Tado Home / Control Comms Architecture - 'Device Offline' - Meaning?
Background
I have the Heating controller + bridge + numerous TRVs and a couple of room thermostats. The Wifi environment is a mesh setup with 5 WiFi points / nodes to eradicate any dead spots. The Tado bridge is plugged into the main mesh router. The WiFi supports both 2GHz and higher bandwidth networks using the same name. Not a problem with various smart lightbulbs. There's also a set of Eve (Thread / Matter) devices with an Apple TV and Home Pod acting as border routers. So there shouldn't really be any problem with coverage.
I have been unable to add the Tado bridge to HomeKit directly - after entering the homekit code for the bridge it never completes. Tried everything, resetting, restarting. Contacting Tado support didn't solve problem. However as a project I've got a Homebridge server running on a Raspberry Pi zero / 2W and this has a
Homebridge Tado Platform plugin. This now integrates the Tado devices with Homekit and I can set control points but, usefully, have access to the much better temperature graphs and logging within the Eve app.
Problem
It is not too unusual to get a 'device offline' notification for a TRV. The most recent one occured whilst away from home and persisted until I returned home and in the room with the 'offline' TRV at which it went online again.
As an experiment whilst away from home I decided what I could see in the iOS Eve and the Home apps via the Homebridge server. Whilst the tado app showed the TRV as offline both the Eve app and the Home apps could see and interact with the 'offline' device.
The questions are therefore:-
1) what is the comms architecture/routing e.g. ioS App or web page - Tado server on internet - Tado bridge - Tado device
- in which case why does the 'offline' status seem to disappear if I move into the room with the offline device (this could be coincidence)
2) if Tado reports a TRV as 'offline' but Home and Eve can via HomeKit interact with the same TRV, what does 'offline' mean i.e. which comms connection(s) have failed as far as the Tado app is concerned?
Answers
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@Fully_Pumped : Just a quick note to point out the that Tado TRVs only communicate with the Tado Bridge directly using a separate 6LoWPAN network, so your five mesh nodes and good wifi coverage won't improve the connection. Worth moving the Bridge to the most centrally located mesh node to improve connectivity.
I monitor my Tado device connectivity using Home Assistant, and found that the connectivity in the Tado app generally matches that reported in HA. This data was useful to confirm the improved connectivity between the devices when I moved the Tado Bridge to a more central location (and vertical orientation)
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Ah. Is it possible then to add an additional bridge?
Yes - got the bridge in a vertical orientation as advised. The bridge is at the most central mesh node but that as I found out with the mesh nodes there was a problem with what I think of extra brickwork / appliances.
Not heard of Home Assistant (Eve is good for Thread / Matter network routes and strength but doesn't care about WiFi).
Still don't understand why the Homebridge / HomeKit is able to see something that Tado can't (as you'd think that this would be an additional step)
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No, you cannot have more than one bridge, and tado does not offer a signal booster / repeater. This is a major shortcoming of the tado system . . .
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