Weird goings-on this morning – App/Internet Bridge/Smart thermostat - what's happened?
Got down for breakfast to find the room a bit chilly. Checked the app to find the dining room online but all other rooms offline.
How can that be? Changing the temperature in the app had no effect so went to the main, smart thermostat. Upped the temperature manually and the heating came on. But the thermostat showed low (not depleted) battery – strange, as I’d had no alert.
Checking the thermostat in the app it still said off-line but also the internet bridge was last connected at 07:38 – it was 08:15 by then.
Checked the bridge and sure enough the router light was blinking which means ‘the Bridge is awaiting DHCP IP address assignment from the router’. But why? Neither I nor our ISP had changed anything (I checked with the ISP).
Had to do something else for an hour and on return the heating was functioning properly again. Signed in to my online account only to find it says the thermostat battery is OK.
But on the thing itself, it still says low. Which is right?
As I said, all very weird – and inconsistent.
How can that happen? Suggestions as to explanations welcome. Thanks.
Best Answer
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DHCP operates on a lease basis, unless you explicitly configure a static assignment (which most people will not do, or understand). This lease means that a device will voluntarily give up its IP address and get a new one at preset intervals.
Although a DHCP client usually gets the same IP re-leased to it when asking for a renewal, sometimes the DHCP server will change the IP or cause some other form of networking "reset".
When this happens, the handshake between client and server may not robustly complete. It's more common in IoT devices than proper devices with an o/s that has a robust network stack. It's a little bit similar to when your laptop refuses to properly connect to a WiFi network you've used before. A reset and reconnect usually fixes it.
Unfortunately some of the problems generally attributed to a Tado fault because, as you say, "nothing changed", are actually caused by the continual ongoing changes in network stack on the bridge, your router, the ISP infrastructure, cloud platforms etc, all of which are absolutely normal parts of a functioning network.
You'd probably be astounded if you knew how much change happens when no changes are made, even on a small network!1
Answers
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Looks like a bridge problem. The wireless relationship between Tado devices is local, so they can instruct the boiler to fire even when the bridge isnt working, but they can lose their schedule if the bridge isnt there to prompt a setting.
How long have you had this? What's the longest distance from each Tado device to the bridge? What's the distance from the bridge to the router?
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Thanks. It only lasted a few hours in the morning. Then it re-occured in the evening so I connected the bridge to a different ethernet port on the router (about 1m away) and it's been OK since. Not had this problem before in 7 years with Tado.
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@cdmstr thats a very good description of how DHCP impacts a network.
@alanlw DHCP can cause drops, but the Tado bridge is half duplex 10Mb (which routers issued in the last 10 years seem to less able to handle because their memory stack is built to handle much hight speeds). The fact that your problem went away when adopting another ethernet port suggests that either the router's ports are forming intermittent faults, or the bridge is developing a fault. If your router has been delivered by your ISP, would suggest you ask them to have it replaced on the basis that it is delivering intermittent ethernet faults. If it then recurrs, think about replacing the bridge.
Meanwhile, use your app to download your control tables and have them applied locally. This way if the bridge goes offline, the devices will not lose their memory because their base schedules will be present in the house.
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Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.
Am I right in thinking downloading the control tables can only be done in Tado X? We're on V3+ and I can't see that option.0 -
We have V3 and the tables work when the internet is down.
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