Hive Active Heating etc

rkdub

for anyone with more advanced setups using hive devices, you may be interested in openhab integration for hive. its a simple set of scripts to update status in openhab - currently supporting multi zone heating and lighting updates
https://github.com/230delphi/openab-hivehome

Quintis

Has anyone tried the Hive active smart plug?

THE ALM

Quintis wrote: »

Has anyone tried the Hive active smart plug?

Have one running for a lamp.

THE ALM

rkdub wrote: »

for anyone with more advanced setups using hive devices, you may be interested in openhab integration for hive. its a simple set of scripts to update status in openhab - currently supporting multi zone heating and lighting updates
https://github.com/230delphi/openab-hivehome

Found Home Assistant easier to setup than Openhab and it has recently been added to the standard HA and is only a matter of adding you username and password to the HA Config. Will display and control heating, bulbs, plugs and sensors.

Quintis

THE ALM wrote: »

Have one running for a lamp.

Do you find it good value from money, it seems expensive compared to other brands and doesn't have any energy monitoring?

Do you have the slimline one?

Assume it integrates with the app easy enough?

rkdub

THE ALM wrote: »

Found Home Assistant easier to setup than Openhab and it has recently been added to the standard HA and is only a matter of adding you username and password to the HA Config. Will display and control heating, bulbs, plugs and sensors.

Interesting, I hadn't seen that it had support. I'm not too far down my openhab path, so I may switch over yet.

THE ALM

Quintis wrote: »

Do you find it good value from money, it seems expensive compared to other brands and doesn't have any energy monitoring?

Do you have the slimline one?

Assume it integrates with the app easy enough?

To be honest I picked it up when on a black Friday sale as all my Hive stuff was. The energy monitoring would be a good addition alright. To be honest I use it on a side light in a spare bedroom more as a security measure than anything else. I have an action set that if motion or a door/window opening is triggered then the switch turns on the light, I have similar triggers for the bulbs also.

Found it was easy to integrate into the app, just turned it on and used add device on the app no problem. I went with the plug as I wanted to keep everything on the one ecosystem.

Waiting on a Google Home arriving but have been playing around with the assistant on my phone and added and can control the Hive products with voice control also, another reason that may be worth considering.

THE ALM

rkdub wrote: »

Interesting, I hadn't seen that it had support. I'm not too far down my openhab path, so I may switch over yet.

Worth looking at alright, personally find it much easier to work with, currently have it running on a Rpi.

pm1977x

Quintis wrote: »

Has anyone tried the Hive active smart plug?

I have one but haven't used it since last Christmas as it was knocking other things offline, bought on a whim so must find a use for it and give it another go.

savemejebus

Is there a list of Hive approved installers or is it all controlled by Bord Gais? They won't install for Oil boilers according to their site.

metricspaces

savemejebus wrote: »

Is there a list of Hive approved installers or is it all controlled by Bord Gais? They won't install for Oil boilers according to their site.

Any electrician would be able to install it. You'd install it yourself, it took the Bord Gais guy 5min to install mine and they are not electricians, they are just the guy who services boilers.

savemejebus

metricspaces wrote: »

Any electrician would be able to install it. You'd install it yourself, it took the Bord Gais guy 5min to install mine and they are not electricians, they are just the guy who services boilers.

Thats good. I just have no clue about that sort of stuff and while the instructions seem ok, i'm nervous to mess up anything. Plus I was hoping there would be an SEAI approved installer so that i can try to get the hive under the heating controls grant.

bod71

savemejebus wrote: »

Is there a list of Hive approved installers or is it all controlled by Bord Gais? They won't install for Oil boilers according to their site.

I got my hive stats installed by bord gais, and i have an oil boiler.

savemejebus

bod71 wrote: »

I got my hive stats installed by bord gais, and i have an oil boiler.

Interesting, on the hive ireland site i had selected professional installation and when I clicked to say I had an oil boiler it told me that professional installation was not available for oil.

metricspaces

savemejebus wrote: »

Interesting, on the hive ireland site i had selected professional installation and when I clicked to say I had an oil boiler it told me that professional installation was not available for oil.

You really are not getting anything "extra" by getting Bord Gais to install. I would say the use of "professional installation" is a very loose use of the word professional.

I got it half price, so was worth it. If I didn't have this deal I'd just buy from Amazon and install myself or get electrician to install.

The Bord Gais installer actually failed to connect one wire in one of my controllers. I didn't notice that one of my zones was not working until he left. He tried to blame electrician who was in the house at the same time. Then said I'd have to pay a call out charge if it turned out to be electricians fault. He called out, spent about 30min trying to figure out what was wrong, before eventually realising he didn't connect up a wire correctly.

