Combi Heating Control Programmer advice

[UpgradeME]

I'm a heating installer. You are a DIYer, you have one at home.

I and my staff fit this stuff for a living, day in, day out. Hometronic can have an internet interface, this has been the case for some years. There is very little demand for that particular piece of functionality.

Besides me being a "DIYer", my day job for many years has been professional R&D in technology products, including interface design.. during which time we have conducted usability studies with 1,000's of consumers and sold millions of products!

Generally speaking, most people who would get excited about controlling their heating from an app, or via bluetooth from a device, also want control of the other house functions. This is a niche market currently addressed by a number of small fry systems integrators.

The heating industry appears to be stuck in it's ways, reading posts on this forum shows that many RGI's are resistant to change. If the RGI's don't 'sell' the concept to consumers, there won't be the demand (initially)... our studies have shown many customers like to 'see' new technology, it's only then they realise they actually like/want it.

However, technology will enter this industry soon, the first company (which may not be one of the current players) to offer a modern solution will start the ball rolling and when it happens, I wouldn't want to stand in it's way! It happens in all industries, history has shown those who resist change get left behind, once dominent players cease to exist and new markets emerge! [Look how quickly the iPad / tablets have grown over the last year... or how quickly Nokia went from industry leader to nowhere...]

Many of whom use Hometronic for the heating and HW and write to a set of APIs via an interface, but that is another story you can Google later.

Hometronic will never become mass-market, it's way too geeky... No offence but anyone prepared to enter in 1,600 different on/off times to control their home heating (and/or lighting) needs to get out more!

 

[simond]

As luck would have it, part of my job before i got into this industry was specifying user interfaces for electronics, too.

I think you might be better qualified to comment on the virtues of both systems if you had used them.

 

[UpgradeME]

As luck would have it, part of my job before i got into this industry was specifying user interfaces for electronics, too.

I think you might be better qualified to comment on the virtues of both systems if you had used them.

Successfull (mass market) product designs tend to follow the KISS principle, having 1,600 setpoints is 1,500 too many IMHO and just shouts "overengineering". If a consumer really needed that many variations in a week, much better solutions could be developed using intelligent technology such as detecting actual usage patterns via presence detection, there are many other ways to achieve the same objective with MUCH less setup/intevention/support/potential errors/ridgeness.