Introduction

Many roads lead to Rome

Humans are largely predictable creatures and that's why the basis in any home heating system is the concept of schedule. It means setting a baseline temperature for each zone that's only dependent on two things: day-of-week and time-of-day. With a basic assumption that all weeks are the same, it's a rinse and repeat paradigm. For those many moments that your baseline needs some tweaking, EvoControl has you covered with 7 ways you can quickly adjust any number of zones to match (imminent) zone occupancy:

• Scenes/Activities support pre-meditated combinations of setpoints/deltas and target zones that can be activated using names you choose. Their duration can be time-limited and they can even be scheduled to trigger later today:
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  • Alexa, activate 'Watch TV'
  • Alexa, start 'MovieTime' for 90 minutes
  • Alexa, activate 'Office Vacant' for 45 minutes
  • Alexa, trigger 'Studying' until 9 PM
  • Alexa, schedule 'Siesta' starting at 2PM for 1 hour
  • Alexa, schedule 'Yogatime' to start at 11AM
  • Alexa, schedule 'Working' from 4PM until 6:30PM
  
  
• Constrained Overrides facilitate specifying spontaneous (time-limited) overrides for any number of zones or groups:
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  • Alexa, raise the whole house by 1° for an hour
  • Alexa, reduce all zones by 2° for 2 hours
  • Alexa, set the Office to 20° for an hour
  • Alexa, make it 20° in the Livingroom, Diningroom & Kitchen for 30 mins
  • Alexa, set the TV Room to 18° until 2 PM
  • Alexa, set the Kids Rooms to 20° for half an hour
  • Alexa, set the Bedrooms Group to 21° for 30 mins
  • Alexa, increase the Upstairs Rooms by 0.5° until 11PM
  
  
• Schedule Shifting allows you to advance/postpone or reschedule any switchpoints within named day-segments for targetted zones. You can also sidestep segments or request raising/lowering their setpoints. Segment names are all syntactic variations of 'Waking Up', 'Lunch Time', 'Dinner Time', 'Going to Bed':
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  • Alexa, start my day tomorrow at 6AM
  • Alexa, I'm going to bed at 10PM
  • Alexa, my lunch break tomorrow starts at 1PM
  • Alexa, dinner today will be at 17:00
  • Alexa, sidestep my lunch break tomorrow
  • Alexa, increase suppertime temperatures by 1°
  • Alexa, lower bedtime temperatures by 2°
  • Alexa, delay bedtime by 45 mins
  • Alexa, defer getting up tomorrow by 30 mins
  • Alexa, advance lunchtime tomorrow by one hour
  • Alexa, move suppertime forward by 15 mins
  • Alexa, postpone dinner tomorrow by 30 mins
  • Alexa, extend bedtime by 15 mins
  • Alexa, shorten lunchtime by 15 mins
  • Alexa, revert to baseline
  
  
• Schedule Compress/Expand allows you to lengthen or shorten the duration of any switchpoints that fall within named block times for chosen groups of zones (the block-times are all syntactic variations of 'Waking Up', 'Lunch Time', 'Dinner Time', 'Going to Bed'):
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  • Alexa, extend bedtime by 15 mins
  • Alexa, shorten lunchtime by 30 mins
  
  
• ABC Multiple Schedules mean you have more than a single baseline to start out from:
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  • Alexa, upload schedule A in the Kitchen
  • Alexa, restore schedule C in the Livingroom, Bathroom & Bedroom
  • Alexa, select schedule B everywhere
  • Alexa, upload schedule A to the Bedrooms Group
  
  
• Switchpoint Insertion allows spontaneously adding additional switchpoint(s) to the current live schedule by voice command:
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  • Alexa, make it 19° in the Kitchen at 4 PM
  • Alexa, make it 20° in the Bathroom at 5 PM for 45 mins
  • Alexa, make it 17° upstairs from 8 PM until 21:30
  • Alexa, I'd like it to be 22° in the Bedroom at 11 PM
  
  
• Bulk Setpoint Editing. The onscreen interactive setpoint editor has and buttons that allow you to tweak all zones in steps of ± 0.5° at once.
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These different methods can be combined at will to suit the particular circumstance, while each family member can have their own favourite 'approach'. Many of these commands can also be triggered by tapping icons on the screen of your Echo Show, while Activities can even be triggered by tapping on the skill's widget.

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Round Connected Thermostat

EvoControl additionally supports the Round Connected thermostat, which like Evohome makes use of Resideo's TCC behind the scenes for smartphone control and schedule setup. When you first link the skill, if a Round is discovered then things will auto-configure accordingly (for example, the Round only supports 4 system modes instead of 7).

You may wonder what the point of EvoControl is for a thermostat with only a single zone, but the Multiple Schedules, Schedule Shifting, Graphing/Charting and Constrained Overrides in EvoControl all work perfectly well and are extremely useful enhancements.

The Activities/Scenes and Groups paradigms are disabled for the Round as they are not appropriate in the absence of multiple zones.

Dashboard

System Overview in HD

The Dashboard is home-screen for the skill and is automatically displayed upon launch if your Echo has a touchscreen. All your zones (including DHW, if you have it) are shown in their own tiles in a colour-scheme familiar from the Evotouch and TCC App. The current System Mode appears in the subheader, together with any constraint 🏁 on its duration. Within the tiles, any zones calling for heat will have a  symbol; really cold zones have a . Above each tile, the tint associated with a zone's actual/measured temperature is indicated in a small header-bar (there's a setting to disable this if desired). During sync with TCC, a appears in the top right corner.

What's different to your Evotouch is the colour-coded appendage under each zone. It identifies the currently-active ABC schedule for each zone, showing '📋' if the live schedule does not match a preset. It also displays the next-expected switchpoint from the zone's current schedule (i.e. the time-of-day plus the setpoint SP). Arrows ↑, ↓, ↔ next to the SP indicate whether it will lead to an increase/decrease/no-change to the current SP. Note that it's possible in the settings to hide a zone's appendage when the next switchpoint will not actually change the current SP for a zone (to reduce screen-clutter). This is seen e.g. in zones Studio & Garage in the example screenshots above. In Away and HeatingOff system modes, the appendages disappear because the schedule is then inactive.

A revolving array of usage hints appears in the dashboard's footer (this can be hidden if desired), as do touch-enabled icons for selecting  Scenes,  Setpoint-Editor,  Help,  Settings,  Peek (if you have hidden any tiles to reduce screen clutter, toggling this will show/hide those zones),  Graphing (if you have connected a HGI-80, this draws a graph of the previous 24h's climate in a zone), and ---  Locations (provided you have multiple systems/Evotouches).

You can assign a default zone to each of your Echos by saying e.g. "Alexa, the default zone is the Kitchen". Subsequently, when speaking to a particular Echo, you can omit the zone name (or just say 'here') — "Alexa, make it 20° for 30 mins" would then target the Kitchen zone by default. It can be reassigned at will and deleted by saying "Alexa, delete the default zone".

If you have a lot of Evohome zones combined with a smaller screen on your Echo, it's possible to hide certain tiles from the normal view and have them only appear when you press the  Peek button (normally hidden). See Peek.

Note that a more limited display experience is provided on the small/round-screened Echo Spot. You also cannot create/edit activities/scenes or groups — nor create multiple schedules — without having a rectangular screen.

See the section with Example Commands.

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Important: Users whose spoken language is not natively supported by Alexa should visit the section on Aliases for an explanation of how to help Alexa understand their zone names.

Screenless

Uncomplicated ease-of-use

The myriad of features in EvoControl Smart Heat have been designed in a way that you can just ignore the ones you don't want to use and keep things uncomplicated. That's the beauty of voice control — there's zero UI-clutter!

