[OpenTRV-interest] Honeywell EvoHome review

Wed May 27 14:31:17 BST 2015

Thanks Aideen. :-)

I guess we have higher expectations at COHEAT: we compare £500+ of
Honeywell (Quentin is easily in for >£1k on that 10 zone system) to £250
worth of smartphone and a website, rather than £20 worth of pushbutton
controls. Let's hope Quentin's RCD never trips. ;-)

With Evohome they've taken the pushbutton controls they know and love, made
the screen and UI less atrocious (but still very much local), added very
limited internet connectivity as an afterthought, and charged for it as if
it were a Macbook retina.

At £250 for a 10-zone system with resistive LCD and limited web
connectivity it would represent fair value.

On 27 May 2015 at 12:21, Aideen McConville <aideen at amcc.myzen.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi Marko,
>
>
>
> Knowing that some friends had an EvoHome system installed over the winter,
> I was curious - were they having a similar experience? Here's Quentin's (
> quentinsf.com) response to my query:
>
> "I agree with some but not all - here are my thoughts after around 4
> months - feel free to forward them to the list if useful.
>
> Quick summary is that it does almost exactly what I wanted: a separate
> schedule for every radiator in the house and a thermostat in every room in
> the house.
>
> -The radiator actuator hardware is well made. The best made out there, and
> probably the quietest out there too.
>
> Yes, it's good, though audible - but I haven't tried any others. Very easy
> to fit, remove and adjust though.
>
> -The control sophistication of boiler and room temperature is basic,
> reliable and predictable* once you turn off any Honeywell attempt at
> intelligence.
>
> I have the basic mode enabled where it learns the warm-up time. No
> problems, but I haven't instrumented it carefully to see what it's doing.
> The distributor from whom I bought mine said I should give it about three
> weeks to stabilise.
>
> -The control hardware/hub feels like something you'd order from Shenzhen
> for $39, not something you buy for £149, and is certainly not something
> you'd stick on a wall in a house. The battery life of the portable unit is
> a joke and the power consumption is excessive.
>
> Mine is on a wall bracket and I don't mind the way it looks - I've seen
> much worse - but I do think the whole thing looks much better because I
> have it wall-mounted on a stud wall, so all the cables are hidden. I
> wouldn't want it sitting on the sideboard. It's no more ugly than the
> controller for the alarm which is just above it on the wall, though.
>
> I've not used the battery since the initial installation but, yes, the
> battery life is very poor, if for some reason you *did* want to carry
> your central heating controller around with you. I've never felt the desire
> to do that!
>
> The only thing I dislike is the touch bit of the touchscreen, which
> requires sufficient pressure that it feels more like a palmpilot in an era
> when we've got used to iPhones.
>
> -The user interfaces - all of them - are atrocious. The time delays
> between interaction and action are excessive too. It's fair to say that
> Honeywell still can't do user interfaces, unless they happen to be a single
> knob on the wall.
>
> Now, here I would disagree. The low-level configuration stuff is very
> poor, yes, but normal day-to-day operation works well for me, requires only
> a small number of button presses, and is easily understood both by me and,
> more importantly, by my wife, (who never did get to grips with the
> infinitely simpler and really horrible 20-year-old heating controller that
> it replaced). Programming, adjusting and overriding schedules is nicely
> done, and the process of copying them from day to day is easy. I have about
> 10 radiators each with their own schedule, so I did a fair bit of this at
> the start.
>
> The delay between interaction on the screen and activation of the radiator
> valve is normally a couple of minutes, which is just fine - it's not as if
> the rooms warm up that quickly anyway, and I imagine this delay is a
> concession to battery life on the valves, which seems sensible to me.
>
> I like the iPhone app, too - clear and easy to use.
>
> -Their internet connection is as flaky as they come. Forget doing anything
> that relies on timely/reliable internet connectivity. The web portal is
> also worthless: you can't set the system up online (instead you must endure
> tedious menus on the local controller, and there's no way to export the
> settings or back them up, and they're lost when the battery runs flat in a
> power cut, and and and...) and you can't export data from it.
>
> None of this has every been a problem for me - the internet connection has
> always been working just fine whenever I've tried it and I've never had a
> long enough power cut to lose any settings on the controller (though if it
> really did lose the settings, that would be a pain).
>
> I do agree that a web interface would be a big improvement, though,
> especially if you were doing the setup on a large number of systems or if,
> like Rose, you don't normally carry a smartphone.
>
> -You also can't do anything fun with the system, like control radiator
> valve positions or read room temperature directly, because Honeywell think
> they're the Gods of everything and save you from yourself by preventing
> access to such features.
>
> You mean via an official API? (You can certainly see room temperature in
> the UI!) Yes, I wish they would follow the Philips example here: the Hue
> API is lovely.
>
> *You need to turn off window detection and self-learning. Opening doors
> and wafts of air confuse the living daylights out of it.
>
> I have both enabled without problems, but I haven't tested the effects
> carefully - I don't open the windows very often in the winter, I guess!
>
> So, all in all, I'm very happy with mine. Yes, there are things I'd like:
>
>    - an official API
>    - a web interface, and settings backup
>    - a better touchscreen
>    - some evidence that firmware updates might one day be forthcoming
>    - control of the electric underfloor heating in my studio
>
> but, on the other hand, I haven't seen any other affordable system that
> gives me all of the following:
>
>    - individual temperature readings and schedules for every room in the
>    house
>    - control and temperature measurement of my hot water tank
>    - installation done without any plumbing by yours truly
>    - a friendly UI that my wife can also use
>    - a nice iPhone app
>
> If we were to move to a new house tomorrow, I would certainly install
> Evohome again.
>
> Hope that helps!"
>
>
>
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>

-- 
Marko Cosic
Technical Director

COHEAT
+44 7774 524 114
marko at coheat.co.uk

www.coheat.co.uk
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