Tado X Vs Drayton Wiser

Mikey

Mikey

Mikey

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Considering moving away from Tado after they keep trying to put more behind paywall, they abandoned it after the backlash

With Black Friday offers looking at swapping to Drayton Wiser, eventually the hub2 system.

Anyone experience of both?
 
Ive just bought and installed Wiser. I was considering Tado for a couple of years but never got around to it. Recently decided to finally do it and found they had been messing about with paywall features very recently which has annoyed the community quite a lot.

I instead got Wiser. My existing controls were Drayton anyway, so when I removed the existing device there was a square backplate fitted that had all the wiring already on it. The new control unit just slotted straight on, I didn't even need to change any wiring.

It was easy enough to connect it and set up schedules. I like it.

I only got the basic kit, one thermostat and no trvs because their trv heads aren't compatible with my valves.
 
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My current Tado setup is
3 x Temp sensors
8 x TRV units

So would be costly ish to swap, but I've had others say Tado X resale price would cover the Drayton Wiser setup
 
Had a wiser system since 2018, now expanded to cover the parts of the house which aren't being built / undergoing DIY.

Heating and hot water control
3 - room stats
15 - TRVs

Hub is quite centrally located in the house so signal has generally been OK, some TRVs do like the chew batteries though, presume the lower the signal the more power they use.

Will be expanding to the rest of the house and include some underfloor heating in two areas.

Pleased with the system overall, though my original hub died after 5 years, probably saved significant sums of money, system has probably paid for itself by now.
 
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I don't know if you would be jumping out of the frying pan in to the fire..

The issue is simply that as much as I agree on Tado trying to paywall things and not having a 'local' mode, they do at least provide an official Home Assistant plugin that is very feature rich. Drayton provide a local mode, but no official Home Assistant plugin..

Personally, I think if I was starting over (I have a Tado later Hub, 2 room stats and 9 TRVs), I really would prefer TRVs and Boiler interface from more traditional home automation companies that have a history of supporting Local comms and fully maintained official Home Assistant plugins..

There are other alternatives, such as Plugwise who make opentherm interfaces and all the other stuff, and can be controlled from Zigbee via Home Assisant and also maintain an official Home Assistant plugin..

Basically, you want to get in a position you can have multiple vendors for TRVs, Boiler Controls, Room Stats etc, and all have local comms with official home assistant plugins, I don't think Drayton IMO fit that bill and being a larger company, you just know that Home Assistant and maintaining long term official local mode is not necessarily their priority, just like Tado started out quite open and then started nibbling away at things.
 
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I used the Wiser system for a few years - it was fine. There is an unofficial Home Assistant integration that seemed to work, although I’ve actually used IFTTT to manage switching on/off beyond the standard schedules.

One word of caution - if you are considering moving to a heat pump anytime soon, you’ll want no TRVs at all. I sold all my TRVs earlier this year and I’ve just kept the room thermostats.
 
I had an old wiser install log on here somewhere

The wiser has fairly weak wifi.
When I spoke to my gas man a few weeks back and mentioned I had a real pain getting wiser to work again after changing broadband he said its always wiser he has an issue with in that regard

The latest version of the app (and a few versions back) seem to have improved this a lot.
I used to get probably 25% failed connections when changing settings, its very rare now.
 
After a good start at the weekend, Im having problems last couple of days with the app.

Its hit and miss if it connects while Im on the same wifi network. Today Im away from home and it won't show anything at all.

I know my wifi is online because I can still see the Octopus live energy use.
 
Daft question about the setups.

I have stored hot water. I have a timer which controls hot water and heating, and a thermostat in the hall which also controls the heating.

Do these kits have 2 units, one if which replaces each of those controllers?
 
Mikey said:
My current Tado setup is
3 x Temp sensors
8 x TRV units

So would be costly ish to swap, but I've had others say Tado X resale price would cover the Drayton Wiser setup
Click to expand...

Very very similar.
I have old tado.