If all you have is e.g. a screenless Echo Dot device or the Alexa app on a tablet/phone, all of the intuitive constrained-override commands are still available and require no setup. They're the ones that save money and raise comfort by allowing you to specify an until/duration for overrides both to setpoints and the system mode:

• Set the heating mode to 'Economy' until 9 PM
• Set the system to 'Boost' for 30 minutes
• Set the TV Room & Playroom to 18° until 9 PM
• Set the Bathroom to 22° for 20 minutes
• Raise the whole house by 1° for an hour
• Reduce the whole house by 1° until 5PM

It goes without saying that all the query commands work too, so you can ask if there is heat demand or what's next for the system.

If you also own an Echo Show and have set up the likes of Scenes/Activities, Groups, schedule-shifting targets, and/or Multiple Schedules, all of the commands for using these features work perfectly on screenless devices in other rooms — the touchscreen is only needed to set them up, not to use them!

Multiple Schedules

Every zone gets 3 ABC schedules

Evohome natively supports a single-schedule paradigm but EvoControl Smart Heat can store up to three full schedules in your EvoControl account for upload to TCC at will (the 'Live' schedule is separate so in reality the skill manages 4 schedules for you). This can be very useful e.g. for switching between Night/Day shifts or Summer/Winter. The extra schedules are referred to as ABC but a nickname can be assigned to them in the skill's settings to jog your memory. Which of the ABC schedules is currently-active for a zone is shown in each tile's appendage:

There's another reason for having multiple schedules — they are easy to revert to when you need to undo temporary schedule-edits. With EvoControl, you can vocally specify setpoint changes that should apply later today rather than starting now. If at 13:30 you say "Set the Kitchen to 20° until 2PM", that change starts now and is just a regular TemporaryOverride. However, you can also say e.g. "Make it 20° at 4 PM for 30mins" and that change will not be immediate but will take effect at 4PM (and last until 4:30PM). This is achieved by dynamically modifying the active schedule. That temporary schedule can be discarded after use by reverting to a saved ABC. As a visual reminder, after you have edited the active schedule via the spoken insertion of a switchpoint, the relevant appendage on the main dashboard changes so as to indicate '📋' rather than ABC.

In the schedule view in the UI (reached by tapping on any tile on the main dashboard), a gray box appears around today's day-name in the header and a vertical gray bar is drawn beside the switchpoint that resulted in the current target for the zone (which can be from last night if there was no switchpoint this morning).

Some example schedule-related commands:

• "Alexa, open Smart Heat"…
• Alexa, show the Bathroom schedule
• Alexa, make it 19° at 4 PM → inserts 1x switchpoint
• Alexa, make it 18° at 5 PM for 45 mins → inserts 2x switchpoints
• Alexa, make it 17° from 8 PM until 21:30 → inserts 2x switchpoints
• Alexa, undo → retracts the most recent insertion
• Alexa, upload schedule A in the Kitchen
• Alexa, restore schedule C in the Livingroom, Bathroom & Bedroom
• Alexa, go back to schedule B everywhere. Note that this will include DHW if you have it.
• Alexa, upload schedule A to the Bedrooms Group
• Alexa, restore schedule C in the Bedrooms
• Alexa, revert to baseline

When you first enable EvoControl, it automatically fills the A preset with your current TCC-cloud schedule for all zones (plus DHW, if applicable). This is so that you can easily revert to A after a temporary schedule-edit utterance. You can of course alter this preset at any time and it's merely a starting-out convenience.

From the basic schedule overview, there are self-explanatory buttons for  View / …,  Upload ABC,  Edit Live and  Save As. You'll also see a button labelled ΔT which is enabled when the skill's weather feature is configured. It plots the Delta-T between the schedule and the expected outdoor temperature for the upcoming 24h. The wider the gap between these two plots, the more heat-energy (i.e. gas or electricity) you can expect will be required to achieve the comfort level in question. You can see this clearly in the final image above.

There are also a number of useful functions that are accessible after selecting the  More button after choosing  View / …. Note that because you pre-select one of live/ABC before pressing  More, the donor/source (where relevant) can be varied:

•  Fetch TCC will refresh the skill's copy of the live schedule from TCC in case you just made an edit on your panel or the TCC mobile app and the skill has not yet picked it up from TCC. This is only permitted once per skill session to reduce load on Resideo.
  
  
•  Compare allows you to select any two schedules from live/ABC to compare in grid form rather than graphically. Any non-existing presets are greyed out.
  
  
•  Line-Chart draws a comparison graph of all of the saved schedules for the zone in question.
  
  
•  Copy To Zone allows you to select target zone(s) to which the pre-selected schedule will be copied.
  
  
•  Delete allows you to delete a stored preset (you cannot delete the live schedule).
  
  
•  Upload sends the selected schedule to TCC to become the current live schedule for the zone.
  
  
•  Edit opens the editor for the pre-selected schedule and can therefore edit an ABC and not only the live variant. This in contrast to the  Edit Live button higher in the UI hierarchy which always edits the live schedule.
  
  

Make sure you also see the sections on Schedule Editing and Schedule Comparison.

Schedule Shifting

Advance/Defer or Reschedule daily 'moments'

Schedule Shifting lets you easily alter the scheduled times and setpoints for named day-segments within your daily routine on the fly. It's set up under the  Segments button on the settings page.

From a time perspective, you can advance/defer and reschedule starting times or lengthen/shorten ending times. Setpoint-wise, you can sidestep blocks to coast over them with a single continuous zone-specific SP, or you can request a temperature adjustment to make the target zones warmer or cooler than usual throughout the block.

The underlying concept is that you assign boundary start/finish times to 4 named timespans — '⏰ Waking Up', '🥪 Lunch Time', '🍽️ Dinner Time', plus '🛌 Going to Bed' — as suited to your household. In daily use, many syntactic variations of these names are supported so that the wording when actually using the spoken commands is not rigid. Default time-values will have been filled in for you but these can be edited to suit personal preference (tap on the text of the time-span to launch the on-screen editor). Just make sure that the start/end times are 'wider' than the normal range of times found within your weekly schedule so that the blocks will always address your situation correctly.

For each block you get to choose which target zones should be affected whenever you mention the related timespan in a shift-command. Tap any of the 4  Targets buttons to assign/change. Observe the 🔢 captions that reflect the number of currently-assigned target zones for each block. Inclusion/exclusion uses the familiar zone-selector you will already have seen for both group-edit and schedule-cloning — note that DHW does not participate in schedule-shifting.

Whenever you invoke a schedule-shift command, EvoControl will first check which of the target zones have any upcoming schedule-switchpoints that currently fall inside the block in question.

If present, such switchpoint(s) will either be advanced/deferred by the shift specified in the directive (up to ±3 hours) or else mapped to start at a specific time-of-day if that's the form of the command you chose to use. Any staggering time-wise between the target zones will always be retained. Due to staggering, if you specify a start-time rather than advance/delay only the initial zone(s) will change setpoint at the requested time and staggered zones will simply be shifted by the same amount. The calculated shift from 'normal' will be mentioned in Alexa's spoken response.

If you choose to adjust temperatures rather than timings, the target zones will have a requested delta (up to ±3°) applied to all their individual setpoints inside the block. Sidestepping implies that the most-recent scheduled SP from before the start of the block is used to overwrite all the SPs inside the block.

Whichever form your shift command takes, you'll be told how many zones are involved — with their shifted time-of-day or temperature — and on Echos with a screen you'll see a brief dashboard-popup highlighting the affected zones where the tiles appendages will visually reflect the changes. If you try to shift a block that's already passed for today, Alexa will tell you. If the block boundary has already 'started' but the initial switchpoint(s) for all the target zone(s) have not yet occurred, the shift/reschedule operation will still be allowed. If, however, there are already-active switchpoints within the block-extremities then the command will be refused.

