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Tado Cooling – Intelligent AC control

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Re: Tado Cooling – Intelligent AC control

#11

Post by Zikes »

robomartin wrote: post #8

Unlike Nest, which I've always seen as a gimmick sold on false advertising, I believe this has legs. Making these kinds of air conditioning units into intelligent devices could have significant effects. Why do think I Nest is a gimmick almost bordering on a marketing scam? Because in only works in a relatively narrow range of applications (i.e.: small one or two room apartment). In a larger family home --and particul…

I have a single story, three bedroom home. Currently I have a cheap programmable thermostat, and it does next to nothing for me.

Some weekends I'm away, some weekends I'm at home. Most days I'm gone between specific times because of work, but sometimes I'll fire up the laptop and work from home.

That lack of awareness in my cheap programmable thermostat means any schedule I program into it would be wrong almost as often as it is right, which makes it only as good as any other simple thermostat with an up and a down button. Since it is wrong so much, that means I'm often wasting money heating or cooling a house that I'm not in.

Or I could just install a Nest, which not only would know whether or not I'm at home but which I could remotely control with my phone to let it know when I'm headed home or when I'll be gone all weekend.

Edit: The downvotes are most likely because you took something which is an obvious step up from conventional home heating and air controlling systems and has provable benefits, then called it a marketing scam based on vague anecdotal evidence, with a rather hostile "if you disagree then you're an idiot that believes in magic and fairies" tone, to boot.

Re: Tado Cooling – Intelligent AC control

#12

Post by robomartin »

cauterize wrote: post #9
robomartin wrote: post #8

Unlike Nest, which I've always seen as a gimmick sold on false advertising, I believe this has legs. Making these kinds of air conditioning units into intelligent devices could have significant effects. Why do think I Nest is a gimmick almost bordering on a marketing scam? Because in only works in a relatively narrow range of applications (i.e.: small one or two room apartment). In a larger family home --and particul…

Nest is 250$ USD, tado is 150$ USD. Nest allows controlling multiple thermostats from the app, I couldn't find if tado did the same. Thus, your conclusion that Nest is a "waste of time and money" is fruitless. However, the geolocation support does seem quite nice. The bar has been raised once again.

Perhaps you misunderstood. My point is that a single thermostat can only go so far in optimizing cooling in an installation much larger than a studio apartment. A $30 programmable thermostat can probably bring you within 90% of the maximum achievable optimization for all other dwellings. And, depending on where you live, a cheap fan can quite literally bring your cooling bill from hundreds of dollars per month to $10 per month. I've done exactly that for two years as I experimented with various ideas for a renovation that is under way now.

Re: Tado Cooling – Intelligent AC control

#13

Post by robomartin »

Zikes wrote: post #11
robomartin wrote: post #8

Unlike Nest, which I've always seen as a gimmick sold on false advertising, I believe this has legs. Making these kinds of air conditioning units into intelligent devices could have significant effects. Why do think I Nest is a gimmick almost bordering on a marketing scam? Because in only works in a relatively narrow range of applications (i.e.: small one or two room apartment). In a larger family home --and particul…

I have a single story, three bedroom home. Currently I have a cheap programmable thermostat, and it does next to nothing for me. Some weekends I'm away, some weekends I'm at home. Most days I'm gone between specific times because of work, but sometimes I'll fire up the laptop and work from home. That lack of awareness in my cheap programmable thermostat means any schedule I program into it would be wrong almost as of…

And yours might be a perfect use case for it. Small home, highly irregular schedule. No issues there.

My problem is that these things are being sold at my local Home Depot as some kind of magical device. This is a bedroom community of probably 100,000 to 200,000 homes. A huge number of them are two story homes of 2,000 square feet and above with three to five bedrooms. Nest is a waste of time for these people. I actually have data on this. I know six people with homes virtually equal to mine (planned community) who bought Nest to save money and could not tell you if they've saved a penny. If there's an impact it's that small.

