Launch a range extender or upgrade to mesh network
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If you’re on Twitter start tweeting to the company about their support, that usually gets the PR people worried. Jump on this thread: https://twitter.com/tado/status/1329710768586170368?s=212
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This is now becoming a seriously annoying issue for our setup. We are constantly having "No remote access" on a number of our values and temp sensors meaning cold rooms.
My understanding is the networking technology they use is already in place - 6oWPAN. As to why Tado haven't implemented it to use a mesh / range extender has now become so irritating that it's damaging their brand in my eyes.
I really like Tado when it works. But very often now it doesn't. If there were any viable alternatives I'm at the stage where I would jump ship.
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I am a new user. I looked at quite a few smart control systems for my heating but I liked the scope of the tado system so I decided to see how well it worked. It was quite easy to install - clear instructions but very limited explanations as to how it all worked technically. But the number of daily dropouts is crazy. And when I awake with the temperature at 22 degrees in the middle of the night I can’t just turn off the heating at the room stat because it can’t talk to the bridge! And the wireless receiver doesn’t have an off switch so I have to go down into the cellar to turn the boiler off!
A range extender, multiple bridges or a more powerful single bridge would be great.3 -
Tado you have till 31st Jan to sort this or am returning to Amazon!
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Ignore this. I can't delete my comment and need to leave at least 19 characters.
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Currently, I'm having quite a hard time to find a spot in my house for the internet bridge that makes sure all my tado stuff (Smart Thermostat, Smart Radiator) connects reliably.
It would be very useful to have a way to extend the reach of the tado network, for example by being able to add a second internet bridge, so it's easier to achieve full coverage everywhere.
Please enable this, it would make full use of tado products possible even in more 'difficult'. homes.
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Yes, I completely agree. We need a mesh wifi or a kind of repeater.
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I am currently researching both the Tado and competing products for my 4 bed South London home built around 1900. I had to put in a Netgear mesh network to ensure coverage as a single router wasnt cutting it. I have a plan to install Smart TRVs on all suitable rads. I have clear concerns if Tado is not mesh-enabled with their own internet bridge(s).
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@PT22 Have a look at Drayton Wiser too when researching. They have the same functionality as Tado but also have a range extender.
I think I'm just about to put my Tado stuff on fb/ebay and switching over to Drayton as I'm fed up of Tados shortcomings and their lack of engagement over fundamental missing / poorly designed bits of their ecosystem.
https://wiser.draytoncontrols.co.uk/smart-radiator-thermostat
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@PT22 I live in a three-bed house - which has a 22ft square footprint and the hub is located in the middle of one exterior wall (on the first floor - not ground). However I sporadically lose reception for a radiator on the ground floor on the opposite wall.
The hardware is otherwise amazing, but unfortunately there isn’t a way to increase the range and so I can’t recommend it for a larger house than mine based on the evidence.2 -
To be completely accurate the hub is three feet in from the outside wall.0
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Having just installed tado in my large 17th century house with seriously thick stone walls, I also have some rads seemingly out of range. One glimmer of optimism is that the rad furthest away from the bridge connects fine and runs firmare 75.2, TRVs that are closer and don’t work run 54.12. It may not be the reason but its worth a mention. Im not sure how to force an update?
However an extender would be fab!3 -
@hjenkins I thought this too, however, the firmware makes no difference in my case. Sorry.
In general: mesh network is never gonna happen, would take too much power for the thermostats (and deplete batteries). But, introducing a range extender or making some software changes to the bridge allowing it to act as a repeater would be great, of course in addition to allowing multiple bridges in 1 home (if they are in repeater mode). It should be possible, as the bridges already receive and send, but hasn't been done yet by Tado. Which makes me wonder, sadly.
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Another vote for this. I have a house with a lot of stone/metal inhibitors and constantly have my boiler firing away because a TRV has lost signal.
With current Zigbee meshes and Zwave Long Range technology taking hold soon it's going to be hard to see Tado as a viable option any longer unless they do something to address these signal issues.
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Completely agree that some form of extender, or signal booster is needed.
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I just about managed to sort out the two rad valves that were having connection problems in my large stone built house by using a longer lead and mounting the unit high on the wall with a metal plate behind it to help reflect the signal inwards. But I agree an extender would be a great addition.
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This product is broken and not production ready without a range extender.