Some example schedule-shift commands:

• "Alexa, open Smart Heat"…
• Alexa, start my day tomorrow at 6AM
• Alexa, I'm going to bed at 10PM
• Alexa, my lunch break tomorrow starts at 1PM
• Alexa, dinner today will be at 17:00
• Alexa, sidestep my lunch break tomorrow
• Alexa, increase suppertime temperatures by 1°
• Alexa, lower bedtime temperatures by 2°
• Alexa, delay bedtime by 45 mins
• Alexa, advance lunchtime tomorrow by one hour
• Alexa, defer getting up tomorrow by 30 mins
• Alexa, lunchtime tomorrow should be half an hour later than usual
• Alexa, move suppertime forward by 15 mins
• Alexa, postpone dinner tomorrow by 30 mins
• Alexa, extend bedtime by 15 mins
• Alexa, shorten lunchtime by 15 mins
• Alexa, revert to baseline
• Alexa, when is bedtime today?
• Alexa, what time is wake-up tomorrow?

Saying "Alexa, undo" is supported and will work if it's said immediately after you make an inadvertent change. This will restore the schedule that was in effect just before you made the utterance.

Note that you cannot specify a day-name with these commands, but you can mention today (default) or tomorrow. That's deliberate because shifting/compansion is accumulative and if you were to shift things too far in advance there's a possibility you might forget you already did so and perhaps inadvertently shift again.

The command to revert to baseline returns each zone to its most recent ABC schedule, providing an ideal means to return to normal after a shift that should not be repeated next week. It works because EvoControl keeps track of which ABC preset was most recently uploaded to each zone individually, whether by voice or touch inputs.

Activities / Scenes

The shortest path to Energy Savings

By far the easiest way to reflect real-life zone-occupancy makes use of activities (also called scenes). You can create up to 12 of them using the skill's touchscreen scene-editor.

They can be triggered at will by voice or touch, tapped into action from the skill's widget, and even launched from Alexa routines. Each participating zone has either its own setpoint SP or else a delta Δ (±6°) which you decide upon when creating the scene. Any activity can mix/match SP/Δ as desired, while any zones you omit from a scene are always unaffected when you trigger it. Scenes can be activated immediately (with or without a specified until or duration) or can be scheduled to start later today (also with an optional until/duration). To assist in visual selection, each scene can have its own icon which you may choose from a library of (currently) 84 popular symbols!

As an example of the concept, the 1^st screenshot shown above is of an activity named 'GoodNight' which requests a delta of -2° for the LivingRoom to lower its setpoint by 2° (a +2° delta would raise it), sets the Wardrobe zone to 19.5°, the Bedroom to 18°, the Bathroom to 22°, and leaves all other zones unaffected.

On the start-page (reached from  Scenes on the dashboard) you'll see buttons for  Previous and  Next to browse sequentially through your existing scenes,  Activate to immediately trigger the current scene until the next scheduled switchpoint for each participating zone,  Edit to unlock the tiles to make changes (these are locked during browsing to prevent inadvertent edits),  LaunchPad which will display a tappable grid of all your scenes with their assigned icons, and finally  New which opens the editor to start creating a new scene.

When creating a scene or editing an existing one, a single tap on any tile toggles inclusion/exclusion in the Activity. Either a long-press or a double-tap on the centre of a tile can be used to toggle between SP/Δ mode for the zone. A long-press on the ▲/▼ arrows above/below the tiles alters the SP/Δ in steps of 3°, while a short tap results in a 0.5° step. Whenever at least 1 zone is selected the  Assign Name button is enabled — it will open an on-screen popup so you can type a name (max. 28 chars) for the activity when you're all done. You'll then be able to tap either  Save to save the newly-created scene or  Cancel if you change your mind.

The min/max allowed SP limits (usually 5° and 35° for the HR92) are always enforced by the skill, so if you have an extreme delta and the setpoint is already critical at the trigger-moment, you'll never inadvertently exceed the allowed floor/ceiling values.

For activities that are immediately triggered, the delta is applied with respect to the current TCC SP for the zone. However, when you schedule an activity to start later today, the delta will be applied with respect to the SP that will normally apply at that time according to the schedule.

The final 2 images show the icon-assignment and icon-selection screens, wherein a custom icon of your choosing can be associated with each user-generated activity (system-generated items have icons that cannot be reassigned). Any custom icons will also appear on the skill's widget. During the allocation process, upon tapping any icon a magnified view will be shown with the option to assign or reject that icon. This makes it easier to see intricate details on the small 5" Echos.

If an activity name ends with 1-3 digits plus either an 'm' or apostrophe (shorthand for minutes) then the activity in question will be activated for that particular duration in minutes via a TemporaryOverride. There should be no space(s) between the digits and the m/'. Examples: HW Boost 20m, HW Boost 120', Shower Time 15m. This automatic constraining only applies when the activity is triggered from the  LaunchPad (or the widget) and not when activated by voice or via the  Activate button you'll see when browsing through your scenes.

Some example scene-related commands:

• "Alexa, open Smart Heat"…
• Alexa, show activities / scenes
• Alexa, activate 'Watch TV'
• Alexa, activate 'Boost Upstairs' for 20 minutes
• Alexa, activate 'SummerTime' permanently
• Alexa, trigger 'Studying' until 9 PM
• Alexa, start 'MovieTime' for 90 minutes
• Alexa, schedule 'GoodNight' to start at 10PM
• Alexa, schedule 'Working' from 4PM until 6:30PM
• Alexa, schedule 'Siesta' starting at 2PM for 1 hour
• Alexa, list my activities
• Alexa, revert to baseline

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Standby

When you first launch EvoControl Smart Heat, you'll see that an activity called Standby has already been created for you. It's a useful alternative to HeatingOff and also assigns a setpoint of 5° to all your zones. There is one important difference though — when the system is in true HeatingOff mode, Evohome rejects manual overrides from your TRV valves and will also ignore spoken SP-changes via EvoControl. With this Standby activity active, any zone-overrides will still be handled. Some examples:

• Alexa, activate 'Standby' → until each zone's next scheduled switchpoint
• Alexa, activate 'Standby' for 2 hours
• Alexa, activate 'Standby' until 4PM
• Alexa, schedule 'Standby' to start at 7PM
• Alexa, schedule 'Standby' to start at 8PM for 2 hours
• Alexa, schedule 'Standby' from 2PM to 3:45PM
• Alexa, activate 'Standby' permanently
• Alexa, revert to baseline

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Avoiding Pitfalls

Here are a few pointers worth remembering about activities/scenes:

• You should be mindful that the changes introduced by a 'previous' activity don't auto-revert just because you trigger a 'new' activity — that's by design.
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• Any successively-applied Δs are accumulative, while SPs are independent and always supplant each other when successively applied to the same zone.
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• Activating a scene — even one that involves all zones — doesn't change the System Mode but rather alters the mode(s) of the involved zone(s). For that reason, saying "Set the System Mode to Auto" won't have any effect on live activities! Choosing one of the other system modes (Custom, DayOff, Away, AutoWithEco, HeatingOff) may do so, depending on context.
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• To revert a scheduled activation you need to re-apply whatever schedule was in place beforehand. The command "Alexa, revert to baseline" can be used for any zones to which ABC's happen to be assigned (that's because the baseline concept 'remembers' which preset was previously assigned to each zone) but won't help if you have any non-ABC zone(s) with manual schedule-edits. There's a button labelled Baseline on both the widget and the  LaunchPad to do this by touch. The section on Usage Tips has a suggestion for using an Alexa routine to automate this task every day so you cannot forget.
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• Reverting an immediate (non-scheduled) scene/activity means setting all zones to FollowSchedule. The  Reset button on the  LaunchPad or widget achieves this. By voice, you can say either "Alexa, set all zones to follow-schedule" or "Alexa, reset the system mode".
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Setpoint Editor

Change multiple zones at once

While you will usually change the setpoint of a single zone by voice (e.g. 'Set the Kitchen to 20° until 2PM') or those of multiple zones by triggering an Activity (e.g. "Alexa, activate Siesta for half an hour"), there can be occasions when you want to address multiple zones manually by touch alone.

