Home Gadget

Week 6. This seems like the perfect time to sum up our experience so far and end the weekly diary as everything has settled down and there is really not much to report. We'll still update when something happens or more importantly if something does not happen that should. We will instead divert our attentions to the huge pile of home automation gear that needs our attention for our youtube channel. Anyway back to the heating.... The Honeywell support team finally came back to us after some more chasing and once I'd had an email from their team in the UK they answered my question the same day. Readers of the blog will recall we wanted to know if Alexa should be able to report the hot water temperature. We'd not been able to get this to work but it seemed reasonable it should as its just another zone with a temperature.  Our hopes were shot down instantly (instantly after 6 weeks of trying to get the answer) as we're told this is not a feature.  If I'm honest ...

5 weeks. So what's been happening since our update last week ?. Well actually nothing!. OK, I appreciate that does not make for very exciting reading but it's certainly what anyone would want from a heating system so from that perspective I've got no complaints. Evohome has just been quietly doing it's thing, happy days.  It's working a little harder in the mornings now its' a lot colder outside but that's about all there is to report.  Alexa is getting quite a lot of use to nudge the lounge temperature up a few degrees in the evenings but the process remains simple and reliable, in fact so reliable it puts some other Alexa commands to shame (as some are less reliable). We introduced a new Echo to test out the latest amazon hardware this week, we were not that impressed but that's a different story and too far off topic for this blog.  I will just say the new shorter Echo is more an up sell for the dot rather than a cheaper option for the origina...

I can't believe it's been a month already. After things were going so we'll we've had a few days this week of not communicating, at least that is not communicating by phone. Yes, for some reason we were unable to log into Evohome via the app for 3 consecutive days. The app would stall whilst trying to connect and do nothing. A check of all the usual things showed the main Evohome controller was on the Wifi, internet was up (amazing for BT! (that's another story)) and all was well on the mobile. Despite our best efforts, nothing....... The positive from all of this was the heating kept doing it's thing, Alexa was also interacting with it so without doubt the app was having the issue.  We could make any comfort changes we wanted using Alexa or the main controller so it was not a big issue. Thinking it might be a server issue somewhere at Honeywell I dropped them a quick tweet.  As normal they were lighting fast in picking up my tweet and saying they would ...

3 Weeks, my goodness how time flies. In any new relationship three weeks is often a pivotal point. Should we think about meeting the parents or first get that all important "best mate approval" out of the way?.  Thankfully it's just heating so a lot simpler, anyway we've already been living together for three weeks so we can just carry on as we are. We've settled into a comfortable routine, get up, go to work, come home or do what we like when we want without a thought for Evohome.  Evohome just does it's own thing making sure different rooms are warm or cool as required and the hot water is, well, erm...hot. Alexa occasionally get's involved but she won't ever come between us!. It's like we've always been together, we've certainly got to the point where we take each other for granted and all after just three weeks.  Normally that would be a relationship heading for the rocks, but this is the life we wanted. If we had to keep thin...

So here we are, two weeks into our Evohome experience, how have things been ?. Chalk and cheese compared to what we'd been tolerating since moving in.  We've gone from being uncomfortable with the worlds hottest hot water (the thermostat was definitely knackered) to being comfortable with hot water that's just as we want it and no longer fetches your skin off, all in time for winter. Of course installing this now does mean we won't have any data of our own to gauge any potential savings against.  We did change energy supplier the moment we walked in so do have a bill showing one months use but that won't include any heating (the hot water cost was ridiculous as we thought).  We have a rough idea of bills from previous owners and also our old energy costs in our previous house, so might be able to pick a rough idea out of that buggers muddle, if not we won't lose any sleep (unless the TRV's kick in ...apparently...). The aim of installing the system was...

"What the hell was that noise ?" "What Noise ?" "That whirring sound that's just bloody well woken me up!" "Oh that noise, the same one that's been happening at the same time each day for the last 6 days ?, the one that's never woken you up before ?." "It's never made that noise before" "Yes it has, every day" "No it's not". And so this gentle early morning "chat" continued for the next few mins, the source of the sound identified and clarified by other various comments that could not be written here without the over use of the shift and 8 keys!. (* for anyone that has a different keyboard). OK, we need to talk about Evohome TRV's and how much noise they make. Now noise is a funny old thing, often defined as "a sound that is unpleasant or causes disturbance", based on that definition this is certainly noise rather than sound (at least for one of us).  Of course ...

Day 5.  We're really starting to get into the bones of the system now and everything is mostly positive but of course the more we ask from the system the more we find the odd little niggle that's in there. That said it's already starting to melt into the background and be forgotten which is exactly what you want from a system, if you have to keep thinking about it I'd suggest it's not doing it's job properly.  Most of our home automation is "invisible" because it just works and we never think about the clever stuff going on, but oh boy does it become instantly visible the odd time it stops working (normally I'm made aware of this by lots of shouting which is of course the universal system warning shared by anyone running a home automation system).   Anyway, back to the niggles, looking on the web we're certainly not the first to find these however in most cases people don't seem to have tested things a little further to find out the ...

Day 3, So far so good, almost. We have a fault showing on the hot water which showed up about 3 hours after everything was installed. Although the controller shows the fault everything still works as expected which is a bit of a puzzle.  Whilst having the fault showing is a pain it has no impact on the system so for now I can live with it for now. We can work out the issue in the coming days and having mentioned it on twitter the Honeywell team were very fast to get in touch, and whilst this was the USA team they raised a support ticket and passed it on to the UK team. Everything else is working well and as we're only into day three the process of find tuning is still on going.  The tweaks are easy to make via the app which although lacking any sign of the slightest bell or whistle gets the job done. TRV showing the illuminated screen Now that we've got the basics covered we've also started to play with the Alexa voice control integration.  There are mixed re...

Installation day, finally. We can at last wave goodbye to the much loathed 24 hour programmer that has been driving the heating system and at the same time everyone nuts, whilst making far more profit for our gas supplier than is reasonable from a single household. As we move out of the dark ages we've decided to welcome the modern age in the safe hands of a Honeywell approved installer.  This seemed like the most sensible option as we're the second owners of this house and the previous owners left something of a puzzle regarding how the underfloor heating links into the rest of the system.  I'm no heating expert and having someone with the right tools, experience and knowledge setting things up just makes sense.  He also gets a good deal on the hardware so the whole install was less than we had imagined. Just a note about approved installers here based on the experience I had. Having got the list of Honeywell installers from their website, the first approved instal...

Since moving into the new Home Gadget HQ we've been planning all of the automation we want to add, in fact let's be honest we were planning this for months before the move (and if I'm really honest for years before). Our old HQ was something of a test bed for lots of different tech with the aim of finding the "perfect" solution should we move somewhere a little bigger.  As that somewhere bigger happens the first thing you realise is that each place is different and has it's own unique requirements in terms of automation, you can use lots of what you planned but will also need to find new solutions.  If you've already decided on the platforms you're using that process is much easier than if starting from scratch. That said all of the learning's, developments, trial, error, tears and shouting at little black and white boxes over the years has been worth it so we are up and running with our core and integrated systems very quickly, now it's just...