It is a disgrace it went live in this state.-1 -
For a long time I had one room where the radiator stat would lose connection. I managed to resolve this by putting a power line device in a more central location in the house so that I can have the bridge in a more central location. This does seem to have done the trick but now the whole system ‘loses signal’ about once a week as the bridge loses the internet connection. Turn it off/on again fixes but I’m not sure which is more annoying! Consider this another upvote for a range extender or at least a software update for the bridge so that it is better at regaining internet connection after an interruption.
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Add me to the list.
Frankly I pain to understand the logic behind some decisions taken by tado. Is the goal of you guys to win money keeping customers or making lots of 'one shot scam' sales ? I pain to follow.
Right now I am owning 13 (the bad number I guess) TRVs and some of them, half of the time, are displaying as with no connection to the gateway.
The whole purpose of a system like this one is to simplify the management and, why not, make people win some money by helping them to control their heating system in some efficient way but NOT having them to nurse that system every couple weeks because it's going mad.
The purpose of such a system makes even more sense in big houses where the livable GROUND SURFACE is BIG. For a small flats of like 100 or so square meters, the interest is much more limited, if you need like 1 thermostat and 4 TRVs.
My house is about 500 square meters of livable space, I don't need to picture what happens with tado's farest van's...
I mean, what is even the point of this system if, in the use case where it actually makes the most sense, it is rendered mostly unusable because a basic device like a signal repeater is...non-existing ? Mmmmh ? What is the f****** point tado ?
To this I might add the total lack of transparency, beginning with firmware updates happening without the OWNER of the device being asked for.
So, in the middle of the night, vans are starting to update, waking everyone up in the house by the collateral effect that the heating then turns on when we DON'T WANT it to.
What could I add ? The brainless support maybe ? Where are those guys sitting ? In some overcrowded building in the middle of India or what ? ... " Please Mister can you move the gateway ... Please Mister can you unplug and replug the gateway ..." Common what the ****** is this all about in the end ?
I don't either give a s**** that you want to build a system for Apple-braindead-fans, you need to give to 'normal' people some 'advanced mode' so that they can at least have some BASIC control on what's going on in the system controlling their frickin heating system.
Then you need to build this ****** signal repeater, let it be a simple firmware-modified gateway bridge.
Common Tado move it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!3 -
@AdamF9 i used to use powerline adapters but gave up on it for exactly this reason. You could buy a more reliable adapter or bite the bullet like I did and run an Ethernet cable (mine was about 20m) but now internet connection to bridge is bullet proof.
I would love a repeater though as I still have some signal issues.
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Yes, need a repeater or this shits gonna go on ebay.1
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Hi all,
At this time, there is no range extender planned, because it would require a significant change to the firmware of the bridge, especially to get local control to work in the case that the internet connection is lost. However, we do know that some people are struggling getting all their tado devices to keep a stable connection to the tado bridge and this is quite annoying since you lose all of the smart functionality once a device has lost connection.
At this time, the best way to solve this is to keep moving the tado internet bridge, even a slight change in orientation can have a huge impact on connectivity. We understand that this process is currently tedious since there are no indicators in the app showing the signal strength to the bridge.
In a different thread, there might be some discussion that is also relevant for this thread:
The main thing is, that our developers will most likely look into the following aspects:
- Improve the reliability of the radio connection between the tado bridge and individual devices.
- Improve the reliability of the connection to the cloud from the tado bridge (making sure the bridge does not lose connection unless there is a real internet outage, which is very rare).
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Im in the IT business for 20 years, developer myself.
Meaning that I "understand how it works". You ain't going to push me the usual B.S.
Let's face it : there is NO technical reason that a slightly firmware modified gateway bridge could not act as repeater. Should be totally transparent for the van's or with very, very little modification.
I don't understand your answer which is totally off topic. Not trying to propose solutions but only blablabla. What the heck could a developer do to improve the connectivity of existing hardware only by doing software changes ? Or does Tado hire some extraterrestrials who are able to break our laws of physics ? Is that so ? The only thing your developers can do is spoof us by increasing the timeout so that, in the end, a van appears to be connected in the app when it is not. That's the only thing they will ever be able to do. By the way, using the word 'app', do you guys actually understand how a computer program technically works or is 'app' the first word you learned ? That would explain some things in my opinion.
There is no reason either that within the app there is no some possibility to change channels, get some signal quality indication, approve firmware updates, ect
The design of this solution is non-sense. Making sure people can buy more and more vans, allowing them to extend is even more important than all you 'smart' features cool-wanabee B.S. Why is the repeater not available already at the launch of the product. That is the real question.
