T
TBServices
Salus iT500 Internet thermostat.
Utilized my day off work today fitting the iT500 after servicing my boiler for the first time since i bought the house 3 years ago. I know, i'm ashamed.
Anyway, onto the stat.
It's been installed to work with a WB 35CDi, replacing a Honeywell mechanical stat that has ALWAYS been in the wrong place (bottom floor hallway in a 3 story house, on the internal garage wall. Coldest room in the house by far). I positioned the receiver in the same place as the existing stat, and modified the wiring at the boiler to give me permanent live, neutral and SL. Wiring was dead easy although i have 2 complaints about the receiver:
1. To wire in the manner i have, requires a link wire from L to COM, but the connector blocks are realistically a bit too small to accept 2 wires that aren't of the flexible variety.
2. The receiver only accepts wires fed through from one position, almost at the bottom, so if like me, you had 3+E coming though the plaster at the top of the existing stat with fairly short wires, you will have to extend the wires to get them in. A small pain in the bum but not the end of the world.
The Router "Gateway" was plug and play. Ethernet and mains power plugged in and it sprang into perfect working order. All cables supplied which is good.
The Wireless stat itself feels like a much better quality affair than the other Salus tat I've seen. Good quality plastic and a nice LCD touch pad. Again, installed the batteries, followed the syncing instructions to pair with the receiver and it worked straight away. Easy peasy.
Now you have to go online, register an account and the serial number of your device, then confirm your email address with a link. Then you can download the smartphone App and enter your registration details in there. Once i had done all that, it worked flawlessly. In less than a second, i had a wireless stat, an internet Tab, and a phone screen all showing me the temp, design temp, program and boiler status etc etc. When i changed a parameter on one device, the others visibly updated. So far so good! Very impressed.
Its now 8.13pm. My stat is telling my phone that the living room temperature is 23 degrees and the boiler is off. Yesterday my heating would have been on, and id have been sat on the sofa sweating my balls off because my room stat was in the wrong place and 15 degrees downstairs equates to 25 upstairs. I'm expecting this thing to save me a bucket in gas.
Complaints. While i cant really fault the quality, operation or ease of installation, i have a couple of gripes, which i would appreciate the rep seeing.
1. The instruction manual for programming the stat leaves a lot to be desired, there's a whole load of pictures but no text. Oh well, you'd expect there to be some better instructions on the web app? Wrong. It would be nice if there was some technical help for programming the stat online. Perhaps in the form of pop-ups when you hold the mouse over an icon/right click.
2. There's a function called Energysave. The official line is "energysave will use the lowest set temperature on your daily schedule". What the f does that even mean? It wouldn't make sense to 100% of my customers. Turns out its an OVERRIDE function, so if you're gonna be late home from work or whatever, you can press the button and it will keep the heating at your lowest set temp until you switch back to auto, in my case 10 degrees.
3. Lack of features. I find this majorly annoying with many stats - there's no manual override/constant, without pressing the up key, half a degree at a time until you get to your desired temperature. There's no option to change the parameters to go up in 1's instead of .5's of a degree, and there's no advance button. There's also no COPY DAY option to copy your programs over to the next day. Seriously no excuse for leaving these functions out. I'm hoping that since the stat is internet based, we may get an updated app/firmware to include them.
4. The app and the web app are seriously basic. I would've thought that a bit more thought and a lot more features would have gone into it considering the possibilities. Unfortunately Salus have limited this stat to having the same basic functions as their ordinary ones, and that is a shame, as its one of the main reasons i don't fit them for my customers.
If anything else springs to mind or rears its head in the future, ill be sure to report back.
All in all, i'm fairly impressed. Especially with the leap in quality over other salus products and how easy it was to fit and get working, considering they're the first mainstream manufacturer to internet enable a stat, make it widely available and affordable. However, i wont be recommending them to my customers until there are a few more features. They've made a step into the future of home automation, with a product that somehow feels a lot more dated than a CM927 or a MiStat.
Hope this helps anyone thinking of buying one.
P.S. Thanks to Ray and Williams, for the freebie and the Wine Gums, they went down a treat at the cinema last night.
