Anyone using Hive?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Hmm. If I had a holiday flat which was unoccupied other than when I used it, I'd turn off things like water and electricity when not there.

[Michael Chare]

I have a Heatmiser Smartstat. It uses a separate thermometer connected to it by a cable. It is mains powered and turns the boiler off and on to keep the room with the thermometer at the correct temperature. There can be up to 4 temp changes per day.

I can control it using an Android mobile phone app, and a 64bit Windows PC running Google Chrome Arc Welder.

The main reason for having it was that I wanted the remote control.

The connection to it must rely on a Heatmiser server somewhere. If the server stopped I would loose the remote control. It is a pity that there is no web interface.

The biggest problem with the installation was running the cables neatly. I happened to get lucky.

[Roger Mills]

I do indeed turn the water off, but not the electricity because there's a fridge/freezer with food in it. The flat is in a converted house, the rest of which is occupied - so the areas above and below are heated for most of the time.

[Dave Liquorice]

Ta, all seems a bit complicated. I guess the hub is not integrated with the receiver as running an ethernet cable is "too difficult" for the majority these days.

Probably the normal wireless stat (and hundreds of other things) on

433 MHz(?) the stat only has to signal "Hi it's me, switch [on | off]", probably to the hub so it can tell the remote server and the local control switch (receiver) the expected system state.

[Andy Burns]

I think it sends continual temperature readings to the hub, which I gather can show you the historical readings via a web interface (could be the webserver is a central BG one, rather than in the hub)

[NY]

Yes - it would involve drilling holes through walls and floors/ceilings to take it from one room (the one with the boiler wiring to the former time switch) to another (the one with the router). I imagine most people (me included) would opt for Homeplug to convey Ethernet from one to the other, to make use of pre-existing house wiring - the ring mains.

Likewise for fitting a telephone socket in the bedroom where the router is - if I wanted a clean, non-filtered line (with the internal phone extensions changed from the unlfitered to filtered side of the faceplate) I'd need to drill holes through the internal and external walls, run exterior-spec Cat 5 along the outside of the house and then drill another set of holes in through the bedroom wall - or else run the wiring along the edge of the carpet and up the corner of the living room (where it would be least conspicuous, though it may still not pass the Wife Acceptance Test) and the through the living room ceiling and the bedroom floor, trying to drill the holes as close to the corner as possible to avoid the cable having to do a dog-leg. All the holes would have to be big enough to take an RJ45 plug because I don't fancy the hassle of trying to attach one to bare ends of all the cores in Cat 5 - I tried it once, having bought a special crimping tool, and I wasted five plugs (and a shortened the cable a bit each time) trying to get a good connection.

Telephone cable is thin enough to push down the edge of carpets and under the metal strip in each doorway, and then up the side to he stairs, but Cat

5 is a bit too thick for that.

Yes I imagine it's 433 MHz wireless, as for the connection between my weather station base unit and the sensor unit in the garden.

[Dave Liquorice]

Hum these days of internal soil stacks generally provide a cable route from loft to ground floor and all floors between.

Corners behind doors are a good place.

With normal RJ45's you do have to get the protruding wire length just right (it's about 1/2"). However there are "feed through" RJ45's now, just strip back an inch or so of sheath sepearate and flatten the wires into the correct order and thread into the plug. The plug has holes at the end for the exccess wire. Crimp and trim, There is a special crimper that trims the wires as well but you don't need it. Google "ez rj45".

[Roger Mills]

The receiver would fit in place of the existing time switch - hopefully using the existing wiring. The hub would normally be installed close to the router. Hub and receiver should then talk to each other wirelessly unless the size/structure of your house prevents this - in which case you could indeed use homeplugs on the hub to router connection to enable the hub to be closer to the receiver.

You shouldn't need to drill holes through walls, floors or ceilings.

[tim...]

why do they have to make it so complicated

why can't they put the heating controller inside the thermostat box and simply put it in place of the current thermostat?

tim

[tim...]

people don't like messy cables running around their walls

tim

[Graham.]

That's true, but I'm prepared to stick my neck out and suggest there was nothing wrong with NY's technique, what he was probably doing wrong was using solid core cable, with RJ45 plugs designed for stranded core cable.

It's a very common mistake, and often made by cablers who should know better.

Most cable sold is solid, and it's what you'll get if you don't specify either. Normal RJ45 plugs have blades that are axial to the wire, they pierce the insulation then enmesh themselves into the stranded core making a sound connection. With solid core, the tendency is for them to fracture the core making a poor contact, or no contact at all.

