Exactly. It's a classic example of scamming the gullible that have been brainwashed into believing everything that comes through the mind-control box is truth and must be obeyed to lead a "happy life"
A more believable and useful concept would be being able to control the boiler temperature remotely not the room 'stat.... oh wait, that's already possible, fully automated without human intervention it's called "weather compensation"
My Viessmann controller allowed you to set things for a holiday long before Hive was thought of.
Thanks for all the responses. I have decided to go with Hive as I am alread y changing my programmable wired thermostat for a wireless type, with the p roposed one already coming in at £120+ I might as well go for the extr a cost of the Hive self fit version and get the additional functionality. W e already operate schedules on the the existing stat and for most instances of our lifestyle they do other than we occasionally boost by an extra hour if staying up late. It will add convenience to be able to either turn down or up the heating should plans change whilst we are out.
I have looked at the wiring arrangement for our combi boiler and the reciev er and it is straight forward nothing that I can see justifying getting BG or approved installer in.
With regards Cat5e wiring round the house, at our last house we had a wired network where I could get under floorboards or utilise cupboards to route the wiring. One room due to having a part solid floor meant I had to resort to Powerline and i can say it worked very well, used for downloading to th e Sky box. My SiL has been fitting CCTV using an NVR. He is using Powerline to connect the cameras to the NVR and provide power to the cameras using P oE so no mass of unsightly cables just one Cat 5e cable coming through the wall from the camera plugged into a Powerline unit in the nearest socket. The video feed is excellent.
Richard
+1. I never have it set lower than 15degrees when we are away. the holiday mode is a great feature.
So does my Honeywell programmable stat - which is fine if you know exactly when you'll be returning - but not very useful if you don't.
I'd think not many go on holiday without knowing more or less when they're returning. ;-)
For Hive to be worth it for me, it would have to save its cost.
(Actually it would be useless, as I don't have conventional thermostats anyway. Both room and water have sensors which go to the boiler processor.)
I'd doubt you could plan it to the hour - which is the point.
I'm not convinced at all about the cost savings of much of the IoT gubbins. If you rationalise it that way I think it's highly unlikely you'll adopt.
It's a convenience/gadget lust/bragging rights/techphile/high disposable income/curiosity/social-interactive thing of things.
So not much use for drug mules then?
In the general case, that is true. But not always in the case of visiting my holiday flat. We generally come here for a days each month, planned in advance - in which case your solution would normally work. But we had to cancel our planned visit in February last year. If, when we left in January, we had used holiday mode to tell it to come on for the scheduled visit in February, the result would have been that it would have been on continuously until we eventually arrived in March!
I accept that our requirements are somewhat non-standard.
That is the point to me. BG are advertising it as something they install and you rent from them. at 9 quid a month. Or near 100 a year. That quite a lot of gas.
I love gadgets. But ain't going to buy one I really can't see a use for.
Roger has certainly made the case for one in his particular circumstances. I was hoping others might say they find it very useful - for the things it is advertised for.
Hive uses ZigBee on 2.4 GHz. It's intended to be a simpler, lower power alternative to bluetooth or wifi. The hub is a wired Ethernet to ZigBee bridge.
(ZigBee can also use 868 MHz but the current v2 hub uses a rf6555 RF transceiver - a 2.4 GHz part.)
Some further reading for those who like technicalities:
I have a British Gas sampler system consisting of a hub and a couple of (not very) smart lights. Presumably British Gas hope I'll lash out a couple of hundred quid to make my home heating vulnerable to Internet outages, dodgy firmware upgrades and the withdrawal of the servers if Hive is insufficiently profitable.
I can use an app or a website to set the brightness of the lamps. I can choose a brightness level and it then takes the lamps a second or two to react. You can't brighten or dim them in real time as you vary a control.
If they lose power they forget their brightness setting and come back on at full brightness when the supply is restored. You can control them remotely which could have security benefits but then so would a cheap plug-in mains timer. (Frankly, given the levels of faff using an app/ website rather than a light switch, you'd hardly want to control them locally.)
What is the point of this technology? Set your thermostat to the temperature you like, then never touch it again.
To build on this reply, the professional convention is to run fixed cabling in solid core cable terminated in sockets with (solid core compatible) insulation displacement connectors (idc) and to connect the sockets with patch cords made with stranded core conductors terminated in (stranded core compatible) idc plugs.
So solid core cable goes to a socket and stranded core cable goes to a plug. If you want to do something different you'll need to look for non-standard sockets or plugs. Or you might want to reconsider what you're up to and stick with the standard. A common temptation is to fit a plug on the end of a long fixed run to save fitting a socket box and a patch cord. However if you run solid core cable out to a device the conductors are more likely to fracture when moved. That's why the convention is only to use solid core cable on fixed runs where it won't be moved.
Turning the electricity off would of course stop the heating (even if only using a frost stat to control it) from working!
My parents new insurance policy for their holiday flat requires the water to be turned off and the heating to be left on at 10 deg when the place is unoccupied.
I fitted them a Surestop remote switch (the stop tap is under the sink behind the usual crap). They are delighted with it.
My next job there is to add a second SKY TV cable. That means I have to go up a ladder to the same hight as this
I am not looking forward to fitting that.
My insurance company tried that on for a year or two, but they've now relented - presumably because it lost them too much business. Now they simply require the water to be turned off when the flat is unoccupied between November and March.
While I'm a self confessed lover of 'gadgets' I'm wary of things like this. It isn't that I don't trust them, I'm sure they can be made reliable if they incorporate 'fall safe' systems. My concern is the changes in technology and finding you have a system that, when something fails, you need to totally replace, because the overall technology has been superseded.
I'd be more tempted to look at what you want, or think you need, to control, and look for self contained 'low tech' ways to do it which are independent. For example. Do you really need to be able to control you central heating remotely? What is wrong with a simple timer or timed thermostat? Ditto for lights. A simple timer is all that is needed. Ok, once in a while you may be home early/late and the heating isn't on or it has been on a bit when it wasn't needed but is that a big deal?
A neighbour can control his lights, even to the point of the colour, via his phone from the train. Wonderful. When he first had the system installed I noticed his lights sometimes came on in 'funny colours' around 'home time'. I don't see it now. Perhaps I don't notice it. Perhaps it has broken. Perhaps the novelty has worn off. Perhaps his wife, who is at home during the day as far as I know, didn't like it.
perhaps he is a fanny ......
I agree up to a point, but all of these things are getting cheaper and easier to use. It would be pretty straightforward for a boiler to connect to the wifi, so that you could check or change its state using an app. Surely modern ones already contain all the necessary processing power.
By the normal definition of 'holiday', most people know when they will be returning - and turning the heating on on the right day would be sufficient, so the Honeywell digital stat with holiday mode is fine.
But I use mine the wrong way round! Mine controls the heating in my holiday flat, and holiday mode would be used for when I am at my main home. I don't always know exactly when I'll be going back to the flat - so the remote control feature of Hive is very useful. It would also be useful for people working irregular and unpredictable hours - enabling them to turn the heating on shortly before getting home.
The downside of Hive cf Honeywell is that Hive doesn't contain any P.I.D. logic - so there's quite a lot of overshoot and hysteresis.
I think it would be difficult to make an economic case for buying a Hive unless you really did keep very irregular hours. I bought mine for convenience and the remote monitoring capability.
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