The Bord Gais installer won't touch your existing thermostats. He'll just tell you to turn them up to max setting. I had an electrician in the house at same time as Bord Gais installer called, electrician removed the existing thermostats and changed the wires so it was a straight through connection (i.e. as if it was set to max). He then placed the new Hive thermostat holder in the place where the existing thermostat was....so he finished off the job properly that the Bord Gais does not do.

rkdub

THE ALM wrote: »

Worth looking at alright, personally find it much easier to work with, currently have it running on a Rpi.

a few days with it now. it does look much more promising than i expected originally.. thanks!

THE ALM

rkdub wrote: »

a few days with it now. it does look much more promising than i expected originally.. thanks!

No problem, yeah once set up it is good to go and an updated version should be in the works for the next update of Home Assistant and developers are continually working at it.

Ghostrider7

Quintis wrote: »

Has anyone tried the Hive active smart plug?

I have a few of the Hive smart plugs and light bulbs, bought them in the sales. All work great, no problems and all connect easily enough with Google Home.

I stuck with smart plugs for the Hive as you can only have a certain amount of devices (11 I think) with the Virgin Media router before you have to upgrade. As the Hive devices all connect to one hub you can have as many as you like and it appears as one device unlike something like TP Link smart plugs with energy monitoring, each one of these smart plugs count as one.

I find if you add any new devices to the Hive then to connect them to Google Home you need to unlink Hive in the Google Home app and reconnect them.

DublinGuy11

Quick question, recently got Hive installed. I have schedule set up whereby heating and hot water come on at the same time, twice a day, morning and evening time. The last few days however, everything has been fine in the morning but in the evening, there has been no hot water in the taps even though the app says the hot water is on, as per the schedule. It is a brand new boiler in we have got as well so unlikely that is the problem. It feels like a setting issue or something, considering everything is working fine in the morning. Has anyone any suggestions on what the solution to this matter could be?

metricspaces

There's a HIVE helpline you can ring so maybe they can help if you don't find an answer here.

I'd check if the controller lights up and gas comes on when activating hot water from App manually.

If this works I'd imagine it's a problem with your schedule. Then try resetting schedule to default/deleting your schedule and setting it up again.

selsun

My boiler heats either taps or rads, never both at the same time. Maybe check if yours isn't same. Morning hot water maybe left over from night.

mel123

Pick your brains guys. I put Hive on manually mostly. Is this correct, in that, heating is left on manually, once the house reaches that temperature, the heating goes off.....and stays off. So say i leave it on all night at 18, the house reaches 18, heating goes off, but temp of the house drops to say 14, heating doesnt then go back on. Is this correct?
Fine if it is, I just want to make sure its not a glitch with mine and I dont need to fix something.

THE ALM

mel123 wrote: »

Pick your brains guys. I put Hive on manually mostly. Is this correct, in that, heating is left on manually, once the house reaches that temperature, the heating goes off.....and stays off. So say i leave it on all night at 18, the house reaches 18, heating goes off, but temp of the house drops to say 14, heating doesnt then go back on. Is this correct?
Fine if it is, I just want to make sure its not a glitch with mine and I dont need to fix something.

I would have thought that if it is just left on manual mode that it would maintain the temperature that it is set to i.e. 18 therefore when it drops below this the boiler would start up and boost the heat again to 18.

squonkie

I normally use it on manual as well and it maintains it at the temp I set. I can hear the boiler switching on and off

fullstop

Is it possible to get different thread sizes on the bulbs? The website only offers screw or bayonet, but no size.

THE ALM

fullstop wrote: »

Is it possible to get different thread sizes on the bulbs? The website only offers screw or bayonet, but no size.

Think that is your only choice I'm afraid.

Ghostrider7

fullstop wrote: »

Is it possible to get different thread sizes on the bulbs? The website only offers screw or bayonet, but no size.

The screw version is an E27 screw base bulb which I think from memory is 27mm although I haven't measured it.

sadhbhie

Just wondering if anyone has bought from amazon and self installed recently? Reading back I know there used to be problems with registering - has that been resolved now hive are selling directly to Ireland?

rkdub

sadhbhie wrote: »

Just wondering if anyone has bought from amazon and self installed recently? Reading back I know there used to be problems with registering - has that been resolved now hive are selling directly to Ireland?

I got a set at a good price on black Friday from amazon uk. I installed and they are working great for me.

fullstop

Do people generally buy the hardware outright and pay the lower monthly fee, or rent for 24 months until the hardware is paid off that way?