The answer is probably because this company is hold by a bunch of incompetent's1 -
Well, he is talking about "our developers" but I can hardly believe there is more than 1 developer, given the rate of development we can observe from the outside. When there is more than one, they must work incredibly inefficiently.
My guess still is that the only developer on the project is the one guy who was the software developer when the company was established, and he cannot work full time on this task anymore as he has other things to do as one of the founders. And he is reluctant to hire new developers to redesign the whole thing from scratch (or to do that himself) as he is still proud of his baby.
Whenever we see postings by Tado employees, they are always like the above. "it cannot be solved because...", that means the design has hit its limits and needs to be redone.
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So here’s what we do. We all contact where we bought this stuff from and start talking about refunds from them and citing this post.
We go onto every online review place and down vote it and explain why it’s so bad. Then maybe the developers managers will rethink this strategy.
Let’s be honest, this is a money thing. They want to say they have added features rather than fixing a problem.
So let’s give them a new one and cut their new sales as people avoid buying a broken product.
I’m off to Amazon to vote every one of the 14 valves, heater and ac connector I bought to one star.
Your move Tado 🤔1 -
The official reply here talks about the difficulty of including some local schedule functionality. I get that this would be a significant shift in the current approach & would be difficult to achieve. Personally this isn't what I'm looking for at this point, I'm looking for the ability to go more than 2 days without my signal dropping out on a TRV!
I've moved the current bridge to the centre of the house, got it stood on an upside down ice cream tub in a 3d printed holder stood on a baking tray (to reflect signal back towards where the TRVs are) and tin foil behind one or two troublesome valves to help gather signal. I can go a week without any issues and then suddenly rooms start dropping out with no changes to the room layout or furniture placement.
The signal coming out of the bridge is appalling & leaves me with a useless system. I don't want local control I want reliability, I want to be able to trust my heating system otherwise come the warmer months this stuff is all going back.
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"The official reply here talks about the difficulty of including some local schedule functionality"
I forgot to answer to that part. What is the decoy about actually ? "Local schedule" ? WTF ??? Who needs local schedule if the connectivity between van's and the backend gateway is OK ?
Nobody. I mean you don't buy a cloud enabled solution if it's to work locally.
The guy just jumped onto the occasion to explain that local schedule it is not possible pulling out his f***** flute and sending some smoke...
That's not the point !!!
The point is signal strength of the gateway !!!
Given the fact it has its limits inherent of its construction and it's physical components there is nothing to do except bringing out a damn modified bridge-repeater.
And yes, of course it's a money thing. Money and keeping politically correct. As always nowadays. The world is full of m*********** who are unable to take their f******* responsibilities. Easier to implement a "child lock" function (you know, working around the real problem being that you actually have to educate your kids that they don't have to touch the radiators) or ON/OFF 'function' ... Which, basically, already exists with the 'away' mode you can manually enable.
Anyways, I'm ok with the fact of writing reviews on major selling platforms, if that can make them loose some customers that will be already that.2 -
Hi all,
@alvoryx @Bibbleq @Rob2 @stevearmstrong I think you might have misunderstood my intention?
I linked to the other thread, to let everyone know that we will NOT be developing a local schedule, instead we will look at significantly increasing the stability of the connections from the tado bridge to the tado devices and from the tado bridge to the cloud.
Instead of going for the option to add a repeater, which would cost our customers additional money to buy additional tado bridges, we first want to investigate the option to see what we can do with the current hardware without forcing anyone to spend additional money.
At tado, we believe in our products and therefore we offer a 30 day money back guarantee if you buy from our webshop directly. If you are having a lot of radio issues between the tado bridge and your tado devices, there are some things you can try:
- Try to move the tado bridge, either by running a LAN cable or using powerline adapters (or even some WiFi repeaters with a LAN port could work). The more central your tado bridge is the better the reception will be.
- Try to change the orientation of the tado bridge, putting the bridge upright, upside down, diagonal can all have a significant impact on the wireless range in certain directions.
- If the above points don't work, tado might not be suitable for your home and you should use the sales return period (usually 14 - 30 days after the original purchase/delivery) of your specific retailer to return the products.
As a final note: All your feedback has been noted and forwarded to our product management team. Please give our developers some time to dig into this topic.
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@Jurian i would pay money for a repeater so dont think we are afraid to spend money. Some of us have spent alot of money on your solution, spending a bit more on a repeater (that your competition does offer and sell) wont be a big problem?9