The easiest way to do that is in the Setpoint Editor (this looks a lot like the Scene/Activity Editor, with the exception that the center of the tile is not tappable here). It displays all your zones with their current setpoints SP in a special view where each tile has ▲/▼ tappable bars above and below the SP. A long-press on those ▲/▼ arrows alters the SP in steps of 3°, while a short tap results in a 0.5° step. If you alter anything, the  Upload button becomes active so you can send your changes to TCC.

Just like with the Schedule Editor, there are also and buttons to bulk-change all the displayed zones by ± 0.5° on each press. The  Setpoints and  Actuals buttons allow you to pre-populate the editor with either the current setpoints as basis (this is the default), or the current actual temperatures.

After making a change to any setpoint(s), in addition to the  Upload button you'll see the  Duration button become active. When pressed, this pops up a duration-selection bar in the footer. Tapping any of those buttons adds that time-constraint to all the zones whose setpoints were just edited — note that tapping a constraint immediately applies it as there is no subsequent 'send' button. The option to the right hides this footer and returns the normal one into view.

If you change your mind, you can use the back button at the top left of the screen to ignore the changes or alternatively press the  Cancel button. You can say "Alexa, undo" even after you already submitted the changes, provided it's the first spoken command after the submission. This will restore the setpoints that were in effect just before the edits.

The editor can be shown by tapping the  Setpoint-Editor button in the footer of the main dashboard, or alternatively by saying "Alexa, show the setpoint editor".

Note: If the system mode is HeatingOff or Away, all buttons except  Cancel are disabled, as are the tiles themselves.

Example Commands

So many ways to say a command…

Whenever you either tap the  Help button on the main dashboard or say "Alexa, help" when the skill is in-session, a scrollable list of example commands is displayed:

• System Mode
• Set the system mode to 'Auto'
• Set the heating mode to 'Economy' until 9 PM
• Set the system to 'Boost' for 30 minutes
• Set the heating mode to 'Away', ending
• Set the system mode to 'Day-Off' for 2 days
• Set the system mode to 'Custom'
• Set the heating to 'Frost Protection' (Off)
• Reset the system mode
• What's the system mode?

• Zone Control
• Set the Office to 20.5°
• Make it 19° here
• Make it 20° in the Livingroom & Kitchen
• Set the TV Room to 18° until 2 PM
• Undo → undoes an override if you got the zone name or temperature wrong
• Set the Lounge to 22° for 40 minutes
• Set the Garage to 10° permanently
• Raise the whole house by 1° for an hour
• Lower the Office by 0.5°
• Reduce the whole house by 1° for half an hour
• Return the Bedroom to follow-schedule
• Cancel the Bathroom override

• Query
• What's the Cinema temperature?
• Tell me the Bedroom setpoint
• Show the Livingroom schedule
• What's the average temperature?
• What's the coldest room?
• What's the warmest zone?
• Is there heat-demand?
• What's the Studio climate?
• What's the Outside temperature?
• What's the forecast?
• Give me a system summary
• Show today's roster
• What's next for the Office?
• What's the Hot Water state?
• What's today's gas consumption?

• Schedule
• Show the Livingroom schedule
• Make it 19° at 4 PM
• Make it 18° at 5 PM for 45 mins
• Make it 17° at 8 PM until 21:30
• Make it 22° in the Bedroom at 11 PM
• Undo → removes a verbally-added switchpoint
• Upload schedule A in the Study
• Restore schedule B in the Bathroom and Bedroom
• Go back to schedule C everywhere. Note that this includes DHW, if relevant.

• Schedule Shifting
• Start my day tomorrow at 6AM
• I'm going to bed at 10PM
• My lunch break tomorrow starts at 1PM
• Dinner today will be at 17:00
• Sidestep my lunch break tomorrow
• Increase suppertime temperatures by 1°
• Lower bedtime temperatures by 2°
• Delay going to bed today by half an hour
• Advance lunchtime tomorrow by one hour
• Defer waking up tomorrow by 30 mins
• Revert to baseline
• Undo → reverts a schedule shift
• What time is bedtime today?
• When is lunchtime?
• When is supper?
• What time is wake-up tomorrow?

• Schedule Compress/Expand
• Extend bedtime by 15 mins
• Shorten lunchtime by 15 mins

• Scenes/Activities
• Show activities
• Activate 'MovieTime'
• Undo → undoes an accidentally-wrong activity-activation
• Activate 'Boost Upstairs' for 20 minutes
• Trigger 'Watch TV' until 9 PM
• Start 'Cooking' for 30 minutes
• Activate 'Standby' permanently
• Schedule 'GoodNight' for 10PM
• Schedule 'Studying' from 4PM until 6:30PM
• Schedule 'Workout' starting at 2PM for 1 hour
• List my activities

• Groups
• Set the Kids Rooms to 20°
• Set the Bedrooms Group to 21° for 30 mins
• Increase the Upstairs Rooms by 0.5° until 11PM
• Set the Cellar Group to 10° permanently
• Lower the Downstairs Group by 1°
• Upload schedule A in the Bedrooms Group
• List my groups
• Show the group-creator

• Domestic Hot water
• Turn off Hot Water
• Turn on Hot Water for 20 mins
• Turn on Hot Water at 5PM for 45mins
• Turn on Hot Water at 10PM until 11:30PM
• Show the Hot Water schedule
• Upload schedule B for Hot Water
• What's the Hot Water state?

• Multiple Locations
• List my locations
• Select location number 2
• What's the selected location?

• Miscellaneous
• Update my configuration
• The default zone is the 'Lounge'
• Delete the default zone
• What's the default zone?
• Show the forecast
• Help
• Go Back
• Repeat
• Say that again?
• Cancel
• What's new?

Groups

Up to 12 named Zone-Groups

Activities and Groups both address simultaneous setpoint-changes for multiple zones but they do so differently. As mentioned earlier, with activities you pre-determine the setpoints/deltas when the activity is created. With groups on the other hand, the desired setpoint (or increment/decrement adjustment) is mentioned as part of the spoken command each time you address a group. Both paradigms have their uses!

Let's say you have a group called 'Bedrooms' with 2 members: 'Master Bedroom' and 'Guestroom'. If e.g. Master Bedroom was currently set to 18° and Guestroom was set to 20°, saying "Alexa, increase the Bedrooms Group by 1°" would assign 19° to Master Bedroom and 21° to Guestroom. Saying "Alexa, set the Bedrooms to 15°" sets the whole group to 15°. Whether you include the word 'Group' or omit it is optional but it can be useful for disambiguation if you have a regular zone with a very similar name. Groups can also be the target for ABC schedule commands. Note that when creating a group, the  Assign Name button does not become active until you have selected at least 2 zones because a group must have more than one zone to make sense.

Some example group-related commands:

• "Alexa, open Smart Heat"…
• Alexa, set the Kids Rooms to 20°
• Alexa, set the Bedrooms Group to 21° for 30 mins
• Alexa, increase the Upstairs Rooms by 0.5° until 11PM
• Alexa, set the Cellar Group to 10° permanently
• Alexa, lower the Downstairs Group by 1°
• Alexa, upload schedule C in the Bedrooms Group
• Alexa, list my groups
• Alexa, show the group-creator

Eco/Boost Offset

Tell the Skill that which it cannot retrieve…

There are certain parameters which you can set on your Evotouch panel which Resideo does not expose via the API and which the skill therefore has no way of knowing. To rectify, you can fill them in on this page which is reached from the  Offsets button on the  Settings page.

While Resideo always refers to 'Eco/Boost' mode regardless of the offset, if you specify your chosen -3°…+3° offset to the skill then it will reflect Eco 🌿 (for <0) or Boost ♨️ (for >0) in both the spoken and on-screen terminology so as to better address your actual setting.

Another advantage of specifying your offset is that the skill can use it to compensate for Evohome's unintuitive behaviour when the System Mode is Eco/Boost.

