Radiator Thermostats out of Range
Answers
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I am unsure of the science of this ‘inductive’ connection by cable tying an 868mhz antenna on though. Tried to research this to no avail. Definitely some articles saying that 2 antennas connected by coax have a positive effect in amateur radio and WiFi rebro.0
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Hi,
For what it's worth, I did have some moderate successes with the Tado TRVs. I did the following:
1) open the TRV, and remove all the passives after the 868Mhz Balun which is behind the 868MHz CC110L RF frontend: (the ones that were in the red box, they are already removed in the picture).
2) Add a 0 ohm 0402 resistor to connect to the u.FL connector footprint:
Then, populate a u.FL connector on the footprint which is on the PCB:
Finally, attach a u.FL to SMA 50 ohm cable to the u.FL connector, and then add a 868 antenna to the SMA connector. Using this approach, I solved my intermittend connectivity issues so fa (I'll have to check long term), and also increased the range of the bridge to TRV tremendously.
Now it even works outside :D
Left to the vertical red line was before the upgrade, right was after. I think, mission succes so far.
I will now look at the internet bridge, to see what I can do there.
Some important notes on what others have done: it is important to remove the passives leading to the chip antenna before adding an antenna of your own. You will mess up the impedance of the signal path, which in turn messes up de VSWR, which causes severe power losses. So keeping everything 50 ohm is crucial (coax cable, balun, antenna).
The inverted F antenna on the other side of the PCB is a 2.4GHz antenna. This is used for Bluetooth connection I assume. I hope they did not put a WiFi frontend in there and just don't use it, because that would be a shame.
To be honest, they did cut the corners too much with the PCB antenna. Even a SMD chip antenna would have been so much better, and not that much more expensive. So, bad tado management for cutting so much corners.
EDIT: ignore the cable that you see soldered, it was from a previous experiment. The U.FL connector is the way to go.
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Hi,
Did you manage to attack the bridge?0 -
I'm also affected by IB range problems. My mistake was to assume multiple IB can be connected in mesh and bought second - c'mon we just step in 2024. @tado must propose solution for problem how in single account you can use multiple IB to cover a big flat or house. IB antenna might be a good workaround.
I wish all best for everyone in 2024.0 -
Sadly the tado organisation seems most uninterested in tackling this fundamental problem aside from issuing advice about moving the bridge to a better position. Very, very, disappointing . . .
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Issue fixed, sort of …
As the person who started this thread in March 2019 (a long time ago in IT terms!) I’d like to pass on what I have learnt…
My own out of range TRVs have stayed out of range for ever. I kept hearing on here that it is possible to add another Tado Internet Bridge so long as you use a different login account. I was a bit weary to try this as I didn’t want to buy something and not have it working.
The out of range TRVs were not paired to my original system, but they did at least monitor the temperature in the room they were in. When the in range TRVs called for heat from the boiler these heated up too.
The most annoying thing is the TRVs that disappear ‘intermittently’. Then the whole room is cold until I wake up the sleeping TRV. This used to drive me mad, and the wife! Making morning coffee in a cold kitchen isn’t fun in winter 😐.
A little while ago I found a used (as new?) bridge on eBay. The cost was less than ½ new, so I figured I’d give it a go and if it didn’t work for me I could re-sell it.
All installed yesterday, it works fine. I now have full control over all of my TRVs. Except for 1 😱, I’ll have to get another, 3rd bridge to reach that! (it’s the intermittent one in the kitchen …)
How did I do it?
I setup another login account. Actually 2, ready for the 3rd bridge. I just called the accounts name-of-my-house#2, and #3. I made a careful note of all the login details in a new Apple note, so I can access it anywhere. This is no different to using the Tado system in multiple homes as far as I can see.
I don’t want to use the iOS/iPad app as that is controlling my in range TRVs. That works fine and I don’t want to mess around with it. Thankfully(!!) Tado have a Web app that works in any browser, I have a link to this in the same Apple Note. Now, on iOS, if I just click on the web app link it will open the app instead of the web app. A simple workaround is I long press on the link and a menu pops-up asking me what I’d like to do. So I click on ‘Open in Safari’.
Once in the web app it’s hardly any different to the phone app. There are no devices there to start with. I added the new Internet Bridge after plugging it in to power and my LAN ethernet. All ok. I slowly paired the out of range TRVs one at a time, they all paired easily. I renamed each room to something sensible, setup the schedule mirroring more or less what happens in the rest of the house, and it all just works. I could just copy the 1st schedule to all the other ones without having to re-do each one. Thanks Tado 👍🏻
Now these TRVs on the 2nd System cannot call for heat from the boiler independently. So they only heat their rooms when the rest of the system is working. So I have to bear that in mind with the scheduling. Not really a problem for me.
Alternatives?
I did look at other valves. Eve do a smart one. Seems to work fully independently of any other systems. Will pair to your phone with an app for direct programming/scheduling and work with Apple HomeKit. So remote home control would be possible too. I am tempted to try one of these. Maybe replacing the intermittent TRV in my Kitchen. A long term-solution would be for me to keep some Tado control as it works with the boiler well and swap out the TRVs to Eve for better integration?
The Future?
