@majordennisbloodnok Indeed! 👍 Toodles.

@majordennisbloodnok I cannot comprehend their logic for all of the reasons you highlight.

It has also proved invaluable for us to be able to challenge our installers that their design temp of our system was not being achieved. When the max flow temp was set at 45, and the OAT was minus 2, you could see the indoor temp gradually drop via the dashboard graphs which we could screenshot. This has resulted in our installers accepting that they had mis sold this element of our installation, documenting an accurate and feasible design temp on our MCS certificate of a few degrees higher, upgrading an additional radiator and offering financial compensation as a result. Prior to figuring out the workaround to accessing the performance data I was in discussions with them to actually remove it and put something in that did allow me to see this information as I was so concerned that I couldn't see any of it, or certainly not easily anyway- the native Midea controls being so poor. 

It allows me to see how often the unit is cycling. It also allows me not to be tied to one installer if they cease trading, or for whatever reason I no longer want them to service/diagnose any issues (definitely applicable in our case).

I get that some customers wouldn't have any interest in it, but what is clear is there is a significant proportion who do, and it leaves a bad taste that they (and installers recommending the controls) want to keep their customers in the dark. On the basis of this response and their turnaround in customer focused support I would no longer recommend it.

Posted by: @benson

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I get that some customers wouldn't have any interest in it, but what is clear is there is a significant proportion who do, and it leaves a bad taste that they (and installers recommending the controls) want to keep their customers in the dark. On the basis of this response and their turnaround in customer focused support I would no longer recommend it.

Just to be clear, is 'it' in this case 'Homely' (if so that is a major disappointment!).

Without Homely some of the heat pumps that have less sophisticated controls (including quite a few, but not all, of the ones from the Far East) must surely be regarded as 'iffy' for any case where the homeowner expects a simple interface (ie the vast majority of ordinary use cases)   

In fact one might argue that any heat pump where the customer cant simply turn a dial (or the digital equivalent) and as a result efficiently vary the house temperature should be in this 'iffy' category  if Homely can no longer be recommended.  By efficiently I mean that, under the hood, the 'dial' should in fact cause the weather compensation curve to shift, rather than implement some on/off control logic.

That narrows the choice quite considerably.

Maybe the (principally but not exclusively European) manufacturers who, for some years, have had to deal with weather compensation on boilers and have thus developed a user-friendly interface to WC aimed at the end user do actually have a selling point as we progress beyond the 'early adopter nerd' market for heat pumps. 

Posted by: @jamespa

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In fact one might argue that any heat pump where the customer cant simply turn a dial (or the digital equivalent) and as a result efficiently vary the house temperature should be in this 'iffy' category  if Homely can no longer be recommended.  

Homely is absolutely recommended for this. For those heat pumps with clunky controls, such as my Grant, Homely is transformational. I understand why the lack of user-facing detailed data might be disappointing for some, and it would be for me if I didn’t have it, but I would suggest that only a small percentage of the mass market would care. The benefits are still substantial and Homely is still an excellent and cost-effective product.

@jamespa yes I was referring to Homely.

I've grown to quite like the controls and what they offer- as you say the options are rather limited for certain makes. I can't get on board with their operating model for reasons stated.

Interestingly Clivet are, or at least were, pushing the passiv controls with their ASHPs and were offering them for free to Clivet installers up until the end of last month. I suspect it will be broadly similar though in terms of what information is readily accessible to the end user.

Perhaps something like open energy monitor can be installed in conjunction with homely etc?

Posted by: @grahaml

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Posted by: @jamespa

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In fact one might argue that any heat pump where the customer cant simply turn a dial (or the digital equivalent) and as a result efficiently vary the house temperature should be in this 'iffy' category  if Homely can no longer be recommended.  

Homely is absolutely recommended for this. For those heat pumps with clunky controls, such as my Grant, Homely is transformational. I understand why the lack of user-facing detailed data might be disappointing for some, and it would be for me if I didn’t have it, but I would suggest that only a small percentage of the mass market would care. The benefits are still substantial and Homely is still an excellent and cost-effective product.

 

 

That's an interesting and very useful perspective. 

To boil it down to its essentials (and hopefully stimulate some debate) homely remains good (where the native heat pump controller has insufficient functionality) for non geeks (IE the majority). 

For geeks it may be less good or even no good,  but they have alternatives.

@grahaml I cannot agree that it is a small percentage of the mass market who want to access COP data, and perhaps this is a mindset of installers and manufacturers that needs to change. I'd also ask what is the harm of providing this data to customers who want it. The argument that we'd be peppering installers with queries about what it all means, and that is is somehow beyond our comprehension, is weak.

It also seems morally wrong quite frankly that they purposely restrict the data of the ASHP/controls, that we have paid for. I can access the technical data of my car, if I'm so inclined. I'm also not restricted to taking it to one garage who sold me it. Yet this is what homely is doing- tying you to one installer who you then become wholly reliant on to provide performance data and diagnose any issues. Just before Christmas the director of the company we used told me he was packing it all in and going back to installing gas boilers. Granted the general public would probably be safer, but I felt absolutely up a creek and Homely provided no solution to this conundrum. In fact they just ignored my request for help as to how I circumvented this and untied myself from them and their sole installer access to MY controls.

I also have no control over my max flow temp without asking my installer to email their support which I also find ludicrous. When our installers set it at 45 in a weak attempt to convince us that our system was designed as such, our house got cold. The weariness of sorting that out was, well, weary.

Furthermore how do I qualify that Homely is excellent? That it keeps my house at the desired set temperature? 

Homely have today added a really decent feedback feature to their app which allows customers to not only create feedback topics forum-style, but vote/add comments to existing suggestions.

The most requested feature thus far, by some considerable distance is.....performance data 🙂 

@benson Yes Indeed it is! I have also added one request for the app to work in landscape orientation on the iPad as this would be much easier to use than on the iPhone.

I noticed that others have experienced the irksome nature of trying to edit the schedule, if one wishes to make a temperature change to an existing schedule, the only way at present is to delete the current and replace with a new setting.

I do hope that Homely will take note of the need to know what the performance data is storing quietly without allowing the user to see it!

Regards, Toodles.

@toodles oh yes good point about the schedule editing. I've emailed them twice about this and they just responded to say the solution was to delete and schedule again as you say. Most frustrating! I see that this is the second most popular suggestion.

The third most popular one currently is someones genius suggestion to allow the customer to alter max and min flow temps 😆 

Posted by: @benson

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have no control

Is this the best solution for you?

Isn't homely supposed to just run in the background doing it's thing, so the home owner doesn't need too.  Making best use of tariff, etc, matching everything to keep house comfortable etc at lowest cost. If you want control of things (generally mess with stuff) and output data of running parameters, switch homely off and do something different?

Why do you even need scheduling, unless it's for a tariff, once set it's set. If you change tariff set up the basics again, not exactly a daily occurrence.

Setbacks and zone control is just old hat and not really the best thing for a heat pump.

@johnmo generally id agree but being able to edit the maximum flow temp seems quite basic. Likewise the performance data for reasons already stated. I’m not asking for the ability to fiddle with algorithms etc.

The issue with the schedules is that in winter I might need the temp to be set at 20.5 to feel comfortable. In the spring, generally we’d lower this a bit. Currently there’s no particularly easy way to just edit across all of the days. Our schedule is basically set across the 24hr period, same every day, so again I concur. I don’t even use a setback at night.