I had my three W500 configured as Thread, but I switched them to Zigbee hoping that some of the issues would be fixed with the firmware update but they are still present.
1. Incorrect reporting of status in Matter and HomeKit.
I’ve noticed that often, the system will be on (the click from the electrical switch has happened, and the heating symbol appears on the thermostat) but the status of the heating appears as “inactive” in Matter.
It screws a lot of automation and makes it look like the system is not currently heating when it is.
The opposite also happens (showing in Matter as currently heating when it isn’t). Whether the system is actually heating or not is characterised in the Apple Home app by the tile being orange or black.
2. Heating beyond the threshold.
I’ve set the system to not switch itself on beyond +/- 0.5 ° C, but often the system stays on when it has reached the threshold. For example, if I set the target temperature to 22.5°, it’ll reach 22.5 and sometimes as high as 23 ° before the thermostat finally turns itself off.
What is happening? I’m really starting to be disappointed in the system.
I bought an Aqara Zigbee Hub hoping it’ll make things better but it hasn’t. There are a lot of bugs that Aqara must fix ASAP .
Temperature hysteresis is set to ±0.5°C, so the program will turn off when it reaches your set temperature +0.5 degrees to avoid frequent starting and stopping of your home devices. If you want it to turn off directly at 22.5°C, you may consider setting the temperature hysteresis to 0°C.
The Matter accessory status is out of sync. Please check if the HomePod or any third-party ecosystem border routers under your account are connected to the internet properly.
a) there’s no option to have the temperature delta to 0° , +/- 0.5 ° is the minimum
b) even then, the +/- 0.5 ° Δ should mean that if the current temperature is 22 °, and I set the thermostat to 22.5 °, the system will stop at 22.5 °. However, it won’t start again until it has fallen below 22° (to avoid the system starting again too soon)
However, floor hydronic floor heating systems take time to stop emitting heat anyway. That means that if it stops at 22.5, temperature will keep rising anyway. My system for example has residual heat up to 4 hours after being turned off. That’s why it should stop at the set temperature, no more and no less.
If you look at the attached screenshot, you can see the set temperature is 22.5 and the current is 22.9 yet the system is still on! That is not okay and it’s making my home warmer than comfortable.
It’s not the Matter accessory being out of sync.
It happened when configured as Thread, and when reset and configured in Zigbee. It didn’t happen with the Tado X I has before either therefore it’s a bug with the W500.
Hello.
∆+/- 0.5°C means (I give an example based on your temperature)
set to 22.5°C.
system stop 22°C (-0.5°C),
system start 23.0°C (+0.5°C).
For your understanding, the sensitivity range is 1°C.
As you described, the hysteresis should be
∆+/- 0.25°C, then the sensitivity range will be 0.5°C.
I am also waiting for a new update of the W500 product, Aqara promised to fix and improve it.
The scenario you have described doesn’t make sense for hydronic floor heating systems, but in any case, isn’t even what happens with current settings. The software is either completely bugged or badly designed to the point where you shouldn’t market it for hydronic floor heating
The software is either completely bugged or badly designed to the point where you shouldn’t market it for hydronic floor heating
Slowly I come to the same conclusion.
I bought one W500 to test if I can replace all of my analog thermostats used to control a hydronic floor heating. The main reason is to be able to better set a reproduceable target temperature as I can do with the analog dial that even doe not have numbers. Integration to home automatization is the second reason.
Installation and integration in Home Assistant via ZigBee2MTTQ worked well. But a hysteresis of +/- 5 °C is too big to control such kind sluggish system like a hydronic floor heating. In comparison my analog devices a much finer, measured by acoustics and frequency of the relays.
I hope this will get improved. The temperature sensor has an output of 0.1 °C. So, no reason for me not to change the +/- 0.5 °C in the firmware to something smaller.
I’m glad someone else agrees. Even a feature like a timer would be useful (e.g. turn on the heating for x minutes) instead of a target temperature as owners of hydronic systems often know how long a system needs to be on to reach a desired temperature while accounting for the shutoff lag
Because an automation would require the target temperature to be arbitrarily set to one higher enough than the current one to trigger the system to turn on, and then the opposite to turn it off.
It carries the risk that if the automation fails for whatever reason, the home will get way hotter than needed.
It needs to be a feature embedded by design that turns on the system for a set amount of time regardless of current or set temperature points.
Hello, for your information. W500 stops heating (turns off W500) and puts it into emergency mode. It is reset only after manual, physical pressing on the W500 keyboard. The bottom line is that the NTC sensor sent a STOP signal to the W500 heating in case of overheating of the floor. Unfortunately, there is a problem now, when the NTC sensor connection is lost, W500 instead of blocking switches to measurements from the built-in sensor. In the next updates, they plan to fix this.
