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App setup for Village Hall

Frost015
Frost015
edited June 2022 in General Questions & Topics

New trustees for Village Hall with Tado system controlling the boiler. All good, the system works, however the heat output is very low unless someone with the app on their phone is physically in the building. This is no good !

I want to be able to remotely set a block of time, and irrespective of whether I am in the building or not .. have it come up to full temperature at the set times.

So (I think) the system thinks I am ‘away’ and just sits at a low comfort temperature.

  1. what should my Geofencing and Home / Away settings be ?
  2. is it critical that all app users have the same settings ?

Hope someone can help !


Thanks, Ian

Best Answer

  • cbd20
    cbd20 ✭✭✭
    Answer ✓
    It's probably worth saying that the phones don't have a concept of Home/Away mode, the system does.

    What I mean by that is that the system will switch to Away mode when ALL phones have left the defined geofencing area, and return to Home mode when any phone returns to that area.

    Now I assume (though I've never tested this) that if you set every single app users overall geofencing setting to off, which I think is what you're getting at, they would never report their location and therefore the system will always remain in home mode.

    I still think it's better to set the geofencing setting in the time blocks themselves. The reason being that if anybody changes their phone and reinstalled the app I think it'll default back to the app reporting its location and thus switching the system into Away mode when they're not there, unless you proactively remember to disable it again.

    At least with it being in the time blocks it's all managed in a central place, not on each device.

Answers

  • cbd20
    cbd20 ✭✭✭
    @Frost015 if you go into the time blocks you have set in the smart schedule, then click Advanced Settings, you can turn the geofencing off for that time block.

    So the time blocks you are interested in, make sure the geofencing is off.
  • Frost015
    Frost015

    Thanks for that .

    I hadn’t seen that option yet, so a good pointer.

    If Geofencing is disabled in the app for all phones, then I guess that this will be off by default anyway ...

  • Rob2
    Rob2 ✭✭✭

    No that is unrelated. The phone setting determines if that phone will use Home/Away changing according to Geofencing. The setting in the schedule determines what whill happen when the system changes to Away mode.

  • Frost015
    Frost015

    Thanks Rob,

    So, if we have Geofencing disabled and the phones all set to ‘Home’ mode .. Tado will think that we are ‘at home’ (in the Village Hall), and even with all phones being geographically miles away the heating will come on strong (in the requested time blocks) in the Village Hall.

    Is this logic / understanding of Geofencing and Home / Away correct ?????

    I am gradually getting my head around this !

    Ian

  • Frost015
    Frost015

    Thanks CBD20, I am slowly getting there ...

    The default for Geofencing Control in Advanced Settings for a particular block of heating time appears to be ‘OFF’ (The settings of this time block will be active even if Tado is in Away Mode). This looks perfect, so why would I need to make any change to this ?? (Perhaps the answer might be that if Geofencing is ENABLED, then the default is ON).

    So, provided Geofencing is disabled on all User Devices, we shouldn’t need to go this extra step (with the proviso that users need to be aware that ALL must keep Geofencing off at all times, and particularly if Tado software is reinstalled.

    Am I getting there ??!

    Thanks,

    Ian

  • cbd20
    cbd20 ✭✭✭
    Interesting, so you're saying that setting is off already for ALL applicable time blocks? In which case, I would expect it to work as you intend - i.e the heating level to apply regardless of who's present or not.

    Yet your initial post implied the temperature level was dropping when nobody was there, which would suggest it is still switching to away mode.

    If you haven't already, It might be worth confirming what the system is doing throughout the day. I might be telling you something you already know here, so I apologise in advance. If you view the graph for the room, you can quickly tell if it's in away mode by looking for green bands at the bottom of the graph. Holding your finger down and sliding along the graph you can also see what temperature was being requested at any given time and what temperature the room was at. Sometimes that can provide clues as to what is going on.
  • Frost015
    Frost015

    Now that is HUGELY helpful, I wasn’t aware of the extra info on the graphs .. what an excellent way to see what’s going on !

    I don’t yet have access to all users phones (to check their settings). Wanted to get a better / complete understanding first, but I expect to find some with Geofencing switched on ..

    With Covid the hall has been shut down for months, and heating rarely used .. however last time we were there the heat output was useless (and now I think I know why ). The great bit is that I can now go back (hopefully to that specific meeting time, and see if it’s green or orange).

    Thanks again,

    Ian

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