What's the last bit of tech you bought?

In that situation you can turn the lounge radiator down so it takes longer to get up to temperature, so the heating stays on for longer, so the bedroom has more time to warm up.

Sure, I’ve talked about it in a few posts further up but it’s for a few reasons for us.

The first is that we have tado because I’m a techie and wanted to go with smart heating whereas my fiancée hates technology and change and wants to manage the heating the old fashioned away. Keeping the tado main thermostat but ditching the radiator ones allow us to compromise better and get the best of both worlds.

The second reason is that the radiator thermostats are not very accurate, they do have an offset feature to help with it but it’s not great.

The third reason is child lock, before last week it was a pain because our daughter liked to turn them and make them flash which breaks your schedule temporarily, last week they added a child lock feature is great but it completely disabled being able to change the temperature of that room manually, you have to use the app.

You can get add on temperature sensors for each room which look like the main thermostat, these would solve problems 2 and 3 but comes at an extra cost which all adds up.

The fourth reason is that if you wanted to heat the whole house, there’s no simple way to do it manually, if you use radiator thermostats then it basically renders the main thermostat pointless. There’s no manual override.

Last week they added a boost setting to the app which is great, this allows you to override the schedule for the whole house and turn the heating on everywhere, the issues here are that it’s only in app, if the main thermostat did it then it probably change my mind. It’s also be great to control what rooms the boost override effects, currently it’s not editable.

I said in a post above that if you’re going to do the radiators then you need to have one on every radiator with an extra sensor on every room, even then, it would t be right until the addition of 1 or 2 extra software features

The fifth reason is batteries, each unit takes 2AA batteries and most rechargeables don’t work and cheap batteries don’t work at all. They finally lost on their help guides one set of rechargeable batteries that work but they’re not cheap. The batteries that we put in when we got them 5 months ago are dead and they were good Duracell batteries. Battery management isn’t cheap for them.

That’s all off the top of my head but hope it helps :slight_smile:

We also have the same problem as you where some of our rooms are a lot colder then others so we’ve been adjusting the valves on the hottest rooms to try and even out the heat of the house. So far after a few days we’re much happier with the heating then we’ve been for the last 5 months.

1 Like

Amen brother.

I just got a crazy deal on a Galaxy S21 Ultra for the Mrs and now have to convince her to upgrade from her OnePlus 6.

She just likes things the way they are and gets well annoyed by me trying to constantly trying to “improve” things that work just fine for her.

3 Likes

Sounds like the story of my life, I think technology is easily the thing she hates most about me :rofl:

2 Likes

Thirded!

“Why can’t I just walk in and press a normal light switch?”

Snore!

5 Likes

4th’d!

I haven’t had time to properly use it yet but my dog looks great in the shots I’ve taken of her!

I want to get out and try shooting some product photography in a park for my ecommerce site, right now everythign is done in a little light box so it all looks generic. I could do basic outdoors shots with my phone I’m sure, but I’m hoping they look a little more professional using the proper camera.

@Addzy I’m almost tempted to buy them off you but your write up gives me second thoughts! They’d be stashed until I can do the whole house so I reckon I’ll wait…

Speaking of:

Does any one know of a smart switch that has motion sensing capabilities?! My new hallway switch is juuuust slightly out of arms reach, and I don’t want the monsters outside to get me before I can turn the light on.

If you’re using Philips Hue kit, the indoor motion sensor works really well depending on placement.

2 Likes

I use this for our little front door entrance thingy, works well :+1:

1 Like

No problem, I’d rather be honest about my experience.

I was thinking tonight, it’d be amazing if instead of controlling the radiator ones by temp which also make it acts like a separate entity to the rest of the system, I’d love if they could be controlled by 0-5 settings like normal ones, no temperature, I like how I’ve got the system now but I’d love to be able to turn the lounge off if we have the log burner on etc

1 Like

Ooh will have to check that out. I was hoping there’d be something out there that could replace the switch plate entirely, but this might be the next best thing.

Always been against Hue because of the whole hub, but it might close that gap!

To be fair the hub is great. The connection is rock solid and it’s nice to have a dedicated piece of hardware making sure it all works well.
A lot of default ISP routers out there struggle with lots of devices on the fringe of a connection.

1 Like

https://www.tado.com/gb-en/certified-refurbished?utm_source=intercom&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_xmas_2020_uk21_cus

1 Like

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wireless-Hygrometer-Thermometer-Temperature-Bluetooth/dp/B07KY6747N/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?dchild=1&keywords=motion+dection+homekit&qid=1614079341&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUE3SjFUVDlHNFpURDUmZW5jcnlwdGVkSWQ9QTAzMTcwOTUxNUFEWFJEVVdGRFcxJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTA0MDUyNzQxWkczWTk0SEJKMkQwJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfYXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==

That works really well and doesn’t need a hub

1 Like

Two of these, for some extra RGB’s. Only £10 each.

(I’m sorry if this results in you buying something you don’t need)

2 Likes

For switches, motion sensors, etc I’d recommend a DIY solution with Home Assistant and a Sonoff RF bridge. It involves replacing the firmware of the RF bridge (soldering required) but the advantage is that you can use any generic 433Mhz switch/sensor/etc and those are really cheap, like a couple of bucks a piece. I’ve been using it for over a year to automatically toggle heating on/off based on window sensors and it’s been great.

1 Like

It’s not available for me :frowning_face:

Not that I need to buy things anyway :joy:

Just bought an M1 MacBook Air thanks to this. £850 with this offer and student discount.

2 Likes