Tado's smart thermostat system is one of the few options available to UK home owners looking to upgrade their heating system to a smart home. control. I've been using it for almost a year now and overall I'm very pleased with it.
The Tado system consists of a central controller, an Internet bridge for connecting to HomeKit and additional radiator valves to control the heating in each room.
Installation
The exact installation steps will vary depending on the type of central heating boiler and the existing thermostat you have in your home. It's intrusive, but the Tado app will help you figure out what you need to do.
Basically, this means screwing the Tado controller to the wall near your boiler and unplugging a few wires. The device itself isn't ugly, but ideally it can be hidden away in a utility room, attic or other location.
Visit the Tado website to watch some instructional videos before you get started. buy. This is a fairly simple process that you can do yourself, but if you're nervous about wiring, you may want to have a contractor do it.
Then for each room you want fine Detailed Control: You will want to replace the TRV valve on the radiator with a Tado valve. A sensor inside the valve measures the ambient temperature and transmits it back to the base. When necessary, the base tells the valve to physically turn. This regulates the amount of hot water passing through the radiator, thereby controlling the room temperature.
Finally, a small rectangular dongle is connected to your Wi-Fi router, giving the Tado system access to the Internet and connection to HomeKit.
Good
So, after all this, what do you have?
You have the ability to remotely control whether the Tado unit is requesting heat from the boiler from your phone. This switches the overall heating of the house. Additionally, for each room where you have installed a smart radiator valve, you can view the current room temperature and set a target temperature for that room.
This is neatly shown in the Home app, with a tile for each radiator, plus another for the base unit (which has its own built-in temperature sensor). You can view all your thermostats using the Climate section; filter in the Home app that will include a summary of your entire home's temperature.
Tap a tile to view detailed information about a specific thermostat. It will display the current temperature and humidity in the room. Change the value from “Off” to “Heat” to turn on the heat. If you turn on the heating in just one room, the valves in the other rooms will not turn on, effectively directing all the heat from your boiler to your specific room of interest.
In previous versions of the Home app, the thermostat UI was a bit lacking, but in iOS 17 it has been given a major overhaul. It looks nicer now and you can drag the slider to adjust the temperature. Tado responds reliably and quickly to commands; There are practically no delays. I've also never seen accessories show up as “Not Responding”. in the Home app after almost a year of experience with this system.
If you're part of HomeKit, you can also control everything with Siri using natural voice commands. I did a scene called “Heat.” which sets all the thermostats to heat each room. If I'm cold, I ask the HomePod to “warm the house”; and this obediently obliges. Of course, this also works if you are away from home using remote access. This is great.
The Tado app gives you even more features, such as separate home and away schedules, a whole-home speedup shortcut, historical schedules, and access to advanced features like open window detection. It's a shame that most of these things aren't available in the Home app (see below).
In addition to software controls, it's worth noting that the Tado system can be controlled using physical gestures on the devices themselves. The main base unit can display an LED indication of your home's current status, and you can press it to change the temperature.
The radiator valves themselves are also illuminated by an LED display, and you can turn them by hand to change the set temperature or schedule a cycle. This is usually all done from an app on your phone, but it's handy in a pinch.
The Bad
The biggest downside to the Tado system is the price. The basic system is fine, but every add-on like a radiator valve or wireless temperature sensor starts to take a toll on your wallet very quickly. I wish it were cheaper. It seems like getting started and getting started It's incredibly difficult to get started, especially when Tado provides paid access to some advanced features with an additional (optional) subscription, while competing ecosystems like Hive are also in the same price range Smart home heating is a convenience, but it comes at a cost .
Another downside is that you can't rely on HomeKit to properly heat your entire home. Tado provides heating accessories for the main unit and one per room for each radiator valve you install. You can set the temperature for each room and turn each one on and off independently using the Home app or by voice using Siri.
However, Tado expects you to set up a daily temperature schedule using the Smart Schedule feature. This means you won't be able to do everything using HomeKit alone. Hot water control is also not officially available in HomeKit (but you can use the Homebridge workaround to fix this gap).
Likewise, when you enable manual heating settings via the Home app, you can’ You cannot simultaneously set its duration through the Home app. This behavior is determined by a setting found in the Tado app, where you can choose from three options: until the next automatic schedule change, duration timeout, or until you manually revert to the schedule.
Ideally, these controls should be accessible via HomeKit so you can set them individually each time you want to override your heating schedule. I have everything set to a two hour timeout, which works fine, but sometimes more flexibility is needed. (The “until you go back to manually schedule” option isn't possible at all for a HomeKit-centric user, since you can't control smart scheduling through HomeKit at all. You'll have to use the Tado App.)
The culprit here is a combination of spaces in possible HomeKit functionality and gaps in Tado implementation. Hopefully this will improve over time, but I'm not too sure it will, especially since Tado seems to be increasingly focused on promoting its own subscription service.
I have an automatic schedule set up in Tado, which I set up through their app twice a year (winter and spring), and otherwise use the Home app or Siri to manually make the two-hour changes. whenever you wish.
Conclusion
I usually leave the automatic schedule to keep everything off for as long as possible. cold winter months. That's because it's so easy to just turn on the heat from your phone or by shouting a command to a nearby HomePod. When it gets really cold, I use the Tado app to automatically set the heating schedule for a few hours in the morning and evening every day. This is “on schedule”; then turns off when the warmer spring season returns.
In conclusion, I wish more of this was available directly through HomeKit, but I understand the reasons why it isn't (and in many ways Apple's 8217; he is guilty). However, I still enjoy having a smart heating system in my home. It's cool to be able to control it from your phone or ask Siri on your watch to preheat the house when you get back from an evening walk. The Tado system is a reliable way to make this a reality.
