Tado Thermostat Device Plugin

Posted on
Wed Mar 28, 2018 4:52 am
durosity offline
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Re: Tado Thermostat Device Plugin

Strange thing is i'd have thought they'd have both just used iOS's corelocation service (i was under the impression that all iOS apps have to use that due to apple's privacy policies) so i'd have thought that it woulda done the exact same regardless of app!

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Posted on
Mon Apr 02, 2018 5:34 am
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Re: Tado Thermostat Device Plugin

I’ve received the first few bits of my Tado order and I’ve tried out the existing plugin just out of curiosity.. I’ve noticed you can’t change the set points for the heat.. is this a limitation of the plugin or their API?


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Posted on
Mon Apr 02, 2018 8:09 am
Colorado4Wheeler offline
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Re: Tado Thermostat Device Plugin

It was an API limitation, the new API does allow it so that will be part of the update when that happens.

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Posted on
Mon Apr 02, 2018 9:30 am
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Tado Thermostat Device Plugin

Awesome. I had a slight worry that there’d be no control and that’d make it rather useless to me!

I’ve got 2 smart thermostats, one extension device for hot water control, and 8 TRVs which I’m gonna divide up as 4 for each heating zone in the house (basically call for heat upstairs is separated from downstairs) so that’s gonna be an interesting thing to see how well the Tado works with that.. their support says it’ll work.. I have my doubts!

I’m going to install the downstairs part of the system and leave the upstairs section setup and as if it’s installed but no actually capable of turning the heating on just so you can test to your hearts content with it!

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Posted on
Thu Apr 05, 2018 2:17 pm
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Re: Tado Thermostat Device Plugin

Ok, so I poked around on this today and after some fiddling I was able to get connected to the new API and can interact. Fortunately Marks credentials are still the same :D.

Now that I have this, it looks like these Tado systems have a lot of things going on. I am thinking the first phase of this will be just getting what's already out here updated, so a general thermostat for the first zone but upgraded so the temperature can be set. I assume additional zones after that, but not sure yet because I think it'll be a thermostat per zone, right?

Also, this is a reverse engineered API, plenty of success out there, but there are no indications of API call limits so to have real-time reporting I'll have to fiddle with this and see if someone bombs out due to too many calls. For it to be relatively real-time, like the Nest, then it's every 10-30 seconds calling them up. If they limit it then I'll have to get creative.

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Posted on
Thu Apr 05, 2018 4:25 pm
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Re: Tado Thermostat Device Plugin

Cool! Well I’ve got most of my stuff setup and read now. 8 TRVs (which yes you’re right will each need to be their own thermostat), 2 smart thermostats, and a extension kit for hot water control!

Couple of things I’d love to see on this if you could oblige:

A device state with rounded values for use on control pages

A Boost action for it to increase temp by a user defined amount per zone for a specified time, before it returns to the original temperature

A general “cal for heat” option to see if it’s actually requesting heat from any zone

Option to end manual control


That’s the ones I can think of off hand.. I’m sure we (I) will have lots more ideas as it develops


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Posted on
Thu Apr 05, 2018 5:42 pm
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Re: Tado Thermostat Device Plugin

durosity wrote:
A Boost action for it to increase temp by a user defined amount per zone for a specified time, before it returns to the original temperature

:shock: :shock: :shock:

So every zone is a thermostat? It's been confusing going just off the API calls exactly what is what, but it looks like there are water heater things and temperature sensor things, but that is not the case? I tried to find different products but the only one I found was the thermostat, no sensors.

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Posted on
Thu Apr 05, 2018 5:57 pm
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Re: Tado Thermostat Device Plugin

Perhaps you can give me a ghetto tour of Tado's terminology using your own system. There are devices and zones and homes. Homes I think I get, it's pretty logical, I suppose you could have a guest house as a "home" but I think it's more for if you really do have different locations.

I want to think that devices are groups of Tado items inside a zone and a zone is essentially a room. But, again, Tado only seems to sell the thermostat so I don't know why you would have more than one thermostat in a room, nor do I understand what they are using when I see references to water heaters.

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Posted on
Fri Apr 06, 2018 1:00 am
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Re: Tado Thermostat Device Plugin

Sure can.. how'd you like to do that.. just write it up or facetime or what? I can also invite you onto my tado account so you can see how it looks from there!

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Posted on
Fri Apr 06, 2018 7:21 am
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Re: Tado Thermostat Device Plugin

FaceTime would creep me out if I saw that hand with the eyeball looking at me :shock:. Maybe you can just write the basics, it doesn't need to be a novella, just enough for me to get a good idea.