Too expensive to change.
 
bazzabear said:
Daft question about the setups.

I have stored hot water. I have a timer which controls hot water and heating, and a thermostat in the hall which also controls the heating.

Do these kits have 2 units, one if which replaces each of those controllers?
Click to expand...

Tado has this. I have this setup.

Way tado does it.
You replace the hot water control with one unit. And you replace the thermostat with a another unit.
I think you can even bridge the thermostat wires and just place a wireless temperature sensor in its location. But I think mine is wired.
 
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bazzabear said:
Daft question about the setups.

I have stored hot water. I have a timer which controls hot water and heating, and a thermostat in the hall which also controls the heating.

Do these kits have 2 units, one if which replaces each of those controllers?
Click to expand...

You'd need the two channel version of the wiser kit, which then controls both heating and hot water.
 
Well I'm having a problem with wiser.

It won't connect when I'm on mobile internet i.e not at home.

But then getting home, and going on Wi-Fi, it also won't connect. Trying to connect via mobile somehow completely breaks the hub.

I can still ping it, it's still connected to my router. And it still runs the local schedule.

I have to reset the Wi-Fi on the hub by holding the setup button. Then it works again in the app.

That is, unless I try a mobile internet connection again, which breaks it again completely.
 
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danlightbulb said:
I know my wifi is online because I can still see the Octopus live energy use.
Click to expand...
octopus/smart meters in general are using 2g/3g for comms I thought - so this working wan't indicative that your network should be open for wiser via mobile internet.

have you accessed anything on your local network remotely ?

e: maybe everything is done via cloud though
When you connect to the hub from outside your local network, the app does so via the wiser cloud. In order for that to work, your hub also needs to be connected to wiser cloud.
When the hub cannot reach the wiser cloud, the left hand LED is lit solid red (versus flashing red when it loses wifi and therefore has no network connection local or otherwise).

If your router IS blocking the requisite ports (tcp 5671, 443, 80) for the hub, I imagine that LED will be lit solid red most if not all the time.

If it's green, then problem likely lies somewhere other than your router.
Click to expand...
 
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I’ve had Wiser for over 5 years. As others have said, the Hub WiFi signal is quite weak. No issues for the last 3-4 years since I added an access point closer to it.
 
If you're happy with how your Tado is working, then I wouldn't bother with the hassle/expense of changing until they do actually start restricting/paywalling features.

I've got a Tado system as well with a few TRVs - mine is one of the early ones, so it's fully unlocked, and it does everything we need. If/when it comes to replacing it, their previous antics would certainly lead us to look elsewhere, but until it actually becomes a problem, I don't see the need to change
 
I've got a Wiser system and absolutely love it, it's one of the best things I've invested in in my home. full independent control over the temp in each room is fab.

I've found the tech support to be amazing on the couple of occasions when I've had issues, once when the hub kept disconnecting, which turned out to be something in the firmware which was quickly sorted out and new version pushed out and the other time turned out to be an issue with my router. On both occasions I got through to a native English speaker who understood exactly what I was saying and was able to quickly get to the bottom of the issues and provide very useful help!

I've got my system set up in Home Assistant using the integration and it works brilliantly. Makes it possible to connect it up with my tile keyfob so when I'm not at home, my heating is set to away mode automatically and when I return home, it comes out of away mode.
 
I have Wiser with smart TRV's and UFH with the UFH seperate to the TRVs so it can be controlled independently of the rest of the system,

I'd say overall its a good system however some of the scheduling options are a bit basic.
 
my one issue with the wiser app i can create "moments" in the automation section but not how I want to.

typically our heating runs on a schedule, but sometimes the missus is at home during the day for which I don't have a schedule set (the days aren't fixed), so what we would normally do is a 2 hour boost.
I would like to boost the rooms downstairs that she is using with 1 click using a moment, but instead I have to go into each room and boost it individually, mild annoyance in a system that otherwise works well.
 
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