Geo Cosy System to Tado - help with wiring

[Highway Man]

Please explain how "ceasing support" results in "stops working".

You cannot use the smart features and control your heating through the app as previous.

 

[morqthana]

It became non operational when support was removed. The OP mentions theirs was decommissioned in April when support ceased.

It's a central heating control.

Please explain why it should become non operational when "support" was removed.

Please explain how it is desirable for a manufacturer to be able to remotely "decommission" a product which somebody has bought.

 

[morqthana]

You cannot use the smart features and control your heating through the app as previous.

Please explain why it is impossible to have an app able to communicate with a heating system without "support" from a manufacturer.

 

[Highway Man]

Please explain why it is impossible to have an app able to communicate with a heating system without "support" from a manufacturer.

Because they have stopped supporting the app and their cloud servers to communicate to the system, the app is what you used to control the system which you cannot now do. You can bypass the system depending on how it was installed or simply install a nest or hive or any other smart thermostat. The cosy was one of the first types of smart controlers for heating systems, all it really did was to break into the heating stat wiring to use their system to control the room stat, the hot water on a Y plan was the same, just cut into the tank stat to enable you to control it by the app. Now you cannot use the app the system is rendered useless.

 

[Highway Man]

Please explain why it is impossible to have an app able to communicate with a heating system without "support" from a manufacturer.

Your welcome.

 

[MickTheBrick82]

Blimey, what a nightmare with that Geo Cosy system! Sounds like your best bet is to get an electrician to wire it back to how it was before (linking those T1 terminals together) and ditch the Tado if you're not confident - several folks here said it's a proper doddle to revert. Either way, you'll have the heating on soon and no more frozen teenagers!

 

[denso13]

Please explain why it should become non operational when "support" was removed.

It was dependant on remote servers for its features, those servers no longer exist

Please explain how it is desirable for a manufacturer to be able to remotely "decommission" a product which somebody has bought.

It isn't desirable.

 

[ericmark]

I have Nest Gen 3 which still works, but is seems Nest Gen 2 has had support removed, but I also have Wiser in parallel main idea is if the Wiser batteries go flat it will still work, I have been cold in the past due to a pair of AA cells becoming depleted.

Be it discharged batteries/cells or support removed, not many have two systems in parallel in case.

It seems Tado has a good geo-fencing system built in, the Wiser need to use IFTTT and it is hard to set it up with more than one phone. Nest Gen 3 does have geo-fencing, but it does not have in the UK any way to be triggered by more than one room, USA version will, but not European version.

At one point only the European version of Tado had OpenTherm, but I think they have returned it to UK version, the early Hive did not have OpenTherm but the latter ones do.

Energenie seems to work the wrong way around, where the main thermostat tells the TRVs what setting to use, nearly all the others the TRVs when linked will fire the boiler.

The first of the systems I came across which would control rooms independently was Honeywell EvoHome, the latter systems you need a phone to set it all up. Energenie does work with the PC, but the rest seem to need an emulator. Tablets work OK.

Yesterday I realised I had a problem my central heating was turning its self off, this it seems was the problem, how it got turned on I don't know, but the TRV report was also showing the problem, I checked the settings on the TRV these seemed OK, so temperature clearly not what it should have been, the other TRV does not give a history, I had just swapped the batteries in that one, but having so many things controlling the room temperature can work out reverse to what intended, when something goes wrong, trying to work out what has gone wrong.

The voice commands hey google set living room to 22ºC still worked on all three devices, but when a little latter it auto turns off again, that's not much help.

I have tried to get people to talk about their system, but the problem is, most do not want to admit to any errors, every one seems to sing the praises of what they have, no one wants to admit there system has any errors.

Now the away mode has been switched off, Drayton Wiser is working A1 again, the TRV head for Wiser has the option to be set to work out how much in advance of the set time of a temperature change, it needs to turn up heating, so it is at the temperature set on time. I don't use that function, but this seems to be the point, each system has its own + and - features, and until talked about on a forum like this, one does not know about the things it can do.

My plumbing is far from perfect, and the boiler is an old oil one, so features like OpenTherm and Weather compensation do not really help me.

But if my wall thermostat got stuck on, the TRV heads would stop over heating, and only hearing the boiler fire up would alert me of a fault.

I call it near enough engineering, it does enough, to make it better is simply not worth the money.

 

[morqthana]

It was dependant on remote servers for its features,

Why?

Who thought that was a good idea when they designed it?

Whose interests were served by it?