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Intuitive Eco/Boost

Normally, when you define a TemporaryOverride (e.g. on your Evotouch or in the TCC App), the Evotouch will apply the selected offset after receiving the new setpoint (behaviour introduced in the 2020 firmware update). However, this means that if the System Mode is Eco/Boost and you ask "Alexa, set the Kitchen to 20°", you will briefly see the 20° appear on your Evotouch but it will quickly drop to e.g. 17° if your offset is the default -3°.

If you set the 🌿 AutoWithEco Offset Compensation slider switch here to 'ON' then the skill will pre-apply the mathematical inverse of the offset so that when the Evotouch post-applies the offset, the net result will be the temperature you actually had in mind. When the switch is ON then a THRESHOLD tile appears for you to choose the threshold above which the compensation is to apply (usually 16° but selectable here in case of future firmware changes).

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Note that changing the values on these tiles is not communicated back to your Evotouch (there's no support for that in the API). You're merely helping the skill better understand your system…

Settings Screen

Customise EvoControl's Look & Feel

You enter the settings screen from the main dashboard by tapping the  Settings icon (note this can only be done on Alexa-enabled devices with a rectangular screen). The slider buttons allow you to:

• 🎨 Actual° above Tile Show/hide the coloured header-bar above each tile on the main dashboard.
  
  
• ✂️ Trim Appendages Show/hide the schedule appendage under each tile whenever no setpoint SP change will actually result from that switchpoint being triggered. In other words, if the next SP is the same as the current SP.
  
  
• 🗣 One-Shot → Session Keep the session open on an Echo show after a one-shot command. A one-shot is when the skill is not in-session and you invoke with a fully-executable command included in your utterance. For example, "Alexa, ask Smart Heat to set the Livingroom to 20° for an hour". On a screenless Echo, the skill will always auto-exit after the command is confirmed. On an Echo Show, you have the option here of also exiting or alternatively automatically transitioning to a session (which will allow you to peruse the dashboard and issue more commands without re-invoking).
  
  
• 💡 Hints in Footer Show/Hide the usage hints in the dashboard footer. The first few (important) hints are always the same but thereafter they appear randomly to help you learn all the available commands. When you are very familiar with everything it can be desirable to hide them.
  
  
• 📶 Enable/Use HGI-80 If you have optionally linked the skill to use USB/RF with a HGI-80 (or equivalent, such as an ssm or nanoCUL) and  Domoticz or  Home Assistant, an option will appear to enable/disable secondary communication with Evohome using your USB device in addition to the TCC Cloud. Note that if you have more than one Evotouch panel ('location' in your TCC account) then this option is disabled.
  
  
• 🔎 Larger Tiles If you have more than 8 tiles to display there's an option to make the tiles larger so that they are easier to read. This will, however, necessitate scrolling in order to see >8 tiles. Complementary to this is the  Peek feature which allows you to hide certain tiles unless a toggle on the main dashboard is tapped — see Peek.
  
  
• ☀ Show Local Weather EvoControl can retrieve weather and 24h forecast data from the same Resideo source that your Evotouch queries to show the outside temperature. To specify the location, this uses the same ID format as the popular AccuWeather service. You can find the correct location ID to use by visiting the AccuWeather website — enter your location (city/town) in the search box and take note of the number you'll see in the URL of the page you are redirected to.
  
  Note that if you have multiple locations in your TCC account, the ID will need to be entered for each location, even if your panels are all at the same physical address and are merely part of a large installation. Select each location in turn on the main dashboard via the ---  Locations buttons and revisit the settings page to see the per-location setting.
  
  Once you have entered your ID(s) in the skill, the Dashboard header will show the current outside temperature at your location(s), plus a weather icon will appear in the top right corner. You'll be able to ask "Alexa, what's the forecast?" or "Alexa, show the forecast" (for a graph/plot) and per zone you'll be able to plot the ΔT between the expected outside temperature and the schedule for the next 24h for each of your zones — the wider the gap, the more energy your heating system will need to use. The weather icons will look like these:
  
  
  Note that EvoControl polls the Resideo servers at most 1x per 15 minutes.
  
  

Under the slider switches are 3 form fields where you can enter the nicknames for your ABC schedules using an on-screen keyboard. These will then appear in the headers on the various schedule screens to jog your memory as to what each preset represents.

The footer here shows your current Default zone which you assigned using the e.g. "Alexa, the default zone is the Livingroom" command.

To the right are 7 touch-enabled icons for:  Segments to edit the timespans for the Schedule Shifting function,  Live→ABC to copy an entire week's live schedule to an ABC preset for 1-12 zones (plus DHW),  Aliases to specify English equivalents for non-English zone names and to specify which zones (if any) to hide on the main dashboard,  Offsets to reach the sub-settings page for specifying values not retrievable in the API,  Groups for defining/browsing zone-groups,  Zone Order for setting the tile display order on the main dashboard view, and  Account to refresh the skill configuration if you change something in your TCC account or add/remove a HGI-80 on your smartskills account.

Zone Sort Order

Choose your preferred arrangement

This screen (which is reached by pressing  Zone Order in the  Settings screen) allows you to select the sort-order for zone-tiles as displayed on the main dashboard (incidentally, also in the setpoint-editor, the scenes-editor and the groups-editor).

When you tap any desired tile in the bottom row (unset) it is moved to the top row (set) as the next item. Tapping a top-row item moves it back down to the unset row. When all the tiles are set then the  Save button is enabled and the sort-order can be saved.

Hitting the back arrow in the top-left corner of the screen will abandon the entire edit-session without saving it.

Aliases | Peek

International Zone Names

Aliases

If your native spoken language is not supported by Alexa, it's likely that you will use either British or American English as the language setting on your Echo(s). However, the zone names as displayed on your Evotouch — and therefore reported by TCC to the skill — are most likely to be in your native language, meaning Alexa will not understand them in spoken commands.

On the  Settings page, you'll find a button  Aliases that will open the Alias Editor. Here you can define and save a 1:1 mapping from your native zone names to English language equivalents. The names you provide are your choice and do not even have to translate correctly, as long as they are understandable room names in English you're good to go! Note that DHW is always called Hot Water and cannot be assigned to.

The concept can also be useful if your zone names are already in English but e.g. strongly abbreviated so that fuzzy-matching a zone name fails. In that case, you can define an alias for just that zone with the name spelled out in full for Alexa to comprehend.

Whenever you define one or more aliases, your Activities/Scenes and Groups are automatically adjusted to reflect the aliased name so no manual editing is required.

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Peek

You'll also notice a series of green radio-button toggles to the left of your zone names on this screen. These work regardless of whether you have assigned an alias or not and serve to hide the zone in question from the normal view on the main dashboard. This can be useful if you have a lot of zones and a very small Echo screen to display them on. After you have selected/de-selected whichever zones you want to hide/unhide, the  💾 Hidden button becomes active for you to save the changes.

If you have hidden any tiles in this way, the main dashboard will show a new button in the footer which can be used to  Peek at all zones for the duration of the current session or until de-selected.

Note that hidden zones can still be controlled/queried by voice and also still appear in Scenes/Activities, Groups and the Setpoint Editor.

Graphing / USB

Forecast & Historical Data

EvoControl can optionally interface to Evohome through RF/USB and either the open-source  Domoticz or  Home Assistant smart-home software packages — you'll need a HGI-80 (or equivalent, e.g. SSM or nanoCUL) interface for this option to become available (setup instructions are below).

This connectivity provides a parallel path for EvoControl to access data about your system that Resideo does not (currently) expose via the TCC API:

• Temperature readouts are accurate to 0.1° instead of 0.5°.
• The % heat-demand per zone is reported and EvoControl indicates it in the opacity of the flame symbol in each tile on the dashboard.
• Any zones with an Open Window status will show .
• Certain devices will not only report battery-low status but include the percentage too. This means you will potentially see , , , , or icons displayed.
• Historical data comprising setpoints SP, a graphical schedule-depiction, plus actual-temperatures from the previous 24h is available for each zone/DHW and can be plotted on your Echo.

