We took a look at the new Honeywell evohome when it was revealed last Autumn, but there’s no substitute for living with a system to see what it’s truly like. So when Honeywell asked us if we’d like to replace our HomeTronic system with the new evohome we jumped at the chance.
To recap, this is the second generation evohome, now with a colour touchscreen instead of black and white. It can manage as much as 12 zones of heating plus hot water. A zone might be a easy as all your bedrooms, or you might like a zone for every individual space for much more granular control. If you have a number of radiators in one space they can all operate together as a single zone as well if you like (note you cannot currently have an underfloor circuit and a radiator together as a single zone). If you have much more than 12 zones you can add another evoHome controller, possibly one for upstairs and one for downstairs, if you live in Downton Abbey.
Installation
Honeywell suggest utilizing one of their authorized installers and you can browse here to find an Evo Installer near your postcode. fortunately all our existing wireless Honeywell set was compatible with the new system. That implied our Wireless Relay Box (BDR91), Underfloor Heating Controller (HCE80 or HCC80) and space temperature Sensors (HCW82 or HCF82) were all retained.
Underfloor Heating Controller
Our HR80 radiator controllers were swapped for the new HR92 designs and the touchscreen controller was mounted on the wall. With the boiler and underfloor controls already fitted, the evohome touchscreen led us with the configuration process with its Guided Installation. Just follow the prompts on the screen to configuration the bindings with your wireless hardware.
It’s worth noting that each battery operated device communicates according to predefined time slots to save power which implies it can take as much as a maximum of 4 minutes for some tasks to complete.
You can give each zone a custom-made name using the touchscreen controller (9 character limit). It’s amazing how a few years of modern UI use spoil you and make you expect things like automatic title case or the ability to edit a character in the middle of a word rather than having to delete everything and begin agin. but that’s nit picking, it’s an excellent bit unit.
If you already have some HR80’s then you’ll most likely know that there’s some dispute over which firmware versions are supported, so we asked Honeywell for clarification and they told us…
HR80 Firmware version 2.03 and above has been evaluated and is supported to work with evohome. You can inspect the firmware version by eliminating and replacing the batteries in the HR80, or through the product label. Older firmware versions will offer core performance with evohome, however in some versions they pre-date a few of the much more recent features such as optimization and window open, and these will not function as expected.
Evohome Controller Kit (~£200)
The evohome controller’s resistive touchscreen is less sensitive than the much more expensive capacitive screen you are most likely utilized to on your mobile device but it’s appropriate and the UI is fast and responsive without any lag.
There’s a choice of 3 colours for the faceplate surround (black, white and silver) and choice of table stand or a wall installing kit. Our controller is wall mounted in the kitchen, fairly central in the house and well within radio variety of all the other rooms, as we already understood from our HomeTronic installation.
You can utilize the built-in RF signal strength checker to find the best location to site your controller. There is no variety extender available for this system, although Honeywell state that its fairly low-frequency (868 MHz) implies better signal propagation than contending products using Zigbee or WiFi, and they quote a wireless variety of around 30 to 40 metres in a typical residential setting.
You can easily lift the controller off the wall install (as you can with the desktop kit). After 30 minutes the evohome Controller will begin to beep to remind you to location it back on charge. That could be frustrating if you’ve just nodded off to sleep, but it’s crucial as the system needs to be powered as much as run your schedule. If the batteries ever do run completely flat in the controller the system parameters including routine and wireless configuration are kept in non-volatile memory (replace the main batteries with AA 1.2V Ni-MH 2000- 2400mAh cells only).
In practice, in our home, the evohome controller is only utilized to glance at the zones condition and to edit the regular routine the extremely strange time. aside from that manual adjustments are all made utilizing our iPhones. There’s most likely a case for Honeywell to consider an even less expensive starter set that forgoes the touchscreen part of the manage and relies solely on the apps to setup.You can choose between manually setting up your heating routines or choosing the ‘Wizard’. This guided step-by-step configuration simplifies the task and you can still make your modifications by editing the results at the end. You can copy arranged set points from one space to another, or copy days across spaces etc. There are a few enhancements that could be made to the UI. For example when tapping the up arrow to adjust the target temperature on the screen you cannot see the numbers changing as your finger is covering them.
The evohome touchscreen system itself can be utilized as a thermostat for the space it lives in. So if it was in a space with under floor heating for example you wouldn’t requirement a separate stat. quick actions allow you to, for example, turn temperatures down all throughout the home by 3 degrees with the economy button. We’d like to see Honeywell add a method to save routines state for every season – to save re-programming the routines each winter.
There are a range of intelligent technologies such as “Optimum Start” and “Optimum Stop” which are employed so the system can reach a particular temperature by a particular time. Evohome works out a dynamic boiler start-up time based on the ambient temperature, so to reach state 22 degrees by 8:00pm it may begin at 7:30pm today, but 7.40pm tomorrow if it’s warmer. Evohome also employs other innovation to comprehend when a window is left open and throttle back the heat in that space rather than fight against it and squander energy. It also learns how your house heats up and cools down throughout the year. Honeywell published some good technical information in our forums here on this topic.
The rear of the unit has a couple of interesting ports. We’re told the headers labelled “Aux” are “currently not actively used” and the USB input is for firmware upgrades, although we don’t know if this can be brought out by the end-user. You can utilize this evohome simulator to give you an idea of how a few of the screens work.