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Posted on
Fri Apr 06, 2018 11:11 am
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Re: Tado Thermostat Device Plugin

Image

No eye. I had it surgically removed. It’s now somewhere.. else.

I’m trying to think of the best way of describing it.. excuse me if this is a bit rambling!

So from a user control point of view it’s fairly simple. The absolute basic setup would be a A single Smart Thermostat which is wired into the boiler and that simply turns heat on or off for ALL radiators if the temperature drops below the set point.

The radiator valves add zones.. so there are 13 radiators in my house (mostly 1 per room but one room has 2, more on that in a min). Now when you add in these “TRVs” they add an extra zone into the system, so in my situation I have 5 TRVs downstairs and if one of those has a set point higher than the temperature in the room it’ll get the Smart Thermostat to call for heat, and it’ll use a servo to open that radiator so hot water will flow to it, while the other ones remain cold. So in indigo you’d have a Thermostat device per zone to set the set point and monitor the temperature in that room.

Now in addition to this my lounge has 2 TRVs. One is set as the measuring device for the temperature and the other one just mirrors it’s actions, so if one opens to heat the room up the other one will too.

And finally then there’s hot water control to ask the system to heat effectively another zone. Nothing exciting with that one.. it’s just simply on or off.

In my house I also have another wired zone upstairs which means I have another Smart Thermostat wired in to control it’s radiators hot water, and a different set of TRVs for controlling individual radiators there.

Does that all make sense? Just think of it as having a thermostat per room..


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Posted on
Fri Apr 06, 2018 11:23 am
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Re: Tado Thermostat Device Plugin

Thanks, that did answer some questions. So the entire system is based on a hot water thermostat delivery system, I was not aware of that. That explains why I keep seeing references to water heater and such.

So are you saying that each ZONE is a thermostat or is each DEVICE a thermostat? So, using those two terms, can you tell me the devices you would expect to see? For instance "a thermostat per zone" or "thermostat per device" and then a "temperature sensor per ...." or whatever. Forgetting all the bells and whistles, you would want to see 13 thermostats for your home because each of the 13 rooms can be individually controlled for climate control? And this is only for heating, no cooling?

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Posted on
Fri Apr 06, 2018 12:59 pm
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Re: Tado Thermostat Device Plugin

In my simple set-up I just have two thermostats and so two zones. Whenever one of the thermostats drops below a certain temp, the boiler fires up and a valve opens to let water flow to the relevant zone. I don’t use Tado to control hot water.

The clever part of Tado is presence detection so it knows if either myself or my wife is at or on our way home and switches on accordingly.

If it were possible to identify which user was coming home that would be cool.

Tado also gives an indication of how strong a call for heat it is making - low, medium or high. Would be good to access that as well.

For temperatures you can set “home” temps that vary by time. These are the temps that it targets when it thinks someone is at/near home. You can also set away temps so it won’t drop too far if you’re out. Manual control overrides the presence detection until one of three pre specified conditions is met: next change (presence on or off); a set time has elapsed; or ended by user.

Finally Tado now talks to HomeKit but the ability to control is limited. All you can do is invoke manual control and set a temp. Kind of defeats the object as you really want to be able to change the automatic home and away temps but I can see that’s complex.

Posted on
Fri Apr 06, 2018 1:24 pm
Colorado4Wheeler offline
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Re: Tado Thermostat Device Plugin

Well, I can tell you that the API opens up a lot of possibilities, including using the presence detector and updating Indigo with it. All things to look to for the future. If I'm on the right track of 1 thermostat per zone then I have an immediate path. It's a cool little device when I look at the API for what it does.

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Posted on
Fri Apr 06, 2018 2:46 pm
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Re: Tado Thermostat Device Plugin

Colorado4Wheeler wrote:
So are you saying that each ZONE is a thermostat or is each DEVICE a thermostat? So, using those two terms, can you tell me the devices you would expect to see? For instance "a thermostat per zone" or "thermostat per device" and then a "temperature sensor per ...." or whatever. Forgetting all the bells and whistles, you would want to see 13 thermostats for your home because each of the 13 rooms can be individually controlled for climate control? And this is only for heating, no cooling?


I’m not sure how the tado API presents it, but I’d want to have one thermostat per ZONE in indigo (because why would you want to have heating in one part of a room at a different temperature to another part? Hehe!).. so yeah indigo would eventually have 12 (not 13 cos one room has 2 radiators) devices. And also in the tado app it can group together devices as a zone. I’ve got it setup like this now but not actually plumbed in so if you want I can give you my login details to play around with!


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