Real-time connectivity status / is always shown on EvoControl's dashboard. Should any command via RF/USB fail to complete, TCC is used as a fallback data-source whenever possible.

Note that HGI connectivity is unsupported when you have more than a single Evotouch ('location') associated with your TCC account.

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Charting

Access to 📈 graphical data can really help you to understand a room's thermal characteristics, providing visual feedback on response times for setpoint-changes and e.g. how quickly temperatures drift naturally over time due to thermal gain/loss. Those insights can help you plan the optimal schedule entries to achieve your home-comfort goals while minimising energy use.

To view chart data, you'll use a icon that appears on the bottom-right of the main skill-dashboard when RF/USB is connected. When tapped, it starts flashing and a subsequent tap on any tile will draw the associated graph(s) instead of triggering the default show-schedule behaviour.

In addition to drawing SP and actual-temperature data, a plot of the Live Schedule for the period is included for reference. You'll normally observe discrepancies between it and the SP curve due to the advancement/delay effects of Evohome's optimum start/finish plus e.g. any TemporaryOverrides you requested in that timeframe. If the system mode was Eco/Boost during that period, you'd observe the SP plot showing temperatures shifted from the schedule plot by an amount equal to your system's offset (usually 3°). This is clearly visible in the first 3 example images above.

If you tap on any of the caption text entries above the graphs (i.e. the labels 🟠 Actual, 🟡 Schedule, 🔵 Setpoint) then the plot for that particular curve toggles opacity between 1.0 and 0.3 so that you can better compare overlapping portions of the 3 curves.

By default, the horizontal resolution is an impressive 5 minutes. The scaling on the y-axis is dynamic and adjusts so as to show as much relevant detail as possible. A horizontal line shows the average temperature for the period, while a vertical line is drawn through the lowest measured temperature of the past 24h.

Some example graphing-related commands:

• "Alexa, open Smart Heat"…
• Alexa, show the Bedroom graph
• Alexa, next
• Alexa, show the Outside graph

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Real Outside Temperature

For Domoticz, you can include an Outdoor Temperature device (whether real or virtual) called Outside or with the value alias: outside in the device description field. For Home Assistant, the device should be called e.g. sensor.01_123456_outside (the ID should mirror the controller-ID) and be no more chirpy than providing 200 data-points/24h. EvoControl can use such data to display graphs of the outdoor temperature during the previous 24h. The dashboard header will then also show the current outside temperature — this local sensor has precedence over the Resideo-supplied weather for your location (if you enabled that feature in settings).

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% Demand

When you ask Alexa either for a system-summary or if there is demand, a dedicated screen is shown with the numerical percentage values and also the current battery-percentage of each zone's sensor/actuator. Any mains-powered devices (e.g. BDR-91 relays) will show .

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TCC Offline Operation

Whenever TCC is offline, the skill can operate in degraded mode and still provide many useful voice/touch functions via your HGI-80:

• A 👷 icon appears in the dashboard header when this mode is active.
• All (constrained) change-setpoint and activate-activity commands are available, while anything schedule-related is blocked.
• The next block-time for an activity/scene becomes a fallback of 3 hours from now, since the real block time is unknown. You may of course specify any valid until/duration/permanent to override this default.
• You'll note the schedule ABC appendages that show the next switchpoint under each tile are hidden.
• In degraded mode, polling of Domoticz is hastened to occur every 10s instead of 30s.
• If you change a setpoint without a constraint (i.e. block time rather than a specific until/duration), you'll see a ⏳ on the tile(s) until Domoticz returns the real duration-status from the HGI-80 (max. 10sec).
• You cannot update your TCC configuration in degraded mode.
• Skill preferences can be edited as normal.

As soon as TCC comes back online, full operation is automatically restored. TCC will just query your Evotouch panel for whatever setpoints are 'live' when operation returns and take that as its status quo.

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HGI Setup Instructions

Note that this USB/RF feature is for technically-savvy EvoControl users with a smart-home setup.

In order to enable communication with  Domoticz, you will need to:

• Have a working Evohome USB (for HGI/S80) configuration.
• Set up a https connection towards Domoticz via a password-protected proxy such as apache, nginx or ngrok. If you do not need to expose any other endpoints on port 443 then the normal Domoticz external-access can be used without a proxy. A valid SSL certificate is a must (e.g. Amazon accepts LetsEncrypt certs). Note that ngrok handles certs itself and issues a fixed domain name nowadays, even on free accounts.
• Visit your Domoticz UI to enable 'Allow Basic-Auth authentication over plain HTTP (API only)' on the Setup → Settings → Security tab.
• Next, visit the Setup → Users tab and create a new Domoticz user with 'User' rights. Important: If using a proxy, assign the same username and password to this user as you use with the proxy/ngrok. That way, the basic-auth passes through in the http headers and satisfies both the proxy/ngrok and Domoticz!
• Make sure to use 'Set Devices' to assign access to all your Evohome devices to this new user.
• You'll also need to have defined a 'Thermostats' or 'EvoControl' room-plan in Domoticz which contains all your thermostats zone/relay devices plus the Evotouch controller device and DHW if you have it.

For  Home Assistant, you will need to:

• Have a working ramses_cc integration via HACS.
• Provide a https proxy URL without password protection but instead with a long-lived access token.
• You'll also need to provide the ID 01:123456 of your Evotouch (you can find this among your HA entities as the controller ID).
• On older versions of ramses_cc, all your TCC zones must have a climate.xxx equivalent in HA and if you have DHW via TCC it must also be present in HA or you will receive an error message upon discovery. Newer versions of ramses_cc will auto-configure.

Usage Tips

Some useful Pointers

EvoControl is a so-called custom skill, which means its voice-model is not based on any pre-defined template but was especially written to address the envisaged functionality. Because it's not a smart-home skill, your thermostats will not appear in the Alexa app as smart-home devices.

To use EvoControl, you have to first invoke it by name. If you use any other custom Skills then the process should be familiar.

We can differentiate between one-shot and session invocation — how they behave depends on whether your Alexa-enabled device has a display or not:

• With a one-shot, while Alexa is idle you say something like e.g. Alexa, tell Smart Heat to set the system mode to Auto or Alexa, ask Smart Heat if there's heat demand. It's called a one-shot because it will just execute a single command and then the skill will exit. You could subsequently issue another one-shot or e.g. ask Alexa for the weather. Without a screen, the skill will always exit but if you have a display then there's a user-preference in the skill-settings to automatically transition EvoControl to session-mode after handling a one-shot.
• To deliberately start a session, while Alexa is idle you say Alexa, open/start/launch Smart Heat. After the beep you can now issue back-to-back commands without first having to say the Alexa, ask Smart Heat… part each time. For example, Alexa, set the system mode to Auto or Alexa, is there heat demand?.

Remember that while you're inside a session, Alexa only handles commands intended for this skill so if e.g. you ask for the weather while a session is active, you'll get an error that "EvoControl cannot help you with that".

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Confirmation

Note that each time EvoControl sends commands to the TCC cloud it looks for a confirmation message from Resideo. If that confirmation is missing because e.g. the TCC service is temporarily offline, you'll be told to verify things on your Evotouch. If you launch the skill while TCC is offline you'll be told so and a link will be shown on your Echo's display to a Resideo page to check for when it returns to service.

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Undo

The Undo command is context-sensitive and can:

• Undo a switchpoint-insertion when editing schedules by voice. If you say e.g. "Alexa, make it 20° in the Kitchen at 5 PM" and realise you meant the Bathroom and not the Kitchen, say "Alexa, undo" (and then of course issue the correct command).
• Revert things after a TemporaryOverride command. If you say e.g. "Alexa, set the Office to 20° until 5 PM" and realise you meant the Kitchen and not the Office, say "Alexa, undo" (and then of course issue the correct command). This also works for multiple zones or Groups.
• Revert things after incorrect scene/activity activation. If you say e.g. "Alexa, activate WatchTV" and realise you really meant to activate "GoodNight", say "Alexa, undo" (and then of course issue the correct command).
• Undo a schedule-shift delay/advance.