Utilized my day off work today fitting the iT500 after servicing my boiler for the first time since i bought the house 3 years ago. I know, i'm ashamed.
Anyway, onto the stat.
It's been installed to work with a WB 35CDi, replacing a Honeywell mechanical stat that has ALWAYS been in the wrong place (bottom floor hallway in a 3 story house, on the internal garage wall. Coldest room in the house by far). I positioned the receiver in the same place as the existing stat, and modified the wiring at the boiler to give me permanent live, neutral and SL. Wiring was dead easy although i have 2 complaints about the receiver:
1. To wire in the manner i have, requires a link wire from L to COM, but the connector blocks are realistically a bit too small to accept 2 wires that aren't of the flexible variety.
2. The receiver only accepts wires fed through from one position, almost at the bottom, so if like me, you had 3+E coming though the plaster at the top of the existing stat with fairly short wires, you will have to extend the wires to get them in. A small pain in the bum but not the end of the world.
The Router "Gateway" was plug and play. Ethernet and mains power plugged in and it sprang into perfect working order. All cables supplied which is good.
The Wireless stat itself feels like a much better quality affair than the other Salus tat I've seen. Good quality plastic and a nice LCD touch pad. Again, installed the batteries, followed the syncing instructions to pair with the receiver and it worked straight away. Easy peasy.
Now you have to go online, register an account and the serial number of your device, then confirm your email address with a link. Then you can download the smartphone App and enter your registration details in there. Once i had done all that, it worked flawlessly. In less than a second, i had a wireless stat, an internet Tab, and a phone screen all showing me the temp, design temp, program and boiler status etc etc. When i changed a parameter on one device, the others visibly updated. So far so good! Very impressed.
Its now 8.13pm. My stat is telling my phone that the living room temperature is 23 degrees and the boiler is off. Yesterday my heating would have been on, and id have been sat on the sofa sweating my balls off because my room stat was in the wrong place and 15 degrees downstairs equates to 25 upstairs. I'm expecting this thing to save me a bucket in gas.
Complaints. While i cant really fault the quality, operation or ease of installation, i have a couple of gripes, which i would appreciate the rep seeing.
1. The instruction manual for programming the stat leaves a lot to be desired, there's a whole load of pictures but no text. Oh well, you'd expect there to be some better instructions on the web app? Wrong. It would be nice if there was some technical help for programming the stat online. Perhaps in the form of pop-ups when you hold the mouse over an icon/right click.
2. There's a function called Energysave. The official line is "energysave will use the lowest set temperature on your daily schedule". What the f does that even mean? It wouldn't make sense to 100% of my customers. Turns out its an OVERRIDE function, so if you're gonna be late home from work or whatever, you can press the button and it will keep the heating at your lowest set temp until you switch back to auto, in my case 10 degrees.
3. Lack of features. I find this majorly annoying with many stats - there's no manual override/constant, without pressing the up key, half a degree at a time until you get to your desired temperature. There's no option to change the parameters to go up in 1's instead of .5's of a degree, and there's no advance button. There's also no COPY DAY option to copy your programs over to the next day. Seriously no excuse for leaving these functions out. I'm hoping that since the stat is internet based, we may get an updated app/firmware to include them.
4. The app and the web app are seriously basic. I would've thought that a bit more thought and a lot more features would have gone into it considering the possibilities. Unfortunately Salus have limited this stat to having the same basic functions as their ordinary ones, and that is a shame, as its one of the main reasons i don't fit them for my customers.
If anything else springs to mind or rears its head in the future, ill be sure to report back.
All in all, i'm fairly impressed. Especially with the leap in quality over other salus products and how easy it was to fit and get working, considering they're the first mainstream manufacturer to internet enable a stat, make it widely available and affordable. However, i wont be recommending them to my customers until there are a few more features. They've made a step into the future of home automation, with a product that somehow feels a lot more dated than a CM927 or a MiStat.
Hope this helps anyone thinking of buying one.
P.S. Thanks to Ray and Williams, for the freebie and the Wine Gums, they went down a treat at the cinema last night.