V3+ Support lifetime?

mselis

I'm currently investigating my options to "smarten" my heating system. Unfortunately my Junkers heater does not support opentherm. It uses a proprietary HT-bus protocol that the newer Thread-based X system does not support.

That is why I'm considering to go for the older V3+ system, but then the question rises: how long will that older system remain supported? And will it stop working when the support stops?

I'm not willing to invest 1000+ euro in a system that will only work for a couple of years…

Emcee

Hello @mselis

I am not sure where the notion that tado° will stop supporting V3+ comes from. It's not just you that is asking this, so I am not placing the blame on you at all, it's just confusing to me.

First, we still have customers who use generation 1 tado° products from 2014. They still get the same support as all other customers. I guess you could say they continue to benefit from 'lifetime' support… this is the same for all our customers.

Second, V3+ has not only been our biggest seller, we actively continue to sell these devices. Seeing as a majority of our customers have V3+ and will for years to come, it would not make sense for us to stop offering support for this generation.

Last, tado° X and V generation customers have support through the same live chat. Our agents are trained to help customers with all tado° generations and we don't plan to stop training new agents in V3+ topics since, as I've said, this is our largest customer pool.

So to make a long answer short, there is no support limit in site for V3+.

Something that is worth keeping in mind, however, is the 2 year warranty. That means if you find yourself noticing declining performance before the end of the 2 years, please report to tado° support so they can replace your devices in time. This is not a likely scenario, but it is a time-sensitive condideration when purchasing tado° products.

policywonk

@Rob . Sorry mate. Is this one you might handle?

mselis

It's not only about being able to get help or replacement parts in case of problems.

In contrast to my heater that keeps running as long as it is technically in good condition, cloud based products can suddenly stop working because the company behind them

• goes out of business
• is bought by another company that want to push their own products
• simply turns off the cloud services supporting them because the cost of keeping them running is higher than their revenue
• they want everybody to migrate to their new "state of the art" product
• start charging money I don't want to pay for basic services that used to be free

I hope you can understand that I'm very reluctant to rely on cloud-based products for such an important service in my home.

wateroakley

@mselis Welcome. From a previous life with very large (and small) technology companies, I've found that it's the software/apps and OS version that are the biggest bugbear. Tado V3+ supports back to IOS 15, which is where a seven year-old iPad mini is locked by Apple. Tado X requires IOS 16.4.

Some data points for you: The cloud service has been remarkably reliable. With 31 devices in two family homes for 33 months, we've had just one TRV with an early failure. We've recently replaced the original batteries for TRVs in three bedrooms, that's more than 30 months. Batteries in more frequently used rooms were 8-10 months.

We've tracked our energy usage since 2018. I've posted a graph below with our energy consumption since February 2022 at the same outside temperature (mean CET) as 2018-21. It took three months to figure out what worked well for us and we're still refining the schedules for our present diaries. Our ROI was about 9 months. No promises that everyone can achieve the same.

If you're starting out now with the latest versions, I'd suggest the potential benefits outweigh any of the fears.

HTH