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Zone Name Matching

EvoControl uses fuzzy-matching to match your zone names as spelled for TCC against Alexa's expected spelling thereof. If you have a TCC zone called 'Master Bedrm' or 'Mstr Bedrm', Alexa will hear 'Master Bedroom' when you wish to address it by voice. Thanks to the fuzzy matching, the correct zone will still be addressed (it does depend to some extent on how 'close' your other zone names are). There should therefore be no need to rename your TCC zones to work with EvoControl.

If any of your zones have blank names (e.g. from a bound but spare HR-92) then they will be skipped over during discovery. The skill refers to these as ghost zones. If you cannot identify the source of your ghosts, the issue is probably an anomaly that incidentally occurs on Resideo's end. Login to your TCC account, select your location and delete it. Then re-add it and the ghosts should be gone.

Sometimes, after making a call to Resideo technical support (for whatever reason), Resideo will completely reset your TCC account. This has the side-effect of reassigning your SystemID and/or ZoneIDs which unfortunately invalidates the oauth token you were assigned when you first linked the skill. If this happens, the skill will recognise the change and inform you that a re-auth from your Account Dashboard will need to be performed.

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Alexa Routines

If you wish to have the skill automatically revert to baseline every day at (say) just after midnight, you can create a custom routine via the Alexa app to do something like this:

Just open the Alexa app and go to routines. Then hit to create a new routine. Under WHEN hit the for Add an Event, choosing Schedule and subsequently At Time. Choose the time of day at which the routine should run. Next, under ALEXA WILL hit the for Add an Action and choose  Customised. Under Enter what you would ask Alexa, type ask smart heat to revert to baseline. Then hit Next and finally, Save. You can choose any of your Echos or the mobile device on which you have the Alexa app as the device from which Alexa will respond.

Just be mindful that any schedule-shifting applying to 'tomorrow' will be negated by this routine. If you regularly specify tomorrow-shifts, perhaps run this routine only on Sundays after midnight.

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Backup & Restore

Note that you can backup and restore the skill configuration from your smartskills Account Dashboard. This facilitates keeping a library of subtly different settings and swapping them out at will. The how-to is here.

Diagnostics

Real-Time Fault Log

With EvoControl, you don't have to visit menus to consult a fault-log because all diagnostic information is shown directly in the Dashboard and for each tile individually.

• Reflects a SensorLowBattery or ActuatorLowBattery status.
• Indicates a SensorCommunicationLost or ActuatorCommunicationLost issue. You will sometimes see these faults popping up in your log for zones furthest from your Evotouch — they are often transient in nature due to temporary comms-glitches.
• Depicts a SensorFailure or ActuatorFailure issue.
• Is shown when a zone is not currently reporting its temperature. In that case, a red bar also appears in the zone header and a ❔ is shown instead of the current temperature. This error can surface for e.g. a spare HR-92 that's still bound but has had its batteries removed.

Because some tiles can be invisible/off-screen (requiring  Peek or scrolling to come into view), the main header will show a master ⚠️ icon whenever faults are present on any tile.

You'll also see diagnostics information on the skill's widget (a ⚠️ symbol will appear in the header). For zone/DHW faults, you'll see a ⚠️ icon on the offending tile(s). A single-tap on such a tile will then show either "🔋Low Battery", "📡Comms Loss" or "⚡Sensor Fault" instead of the zone's mode.

When using a HGI-80 via USB, any issues with reporting of either demand values or battery statuses via  Domoticz or  Home Assistant will result in a on the corresponding tile(s) on the main skill-dashboard or else a red border around the tile on the widget. If you see this then consult your  Domoticz or  Home Assistant dashboard to troubleshoot.

Multiple Locations

Unite multiple Evohome Systems

EvoControl brings all your Evotouch panels together in a single place. When you have multiple locations registered to your TCC Account, the bottom right of your dashboard footer is populated with extra numerical buttons (referred to earlier as ---  Locations) to allow direct selection of up to 4 systems. It doesn't matter if each Evotouch is situated at a different physical address (e.g. Home, Chalet) or at the same address e.g. in a large home or office that required more than 12 zones.

When more than one location is linked to your TCC account, the name of the selected location will automatically appear in the header on the dashboard.

Some example location-related commands:

• "Alexa, open Smart Heat"…
• Alexa, list my locations
• Alexa, select location number 2
• Alexa, what's the selected location?

Note that only one location can be active at a time — you cannot issue voice commands addressing e.g. location 1 while location 2 is displayed on your dashboard.

Schedule Editing

Modify switchpoints in Bulk

You can do simple editing of today's schedule using voice inputs, but not create/modify a whole week's schedule by voice. For that we have the touch-enabled bulk switchpoint editor which is reached by selecting  Edit while viewing a schedule.

There are and buttons for ± 10 minutes, plus and buttons to assign ± 0.5° which apply to a whole week's worth of switchpoints at once. The bulk-modified schedule can be immediately uploaded to your Evotouch without first saving it as a preset, or just saved as an ABC entry for that zone. These buttons are only activated when an edit is actually made.

To drill down and cherry-pick particular setpoints to be modified, we have the  Selective button which, when chosen, dims all the setpoints in the grid, ready to be selected by tipping on them. Only selected cells react to subsequent presses of the ± 10 min and ± 0.5° buttons. When in selective mode, two new buttons are shown —  Unselect All can be used as a shortcut to deselecting the whole grid, while  Everything does the opposite and selects all cells. Otherwise, tapping an already-selected cell deselects it again individually.

As a visual aid to which cells were already modified in this session, the white background of any changed cell's time-value becomes crimson. You can keep cycling through select → modify → unselect → select-new → modify, etc. until all your desired edits are completed — you only need to choose save/upload when all your envisioned edits are finished.

While in selective mode, tapping a day-name selects/unselects a whole column representing a day's worth of switchpoints. Outside of selective mode the entire grid including headers is disabled for touch inputs.

Hitting the back arrow in the top-left corner of the screen will abandon the entire edit-session without saving it.

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Clone from Zone-to-Zone

It's also possible to copy entire schedule blocks from zone to zone. Tap on a tile on the main dashboard to select the donor zone. Select  View and then choose either the Live schedule or any of the ABC-presets, as desired. Next, choose  More and then  Copy To Zone. This will launch a zone-selector which looks like the group-creation selector. When you have selected all the target zones, pressing  Finish will complete the cloning process.

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Live Schedule → Preset

Via the  Live→ABC button on the settings screen, you can open a view akin to the groups-editor that allows selecting zones (including DHW) for which the Live schedule will be copied to one of the ABC-presets. This can be useful after you select a Schedule-Shift operation to immortalize the shift under one of your presets.

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ABC Grid Compare

The section on Schedule Comparison details how you can graphically compare your modified schedule to the other saved ABC presets. However, it's also possible to view the comparison for an entire week in grid form. To do that, select  View and then  More. Here you will see a button labelled  Compare. It will draw a grid with crimson highlighting of the differences, much like you see when editing a schedule using the bulk-editor.

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Offline Schedule Backup & Restore

Note that you can easily backup and restore the entire skill configuration (which includes your schedules) from your smartskills Account Dashboard to a file on your PC/Mac. This can be useful if you fear inadvertently messing up carefully-crafted schedules. By keeping different versions of that file, you can switch between multiple/different ABCs and therefore access more than 3 schedules — there's no practical limit! Plus, if you ever have to swap out an Evotouch panel, this will allow you to re-apply your old schedules to the new panel in the blink of an eye. The how-to is here.

