Home Automation - Mainstream price point & functionality?
Discussion
Unless the LR versions have changed I was advised that they are a pointless buy a year or so ago.
The reason was power of the LR is not legal here in UK/EU, so as soon as you tell it it is operating this side of the pond (which you have to do to get the correct channel spacing) it knocks the power down to that of the standard AP's
I have a hit and miss relationship with them, when they install (about 90% of the time) they absolutely fly and I am happy with them, but when they dont, they are a total pain in the arse to work out why and how to fix them.
V.
The reason was power of the LR is not legal here in UK/EU, so as soon as you tell it it is operating this side of the pond (which you have to do to get the correct channel spacing) it knocks the power down to that of the standard AP's
I have a hit and miss relationship with them, when they install (about 90% of the time) they absolutely fly and I am happy with them, but when they dont, they are a total pain in the arse to work out why and how to fix them.
V.
Piersman2 said:
Well... I tried a Nest today, bought it, installed it, and have just re-packaged ready to take back tomorrow and exchange for a Dayton MiGenie Wish 2.
Got it largely set up but the Nest just didn't do some of the basics I was looking for, it's not something designed for my particular lifestyle.
Show stoppers for me were that I couldn't turn off the hot water or heating. I only want the CH and HW to come on each day at 3.00 and then go off at 8pm. 5 days a week. Other than that I want to be able to quickly override the system and turn on one or the other on an adhoc basis. The house could be virtually empty 1 weekend, and then full on the next.
The Nest seems to be ok if you have a fairly standard weekly pattern , but it's not what I was looking for, too inflexible. For me my starting position is everything off to be turned on when I want it, the Nest seems to be the other way round, everything on, but without the ability to quickly turn off.
So I'm out, I'll try the MiGenie solution which should be a direct swap out for the existing Drayton box on the wall.
My overall impression of the Nest - bit like an Apple product, looks good, nicely designed and packaged, great if you can use it the way they want, pretty inflexible and useless if not.
Got the MiGenie kit on saturday. Installed incredibly easily as it's just a direct swap for my old Drayton 24/7 programmer. Use is very similar to a normal CH/WH programmer with on/off times and the additional option to define what temperatures you want the system to limit up to. And Boost so you can turn on the CH/WH manually.Got it largely set up but the Nest just didn't do some of the basics I was looking for, it's not something designed for my particular lifestyle.
Show stoppers for me were that I couldn't turn off the hot water or heating. I only want the CH and HW to come on each day at 3.00 and then go off at 8pm. 5 days a week. Other than that I want to be able to quickly override the system and turn on one or the other on an adhoc basis. The house could be virtually empty 1 weekend, and then full on the next.
The Nest seems to be ok if you have a fairly standard weekly pattern , but it's not what I was looking for, too inflexible. For me my starting position is everything off to be turned on when I want it, the Nest seems to be the other way round, everything on, but without the ability to quickly turn off.
So I'm out, I'll try the MiGenie solution which should be a direct swap out for the existing Drayton box on the wall.
My overall impression of the Nest - bit like an Apple product, looks good, nicely designed and packaged, great if you can use it the way they want, pretty inflexible and useless if not.
However, not entirely sold on it yet. The Drayton 'cloud' servers were down for most of Sunday so accessing the MiGenie from the app (either via Wifi or 4G) was not possible and the Boost functionality seems a bit hit and miss, I can't work out the pattern for it yet, or what the cause is, but I can set a boost for 3hours only to find it's stopped boosting hour later and turned back to 'OFF' for no apparent reason. But not every time, so not sure what's triggering that.
I'll give it a week or so to see how reliable it is and if all settles down I'll stick with it.
dmsims said:
Yes I predict the Drayton will be going back!
Have you tried it yourself? There seems to be scant feedback online about the MiGenie kit, I was looking for inspiration on Sunday afternoon and was struggling to find anything constructive on line other than Drayton sites and a couple of tweets about the servers being down a few times.So confidence in the product is not sky high although it did do what it was supposd to do yesterday and the house and water were warm when I got home. But that's pretty basic operation to be fair! LOL
If Drayton can't do it, I'll be onto the Honeywell version next I reckon!
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