Wireless Radiator Controller HR92 (~£60)
The HR92 radiator controller will in shape on many common (M30 x 1.5) TRV bodies like Honeywell Braukmann, MNG, Heimeier and Oventrop. They include a Danfoss RA valve adapter included and others are available to order. Depending on your valve positioning your HR92 may end up vertical or horizontal.
The large remove blue backlit display flips up and included in the box is a bit plastic wedge that can be fitted to lock it in the up setting if you prefer.
The older HR80 on the left and the new HR92 on the right
You can utilize the adjustment dial to manual request a new target temperature which is in effect up until the next set-point in your routine is reached. These manual modifications are not reported back to the main controller or apps.
With the old HR80’s we utilized to spin the dial a number of times without taking a look at the display and walk away understanding it would be at the bottom 5 degree value and turn off. However if you do this on the new HR92’s you reach an ‘OFF’ setting instead. The system then ignores routine modifications from the evohome controller from then on (although frost security is still enabled). That might catch some people out at the begin and we’d have favored it if it wasn’t rather so easy to turn the radiator controller Off like this.
Pressing the single button on the HR92 brings on the backlight. pressing again and holding for around 5 seconds takes you to the top-level of the settings menu. Here you can disable the backlight, set the language, whether you prefer to display the setpoint (target temperature) or the actual space temp. You can add a Honeywell DT92E Wireless digital space Thermostat if needed as well although the HR92’s fuzzy logic is programmed to work out an accurate space temp despite being connected to the rad.
The two (included) alkaline AA cells (LR6, AM3) are cleverly integrated into the new barrel design of the valve controller providing it a much much more svelte silhouette than the older unit. Lithium and NiMH cells can be utilized (you’ll requirement to let the valve know this by modifying the battery parameter 9) and Honeywell state the batteries ought to last around 2 years in average usage. This seems entirely achievable judging from our experience so far.
Hot Water Kit ATF500DHW (~£90)
As well as controlling 12 zones of central heating, evohome will look after your hot water too. We have an oil terminated stove in the kitchen so there’s always hot water, but if you requirement to add it to the system then the hot Water set is available at around £90.
Remote access Gateway RFG100 (~£60)
Joining your new wireless heating controls to your LAN and the Internet is finished with the shark-fin-shaped remote access gateway. With its supplied Ethernet cord connect the box to your router or a CAT5 outlet in your flood-wired wise home. Then connect it to the mains with the supplied wall-wart power adapter,and then bind it to the rest of the wireless system. To complete the install you requirement to configuration an on the internet account and although it wouldn’t accept my postcode from the mobile app it worked fine from our laptop.
Mobile apps (Free)
Once you have the remote access gateway installed you can manage your evohome from the mobile apps. They are available for iOS and Android so controlling your home heating from your iPhone, iPad, Samsung Galaxy, Nexus tablet or whatever is all of a sudden a splendid reality. The benefit of manage from your pocket cannot be under estimated.
The app has had a couple of updates because release and now has the ability to edit your routine from your phone (Version: 2.1.13.5 reviewed), although there’s still currently no iPad version to take advantage of a bigger mobile screen. The app enables you to screen and manage several locations, useful if you have a system at your holiday home too.
There’s still no web browser interface to the system yet either. Editing routines in specific would be ideally fit to the extra screen genuine estate of our laptops browser. While we’re quite certain it’s only a matter of time before Honeywell add this feature officially, some enterprising individuals have already got it working. inspect out all the details in this post on our heating manage forum where Automated home visitors have used Python, PHP and C# to create a representation of the evohome controller in a browser window, whilst integrating with other wise home systems like illumination too.
We recon that for lots of people this may well be the single finest piece of wise home tech they’ll own, so some kind of API or gateway to other wise home systems, (like Z-Wave for example) could be profitable for Honeywell. We asked about their plans for an API to integrate with other systems and they told us…
We have already released APIs for chosen partners (e.g. OPower).We will continue to work closely with chosen market partners first to make sure that our APIs are working properly before opening them to larger groups of developers.
In the meantime you can connect your Netatmo weather condition station to your system and also trigger actions based on geofences with the IFTTT evohome channel.
Summing Up
You can tell that Honeywell are a number of generations into these systems. It’s taken the solid foundation of the first gen evohome, and the even much more mature wireless innovation of its HomeTronic predecessor and developed on that. The visual leap from the old HR80 valve controller to the smooth new HR92 tells you all you requirement to know about the development here at a glance.
When you get a system such as this one that’s reliant on a 3rd celebration cloud based service there is some danger involved. What if the company goes out of business? what occurs to your hardware investment then? While there are lots of startups entering this area best now you’d be hard pushed to find a bigger global HVAC player than Honeywell so we recon it’s most likely the one you’d have to concern about least in this respect.
The Honeywell system is advanced yet it simplifies a task that for many of us is the un-welcomed rigmarole of stabbing buttons in a never-ending tangled menu hierarchy. It brings heating manage into the age of stunning smartphone UI’s and creates the ‘User Experience’ all of us crave.
If you are currently the kind of user that turns your entire household heating all on, or all off (would you do that with all your lights?) then evohome will absolutely save you money. how much is absolutely a ‘how long is a piece of string’ question, but for us it was significant. The cost savings aren’t merely a result of the wise tech and algorithms employed for better efficiency, but just the mere fact that manage is so easy makes it much much more likely you’ll change things and save.
Honeywell state “82% of energy consumed in the home is utilized by heating and hot water.” In a non-scientific guesstimate we’d state moving to a zoned heating system saved us around 20% on our annual heating bill. We’ve utilize 4 or 5 fills of heating oil per year averaging arou