Schedule Comparison

Graphical Depiction of Schedules

A picture paints a thousand words and a graph can sometimes convey more useful information than a grid. That's why each zone's ABC switchpoints can be plotted graphically alongside the current/live schedule for the zone.

While viewing a schedule, tapping on any of the cells in the header row of day-names draws a switchpoint comparison-graph for that day/zone. Note that this feature is disabled while editing a schedule because then that particular tap is reserved for selecting/deselecting a column of cells in the grid.

If any line-segments from the 4 different plots overlap each other, the last-drawn line-segment conceals any underlying one(s). For that reason, if the current/live schedule matches one of the presets (which will often be the case), a combined e.g. A/Live is drawn together with B and C and the separate Live is omitted. If you see multiple entries for Live/'…' it means that the saved data for 2 or more ABC presets is exactly the same.

If you tap on the 🟠 🟡 🔵 caption text then the plot for that particular curve toggles opacity between 1.0 and 0.3 so that you can better compare overlapping portions of the 3/4 curves.

It's also possible to view the comparison for an entire week rather than a particular day. To do that, select  View and then  More. Here you will see a button labelled  Line-Chart.

Widget

Quick Glance plus Activity Triggering

On any of your supported Echo Show devices, you can install a Widget for EvoControl — it can be found under the Smart Home category icon in the widget gallery.

When the widget is opened, you'll see a grid starting with a  LaunchPad button followed by tiles displaying the current readings from all of your zones/DHW. These tiles are gesture-enabled to detect both single and double taps.

When you single-tap a tile, if you are using a HGI-80 then you'll briefly see the demand-percentage for that zone (e.g. 🔥 30%) together with the zone's mode (e.g. Auto, ⏳ 22:50, ♾️). Without a HGI-80 that single-tap will show the zone-mode but no demand info. You'll also see the next switchpoint time/SP inside the SP frame with ↑, ↓, ↔ symbols to indicate the 'direction' of the next SP compared to the current setpoint from a heat perspective (e.g. 22:00 ↓ 16°). The frame will reflect the colour of that next SP.

If you double-tap, you can toggle between dropping a zone down to a 5° setpoint via a TemporaryOverride until the next scheduled change (i.e. a sort of 'standby' just for that zone), or toggle back 'up' to FollowSchedule mode for that zone. On the drop to 5°, the tile flashes blue with a large ❄️ snowflake symbol. You'll then also see the next switchpoint momentarily in the setpoint box (e.g. 22:30 ↔ 16°). On the way back up to 'normal', the tile flashes orange with a large 🔥 flame symbol.

Double-tapping on the DHW tile will simply reverse the state from 'On' to 'Off or vice-versa. Be careful when toggling to 'On' as it will stay on until the next scheduled 'Off' moment which may be quite a while in the future and therefore be wasteful.

On the widget's header, an icon with the current system mode (e.g. or ) is shown in the top right corner, while a  symbol with the number of zones calling for heat will additionally appear when you have a HGI-80 in use. In that case, any zones with heat-demand will have a thick white border around the tile so that they stand out clearly, while any zones reported by the HGI-80 as needing attention will have a red border to them.

Whenever TCC reports a fault via the API, a ⚠️ symbol will appear in the header. For zone/DHW faults, you'll also see a ⚠️ icon on the offending tile(s). A single-tap on such a tile will then show either "🔋Low Battery", "📡Comms Loss" or "⚡Sensor Fault" instead of the zone's mode. It's a good idea to consult your Evotouch panel or open the skill to drill down to the cause (see Diagnostics) because e.g. a TRV with a low battery can interrupt regular radio communications between Evohome devices to a surprising degree!

On the widget, the coloured SP-bars under the tiles do not show any ⌚ override icons/times the way the tiles on the Skill dashboard do.

From time to time, the widget header may show "♻️ Update Available" to remind you that removing/replacing the widget will immediately get you to the latest version without having to wait for Amazon's phased rollout of updates.

Note that the Widget can launch the 'full' skill by tapping any part of its header/title area.

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Gas Usage

If you are using a HGI-80 and your Smart Home system has access to a P1 Smart Meter connection, both your today and total gas consumption can be displayed on a dedicated tile which appears at the beginning of the tile-grid.

When using  Domoticz, the device should be of type P1 Smart Meter and have the name Gas or else a description field containing alias:gas;.

In the case of  Home Assistant, you need to create a sensor with the name e.g. sensor.01_123456_gas. You should then define attributes where the value primary will appear in the upper section of the tile and secondary the lower. If unit_of_measurement is omitted then the default is m3.

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LaunchPad

Tapping  LaunchPad will take you to a second page of round buttons from which to trigger all your 'own' activities plus some extra system-defined items. As a reminder, you can create custom scenes/activities by tapping  Scenes on the main skill dashboard followed by the  New button.

In addition to your regular  Standby activity, you'll see one called  Standby ♾️ which automatically applies PermanentOverride to this oft-used feature.

There's also a button named  Reset which sets the system mode to AutoWithReset (a setting the API supports but which is unavailable from your Evotouch panel). Choosing it effectively 'cancels' an activity by setting all zones to FollowSchedule. Just be mindful that it inherently clears any PermanentOverride statuses assigned to zones/DHW.

Finally, there's a Baseline button which returns all zones with a dynamically modified schedule to their most recent ABC preset.

If you don't tap any items on this grid then the widget automatically returns to the tile view after 8s. If you do tap any button here then it will flash several times before returning you again to the dashboard.

All custom icons assigned to your Scenes/Activities within the skill will automatically appear here on the widget too. A reminder that these icons can be user-selected will be displayed (provided you have at least one user-defined scene) until you have set a custom icon to prove you are aware of the feature.

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Inherent Duration

If an activity name ends with 1-3 digits plus either an 'm' or apostrophe (shorthand for minutes) then the activity in question will be activated for that particular duration in minutes via a TemporaryOverride. There should be no space(s) between the digits and the m/'. Examples: HW Boost 20m, HW Boost 120', ShowerTime 15m. This only applies when the activity is triggered from a widget or from the  LaunchPad in the skill and not when triggered by voice.

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XL Widget

If your Echo is XL-capable then a larger landscape widget automatically takes precedence over the older portrait style (the so-called medium widget). Medium was the de-facto size when widgets were launched by sliding to the left on the Echo homescreen, while Echos that support the widget-shortcut paradigm should all be XL-friendly.

This makes much better use of the screen width of the Echo. The view is responsive to the number of zones in your system and if you have fewer zones to show then the tiles will be bigger. In any case, it will all fit on a single screen with no need to scroll. The XL widget includes the outside temperature in the header and — if you have a HGI-80 installed — will also include the aggregated boiler demand percentage with an ♨️ icon as an indication of how hard your boiler is working to supply the entire system-demand.

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SysMode Dependency

Activities are normally not actionable when the System Mode is HeatingOff. You'll see this on the widget in the form of greyed-out activity names and disabled buttons.

However, if you have DHW and the only item in an activity is Hot Water ON then this can always be triggered during HeatingOff. In Away mode, even DHW is blocked and only the  Reset option will be available to restore Auto status.

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Messages

Unlike the skill (which 'resides' only in the cloud) and is not installed on your Echo, the widget is actually installed on your device and also stores some limited data there. When you launch the widget, you'll momentarily see that stored data until it is refreshed from the cloud with current values. If anything goes wrong during that refresh, the widget will show a message telling you e.g. that TCC is offline or the skill's authorisation has expired (note that the widget depends on the skill in the cloud to communicate with TCC under the hood).

When widget updates are published from time to time, Amazon does not push them out to all users at once but instead employs a staggered deployment which can actually span several weeks. For that reason, the widget will inform you once that a newer version is available in case you'd like to manually update right now. To do that, just remove the widget (not the skill!) and re-install it.

Note that Amazon does not allow widgets to provide spoken feedback and views them as a touch-only paradigm.