Las summer I convinced one of those neighbors to buy a $200 fan and use it as I suggested. He immediately reported a savings of over $300 PER MONTH on his cooling bill. He saved over $1,000 last summer and expects to save over $2,000 this summer.

That's why I say it's a scam.

Re: Tado Cooling – Intelligent AC control

#15

Post by maxerickson »

robomartin wrote: post #8

Unlike Nest, which I've always seen as a gimmick sold on false advertising, I believe this has legs. Making these kinds of air conditioning units into intelligent devices could have significant effects. Why do think I Nest is a gimmick almost bordering on a marketing scam? Because in only works in a relatively narrow range of applications (i.e.: small one or two room apartment). In a larger family home --and particul…

I think Nest is really aimed at builders and major renovations, where a list of features is more of a concern than $200.

(Of course there are lots of builders and major renovations where the $200 would still be considered a waste, I think they are targeting the ones that don't care about $200)

Re: Tado Cooling – Intelligent AC control

#16

Post by ccozan »

legulere wrote: post #14

Strange thing to come from a company from Munich, as AC is barely used there.

Mind you, if you look closely on their website, it works with gas heating - which most of the houses here use. I personally have a Buderus ( although fully automated - but quite inflexible) and I'd really like to try it. 300 Euro doesn't seem to much, considering that it can do savings on the same level per year. EDIT: the central Munich is heated with the SWM's powerplants. But around Munich there is a huge amount of houses which just fit this device.

Re: Tado Cooling – Intelligent AC control

#18

Post by Shadow6363 »

robomartin wrote: post #8

Unlike Nest, which I've always seen as a gimmick sold on false advertising, I believe this has legs. Making these kinds of air conditioning units into intelligent devices could have significant effects. Why do think I Nest is a gimmick almost bordering on a marketing scam? Because in only works in a relatively narrow range of applications (i.e.: small one or two room apartment). In a larger family home --and particul…

You mention this magical whole house fan multiple times across your responses, but how exactly would a fan help those of us living where it's 70-80 F at night? I have one and besides being obnoxiously loud, on one of the aforementioned nights, it'd simply end up blowing around that hot, humid air without actually cooling anything.

Re: Tado Cooling – Intelligent AC control

#19

Post by dmritard96 »

all the IR stuff is done if you want it Tado. :D or at least a start

allows record and playback of IR codes as well as search of LIRC

also, if you are building an IR database, would you consider sharing the IR codes with the community?

after all, I'm sure Ken Sheriffs library and arduino are open tools that are likely helping you quite a lot in the early stages...

https://github.com/dandroid88/webmote

Re: Tado Cooling – Intelligent AC control

#20

Post by DannyBee »

robomartin wrote: post #8

Unlike Nest, which I've always seen as a gimmick sold on false advertising, I believe this has legs. Making these kinds of air conditioning units into intelligent devices could have significant effects. Why do think I Nest is a gimmick almost bordering on a marketing scam? Because in only works in a relatively narrow range of applications (i.e.: small one or two room apartment). In a larger family home --and particul…

Your argument is mostly right in terms of what would be required (the super-high efficiency filter is not necessary, nor are attic fans, to achieve anything interesting), but actually, you have to have multiple condensing units past a certain point.

It's simply not efficient, even with auto-closing dampers, to zone and duct a multi-zone system with single condensing units.

You'd be much better off, efficiency wise, either: 1. Using mini-splits everywhere. 2. Going geothermal. You can support multiple units off a single loop. I did this in maryland. My 4000 square foot house had all the hot water and cooling provided by GSHP. My energy bills, keeping it whatever temperature I liked, dropped from about 400 a month in the winter to about 50 bucks. The wonder of 41 EER, 5 COP. Unlike the air source heat pumps, they actually publish real efficiency curves for various temperatures, and your pump actually work at close to expected efficiency!

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