked out at 1.55V on a multimeter. I had a big pack of Duracells so just changed them and didn't think about it too much,
Then after a couple of weeks one failed for the second time. I contacted Tado and they said they could see the batteries were fine but the SRV wasn't getting enough power. They told me to clean the contacts. I was dubious, and the contacts looked fine, but I cleaned them and the SRV has been fine ever since.
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