Who thought it was a good idea when they bought it?

 

[denso13]

Why?

Who thought that was a good idea when they designed it?

Whose interests were served by it?

Who thought it was a good idea when they bought it?

Sorry, you'd need to ask, perhaps, the designers/manufacturers/buyer. I don't have answers for those.

I do know that, for example, some weather compensation controls access manufacturer's servers to get local weather forecasts for better control of the boiler output. If the servers are not available then that feature won't work and I don't know how else it could.

 

[morqthana]

I have Nest Gen 3 which still works, but is seems Nest Gen 2 has had support removed,

I have PCs and a phone which are no longer supported by the makers. They still work. The makers did not reach out over the internet and brick/cripple them when they removed support.

 

[flameport]

Why?

For the collection of data. Actual user functionality is a secondary concern.

Who thought that was a good idea when they designed it?

Whose interests were served by it?

The manufacturer, and those who they subsequently can sell data to.

Who thought it was a good idea when they bought it?

No one, as most people didn't think that far ahead and those that did could see exactly what this Cosy and other 'smart' devices really are.

 

[morqthana]

Hopefully awareness will spread - even if people aren't concerned about their privacy, they ought to think about what might happen if the company goes bust, or just decides to turn the servers off, or forces them to pay subscription fees to keep on getting what they already bought.

 

[ericmark]

Who thought that was a good idea when they designed it?

I got caught out, in my case Nest Gen 3, so can hardly blame anyone else caught out.

I was told how the modern boiler needed modern controls to work correctly, and how old thermostats like these, although the bees knees in their day, as designed to use a progressive mark/space control to reduce the hysteresis, today with a modulating boiler do the reverse to what is wanted.

So we are told we need analogue controls, and digital (on/off) are no good with modern boilers, so we buy what we think is now the bees knees with OpenTherm analogue controls, only to find the boiler we have does not support them, or for that matter any other wired analogue controls, as I did with my mothers Bosch, latter models did have Bosch's own analogue controls, but hers the only option was to use electronic TRV heads, and to try and set them up to work with a simple on/off programmable thermostat, which at best was hit and miss.

I read all about it, it sounded great, connected to my phone, it would auto turn off heating when I left the house, and turn it back on when I returned, I was lead to understand this geo-fencing as it is called, would monitor the closest family phone and slowly decrease or increase the house temperature as I got further away or closer to home, so it would be warm on my return.

Well it seems using IFTTT you can only use one phone, and Nest version does not turn the heating on until one is about to walk through the door, as a cell site failure can turn off the heating even when your home.

So nearly every smart function was turned off, the only gain is some wireless functions so you can in essence have a boiler controlling thermostat in every room, without a whole load of wiring being done.

There are some TRV heads which will pair to wall sensors, so they are not affected by a cold outside wall, and can connect to a hub so they can turn the boiler on if that room is cold, but I would not class that as smart.

There is one which claims to record how long it takes to re-heat the room, and so you set time you want room warm by, and it works out how long before that time it needs to start re-heating the room, OK that's smart, but one would need to always leave doors open or closed, if how doors are left varies, it can't work it out.

Nest was claimed to monitor how you set the heat in first month and then automate it to do same automaticity, that would be smart if it worked, however it did not work, at least for me, so if the function fails, one can hardly call it smart.

We have had radio control for heating for years, this is how the now de-funked teleswitch worked for storage radiators, to replace is with another meter control doing the same thing is hardly smart, neither is sending billing information with a radio signal, we have had that for years also.

So in the main, it seems anything which calls itself "smart" needs to be viewed with caution. But that's easy to say in hind sight.

Yes I can say hey google set living room to 22ºC and it does, but it's not the thermostat which translates my voice, it is the Nest Mini speakers, same goes for Alexa, I got the Nest Mini speakers to listen to radio, as no radio reception where I live, and yes it seems after all that expense, BBC is pulling the plug and I will soon no longer be able to listen to BBC radio 4 extra.

 

[morqthana]

GEO or Green Energy Options ceased support for it earlier this year so all of them are now useless e-waste.
They sold various other products previously and did exactly the same with those, just randomly stating one day that they are no longer supported so anyone who purchased one can get stuffed.

Do you have, or have links to, info about which other products?

They seem like a good candidate for an entry in the Consumer Rights Wiki, but I can't find anything out about what Cosy was supposed to do, why it had to rely on Geo's servers to do it, why they decided to brick everybody's equipment, and what track record they have for doing it before.