TechReport (UK)

The Honeywell evohome ‘App’

The FOC evohome ‘App’ is available for both Apple and Android devices and to a large extent duplicates the functionality of the evohome Controller.

The interface is clear and intuitive and the ability to ‘copy and paste’ settings across rooms / days of the week etc. once again makes the initial set-up that much easier.

   Quick Actions – ‘Economy Mode’, ‘Away’, ‘Day Off’, ‘Custom’ and

 ‘  All Off’

   Room name, current temperature, set temperature

   Heating settings, Security settings, Weather and Master settings

Individual Zone Settings:

                         Set timer switching points – programme the                          temperature and time of switching points

 

Current zone temperature  

Target Temperature - change by dragging finger up / down over this section of the display.

An option then appears to select a ‘cut-off’ time (when things return to the normal programmed schedule).

Even when at home, it is sometimes just quicker to use the App to make an adjustment than the evohome Controller.

Honeywell has been careful to consider the security of remote control for the system – the owner needs to first establish an account on Honeywell’s evohome server and then to ‘connect’ their home system to this via their login (a one-off operation).

Placing their own server between any would-be ‘hacker’ and individual evohome systems makes it much more difficult to overcome the manufacturer’s (presumably) more sophisticated security to gain access to any installed system. The potential downside, of course, is that the continuation of the ability to remotely control the system does depend on Honeywell’s continued support, but this is a system in which they have invested a lot of development, so this is unlikely to be a problem in the near future (local control would still work in any case).

‘If this, then that’ (IFTT):

One of the downsides of the evohome system in comparison with other smart heating systems has historically been its lack of integration with other ‘Smart’ systems, along with having no ability to sense the location of the home owner (to switch the heating off and on, for example as they leave or near home).

This has recently been addressed by the integration of evohome into the IFTT (‘If this then that’) App infrastructure.

The example command sequences here are simply to switch the heating back to normal (timer) mode when the owner nears home (top) and to switch it into ‘Away’ mode immediately when leaving home (bottom). It took less than five minutes work to set up this pair of command sequences.

With such a complex system, it is inevitable that once it had been running for a while one or two problems did come to light…

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