All it needs now is for Tado to simply get rid of the need to have separate logins / apps / etc. And let us have as many bridges as we need. How hard can that be? Wifi connection instead of wired Ethernet would be good too, it is powered after all, no battery is used in the bridge.
Hope this helps someone?
Keith
PS - I had another long email exchange with Tado tec support recently. The guy I was conversing with was really good, knowledgable and keen to help. So their customer support can be really excellent. I wish the R&D could move forward too 🤔
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One more thing…
On the iPhone I can add any web page as an icon to the desktop. Here are the two separate icons on my phone: iOS app and desktop shortcut. All very easy and slick 👍🏻
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Well done Keith but why has it taken so many paying customers to try and design a way round this? It’s absolutely appalling that Tado hasn’t invested in a fix for this when it affects so many customers. My issues aren’t as bad as some on this thread but still have random outages now and again. I’ve just accepted this as part of a poorly designed system. They’ve updated lots of in app options, which are good but not addressed the biggest issue of connectivity of their devices. Shame on the R&D department for this.1
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Interesting to see the OP stuck it out and eventually managed to fudge a resolution after 5 years with Tado doing bugger all to resolve the inherent problem with the system design. I too stuck with Tado for a few years reading the odd post here from another poor unsuspecting customer having the same issues. In fact I only got around to solving the problem myself in the last 6 months.
I didn't however resolve the problem by sticking with Tado. I bit the bullet and replaced Tado with Sonoff TRV's. If you're an out of the box kind of person this probably won't do for you but because I already have a lot of Smart Home devices and run a Home Assistant server, replacing Tado with Sonoff was easy. The Sonoff TRV's are a bit quieter than the Tado and a hell of a lot cheaper. When on offer, the Sonoff TRV's can be bought for £28 from Amazon. It looks like the battery life with be significantly better too. The Sonoff, might have an unfair advantage since they take 3 batteries instead of 2 but I'm wondering if using 3 batteries also eases the actuator load, time will tell.
Because I'm one of those people that keeps the original packaging, I also managed to sell all my Tado kit for good money. I always bought around black friday when Tado does offers, so I think I actually sold some of my TRV packs for more than I paid which was a bonus LOL.
I have no regrets moving to the Sonoff TRV's, I had been toying with the idea of replacing Tado for sometime but kept putting it off but now I've made the move, I can't see any disadvantages, in fact I prefer having the control in Home Assistant over the Tado app, it always felt everything in my smart home was in Home Assistant apart from the heating system. I mean you can add Tado to Home Assistant but once you have it up and running in the Tado app, it kinda seemed pointless so I quite enjoyed deleting all the Tado devices once and for all.
Sorry Tado if this is not what you want to hear but you just should have listened to your customers this thread alone is full of 6 pages of complaints and many more no doubt made to support about the poor signal issue for people with larger homes but you just chose to ignore and bury your head in the sand.
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@DRH how funny!, I did exactly the same last September and haven't looked back. Sold all 5 year old Tado kit for more than I paid for it and replaced it with 15 Sonoff trvs and HA. It hasn't missed a beat, and interestingly I've also used 20% less gas compared to Oct-Feb last year with the same temperature settings in each room.
The Sonoffs are much quieter, and like you I much prefer the control and visibility that home assistant gives.
Not for everyone, but for anyone using or considering home assistant, it's a no brainier, and really highlights how little tado has progressed in five years.0 -
@johnbur Haha, nice one. The only time I used the Tado app was to boost the heating from time to time so I used the HA Helper to create a Boost Heating button which replicates that functionality, only better because that button is now in the Apple Home App (which we use mainly for controlling everything in HA as the HomeKit app on iOS is preferred by the Wife).
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Great, thanks for the heads up on the Sonoff TRV's 👍🏻.
Like a lot of us I guess I was just putting up with the way tado wasn’t working 100%. I too want a system that isn’t fragile… tado is just too fragile for my taste. But it kind of works, for now.
Rather than get another bridge to fix my one remaining intermittent TRV I’ll look at the Sonoff and Eve TRVs.0 -
Out of interest when using the Sonoff TRVs what is controlling the boiler's schedule and requesting it to fire ?
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@hugbilly Sonoff does have its own hub and app but if you're a Home Assistant user and you already have a Zigbee hub, you can just use Home Assistant automations to control your heating system. I already had a Shelly 2 way smart relay that controlled the Boiler and the Water Heater and that was what the Tado Thermostat turned on and off. When I switched over to the Sonoff TRV's, I just removed the Tado thermostat and controlled the Shelly 2 way relay directly from Home Assistant using schedules and an automation. I kinda did it the hard way too (even though it was still easy), creating my own automation but there is actually an "Advanced Heating Control" blueprint you can install in Home Assistant that has all the bells and whistles that you can configure. I plan to set this up probably for next winter as its has a lot more power than what I made myself but I was dead chuffed with myself getting my own stuff to work so I left it alone for this winter.
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I'm similar - initially controlled the CH and HW with shelly relays and home made automatons.
There are various thermostat integrations available - I have now settled on one called 'versatile thermostat' which does a great job of controlling the trvs and sonoff temp sensors in each room, plus it has a central boiler function to control the boiler via the shelly.
I also use the ha scheduler to manage any temperatures - pretty similar to the Tado app in principle.0