You can get special plugs for solid cable, the blades are still axial, but are subtly pre-formed (bent) so as to slip either side of the core rather than cut into it I would expect these plugs work reasonably well with stranded cable too, but I doubt that DIY sheds stock them.

[NY]

That would be a good idea. Short out the timer contacts rather than shorting out the thermostat contacts.

The only problem is for people like us who have a second controlled circuit - for hot water. Although we have a combi boiler which could be left permanently on, with the boiler only being switched on when a tap was opened, out boiler also pre-heats some water which is kept within the boiler housing, to give instant hot water while the boiler is heating fresh water from the rising main, and we would not want that tank to be kept hot (with consequent switching on and off of the boiler) 24/7. So that functionality was also controlled by the same timer (though different programs) as the central heating system.

Therefore we needed a dual-circuit Hive and so a Hive at the room thermostat would not be able to control the hot water system because there would not be any wiring.

Although three boxes (thermostat, hub and receiver) seems OTT, I don't think there is any way of reducing the box count without layiung of additional cables between receiver and thermostat and/or router.

[NY]

Yes, I was answering the suggestion that the hub and receiver (timer) could be combined into one unit and that it would be "too difficult for the majority" to run Ethernet cable between router and hub/receiver.

I was pointing out that in my house, running such an Ethernet cable would be a major exercise involving much drilling, as the alternative is to take a very long way round via the staircase, running Cat 5 along skirting boards and up the side of the staircase at tread level.

Likewise if I'd wanted fit my own phone extension from the master socket to the router.

[RJH]

I don't follow - you can just hang the hub off the router. I use a 15cm ehternet cable. Why would you need to dig up the house to do that?!

[Andy Burns]

As it is, you don't. The suggestion was to combine the receiver and the hub, so then you'd need a cable from somewhere near the boiler, to wherever the router was installed.

[Roger Mills]

There are a few problems with that.

The receiver needs a minimum of permanent live, switched live and neutral. Depending on what sort of thermostat you're replacing, you may or may not have all of those. You *certainly* won't have any hot water control wires in your room stat so, if you want the Hive to control the heating of your stored hot water, you can't simply replace the room stat with the receiver.

The receiver is designed to replace an existing programmer and, with any luck, will fit onto the existing programmer's wall plate without requiring any re-wiring (except for linking out the room stat). The existing programmer is effectively made redundant by the Hive. If you keep it, you'll have to set both channels (if also controlling water) to permanently on rather than timed - and it will be consuming (a small amount of) electricity unnecessarily.

In any event, Hive's thermostat is wireless - so you don't necessarily have to site it where the room stat was. You can even move it from room to room if you wish (if you buy the optional stand, or make your own).

Another consideration is that Hive can automate other things besides the heating - lights and power points, etc. For that, you need the hub and the appropriate accessories. So if the hub were integral with the receiver and/or thermostat - as suggested by some - that wouldn't be any use for people who wanted to use Hive just to automate non-heating equipment.

[Dave Liquorice]

"the wrong sort of plug" hasn't been a problem here. B-) Thats stranded plug onto solid wire. Wires sneakly swaping position and looking right before crimping is another matter.

[Dave Liquorice]

Cable stapled (not p clipped) along the corner between to of skirting and wall and painted to match the skirting(*) soon becomes "invisible". In the grooves of Ogee profile is also a good hidden in plain sight place. Failing that the skirting shouldn't be in contact with the floor, there should be a gap just large enough to take a Cat5 cable.

(*) Does require painted skirting, wouldn't work in some parts of this place with varnished skirting. But that part is flood wired with Cat5 and coax...

[RJH]

Got you, thanks.

[NY]

I've never seen that. In my house (1930s terrace) the bathroom has exposed floorboards and the skirting goes right down to the floorboards. Pulling back a bit of fitted carpet in one of the other rooms shows the same - either no gap or else a gap of only about a millimetre. Maybe the leaving of a gap is a feature of newer houses. Is the gap there for any specific purpose (eg for routing cables!) or what? I presume it's not present in houses with exposed flooring because it would look naff. Having said that, exposed flooring may well be laid on top of existing wooden or concrete flooring which would raise the level a bit and hide the gap.

Anyway, the problem comes when you need to take the cable from one room into the next - unless there's also a similar gap where the door frame reaches the floor.