What is your experience with Tado thermostat and radiator valves?

Hardware
2

I have 5 TVRs (no thermostat). So here are the short answers of your questions:

  • you need also Tado internet bridge (this is a “hub”). No other way (or at least I don’t know) to connect devices. They are using closed protocol different than / zWave / zigBee / WiFi
  • All communication is via Internet
  • Integration with HA is very simple (now even via GUI)
  • For HA - you can control almost everything
  • Battery life is acceptable - almost 1 year or even more. It really depends how often the “motor” is changing temperature
  • I’m not sure that you need thermostat. I don’t have one - and they work perfectly using the HA as a management (on top I have Google home hub) in few rooms where I can control almost everything as an alternative of HA.
3

Thanks @100lv for sharing your experience, I believe the bridge is also included (as seen in the picture at https://www.bol.com/nl/p/tado-slimme-thermostaat-starterkit-v3-met-2-slimme-radiatorknoppen/9200000123108536/ ).

Currently I’ve already got 2 Eurotronic Zigbee valves which work well and indeed the battery life seems to be around 1 year (only done one winter with them so far).

I don’t have a smart thermostat yet so that’s why I would just get the all-in-one pack, otherwise I have no (smart/HA-connected) way of controlling the heater hardware.

4

I fitted Tado to a new (to me) property a few months ago.

Install was relatively easy.

Downsides for me
All communication is via the Internet (if it loses connection it defaults to last loaded setting).
Limited to 10 rooms (can have multiple devices in each room).
HA can’t change Home / Away in the v3 and later release
So, you need the annual subscription for automatic geo-fencing (older versions unaffected) to access this. This sub is one per install, so not per user.
No “master control” to set a single temp in all rooms, you have to adjust each room individually.

Upside
Connects to HA and Homekit easily.
Thermostat not required if all your rooms have TRV’s
Room specific controls
You can use Tado for presence detection in HA.
It’s pretty discrete (slight noise from TRV’s).
Manual control with every TRV (ideal for visitors).

I have Nest in another smaller property, and I prefer Nest for some things (no subscription, and works when the Internet’s down) but Tado does give a lot of flexibility in a larger property with multiple rooms / zones.

5

I switched from Homematic IP to Tado TRVs and a central thermostat a few month ago. They’re definitely the TRVs with the best WAF currently on the market, and as already said they’re really silent.

I’m fine with having the Cloud necissity but I’ve set up Homekit connection as “backup” if something goes wrong.

After all, I’m pretty happy with the solution. Hope that helps.

6

I have 7 TRV fitted throughout out house.
I have put mine bridge on a vlan without internet and setup homekit-controller integration in HA instead.
So no need for internet.

I have presence detection using other methods (monitor and homekit), and i just set a manual temp when we are away.
Instead of using tado’s subscription.

No master control in the tado app, but you can set the temp on multiple climate instances in ha.

The only thing i am missing alot is the open window detection.
i have hacked some things together with the help of a thread here, but it is still hit and miss.

1 Like
7

In my opinion, Tado has one big disadvantage. Lack of a cheap external temperature sensor or the ability to use 3’rd party sensors (e.g. via HA). My older central heating system has big pipes resulting in heating up the internal temperature sensor of the TRV very quickly and thereby shutting off the valve quickly again. To begin with I could not heat up the house at all due to this.

They have recently released a “cheaper” wireless temperature sensor at a cost of 79.99 €. I need 7 of these which would eat up whatever potential savings the smart thermostat could have given me.

I’m currently testing out this workaround but it is not ideal. At least I can heat up the house but I’m considering changing back to my old fashion thermostats.

Links regarding the topic:

Here you can see how the valve is pulsing. The real temperature in the room is about 19C (not shown on the graf)

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1 Like
8

Hi, I developed a script in python that can be run in Home Assistant to dynamically update the temperature using the offset (which wasn’t designed for this); I’m the one that asked the “calibration” after offset update to be disabled because that’s the only thing preventing it from being an “almost perfect” solution.

Note that those ideas can be upvoted on Tado’s forums, even though Tado claims that the calibration is required (but they are obviously bull****ting us), it’s worth a try

1 Like
9

jacoscar, I support you 100% and have commented and voted on all your posts on Tado community regarding this. I have also implemented your solution on updating the offset frequently, which has helped a lot, though I’m still having issue with fluctuating temperatures, long heat up time and noise from the constant calibration of the TRVs.
If they would just make this simple change in TRV firmware, Tado’s solution would be perfect.

10

For anyone coming across this topic. This seems to be outdated or incorrect. I am using the preset mode function in HA to change Tado to home/away mode. No need for the subscription as you can even monitor whether the TRV noticed an open window or not and set the temperature lower with an automation.

So you can do most things the subscription would give you by using HA automations :slight_smile:

2 Likes
11

Hi Skye,

Would it be possible to share with us your configuration in order to replicate the subscription options in HA (home/away modes and open window)?

Thanks

12

To toggle tado geofencing use

data:
  preset_mode: away
entity_id: climate.tado_cloud_heating
service: climate.set_preset_mode

You can use home or away values.

What trigger you can use for this automation action is up to you. I use phone location provided by the HA app.

I don’t do anything with the open window info though, the tado integration makes sensors for it, e.g.

Screenshot 2020-11-15 at 13.07.57
Screenshot 2020-11-15 at 13.07.571606×218 21.6 KB

13

Hey @jacoscar I up-voted the disable calibration request, nice work! Also added a note to my solution in HA to it

I’ve been working on this and have done a PR to the Tado integration to expose the offset. Now we can set it, I have written an automation and included some battery saver settings. Of course it would be better to not do the calibration at all.

for info my write up is here:

14

Thanks and good job on getting it implemented in Home Assistant
Unfortunately I cannot try as my home assistance installation crashes repeatedly if I upgrade from 0.114.3 :disappointed:

15

@jacoscar ouch!

Could always just install the Tado code from Core as a custom_component?

I mean you wanna fix that and upgrade at some point, but for now at least you can install the latest integrations you want/need…

good luck

16

This hole tread doesn’t convince me to start using tado. Do you also have alternatives? What would you recommend?

1 Like
17

Exactly! The only reason for me to change my traditional “non-smart” Danfoss radiator valves to Tado, would be to support using remote temperature sensing, which as far as I understand is not currently supported. Are there any good alternatives?

18

@nickagian check this thread maybe it helps: DIY multi room thermostat - #8 by shcherban

19

How did you plot the different valve opening levels? I can only see the following states

grafik

I also don’t have the feeling that there are more states than completely open/completely shut.

20

@coldspark29 Find sensor.xxxxx_heating → xxxxx being the climate entity
It will give a percentage of heating,

21

Thanks, I doubt this value represents the opening of the valve though. It is heating in % per room. The valve just completely shut and the value dropped from 100% to 38%. I guess it is making a guess about the residual heat being output by the radiator. I will observe this, but I still don’t think that here are more states than “open” and “shut”.

Really a pity given the price tag of these devices. I have very old and big heating pipes that are very loud. When I use conventional TRVs, they are very quiet, but all the smart ones I’ve tried can only go full throttle.