EvoControl

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.

As the saying goes, there's more than one way to skin a cat. EvoControl provides 6 different means by which you can quickly adjust any number of zones to accurately reflect (imminent) zone occupancy:

Scenes/Activities support predefining combinations of setpoints 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:
- Alexa, activate 'Watch TV'
- Alexa, start 'MovieTime' for 90 minutes
- Alexa, activate 'Boost Upstairs' for 20 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 (time-limited) overrides for any number of zones or groups:
- 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 or postpone 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'):
- Alexa, delay bedtime by 45 mins
- Alexa, I'm going to bed 20 mins earlier than usual
- Alexa, I want to get up half an hour earlier tomorrow
- Alexa, defer getting up tomorrow by 30 mins
- Alexa, I want to wake up later tomorrow
- 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, revert to baseline
Multiple Schedules mean you have more than a single baseline to start out from:
- 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:
- 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 buttons that allow you to tweak all zones in steps of ± 0.5° at once.

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 from one of the skill's 2 Widgets.

Hopefully you can glean from the above examples that a single short utterance is all it takes to maximise comfort while minimising energy waste. It's really powerful to be able to say "Alexa, activate ShowerTime" shortly before you go upstairs to find that your DHW has been turned on, your towel-rail is pre-heating the towels, and your Bathroom radiator is set to a nice and warm 22°.😁

Note that schedule adjustments are achieved by dynamically modifying the active schedule. Because of the rinse-and-repeat nature of a recurring weekly schedule, a temporarily-modified schedule should be discarded after use by deliberately reverting to a saved ABC — otherwise it will still have the changes and simply repeat them again and again every week. By design, the skill does not try to second-guess by auto-reverting but instead leaves that up to the user. To facilitate this, EvoControl tracks which presets are active in each zone, so you can say "Alexa, revert to baseline" to return all zones with a dynamically modified schedule to their most recent ABC preset. Alternatively, the section on Usage Tips has a suggestion for using an Alexa routine to automate this every day so you cannot forget.

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 the zone (or '📋' if the live schedule does not match a preset), together with the next-expected switchpoint (a switchpoint is the combination of time/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 Guestroom, Studio & Garage in the example screenshots above.

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.

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.

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, 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 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 energy you can expect will be required to achieve the comfort level in question. You can see this clearly in the final image above.

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

Schedule Shifting

Advance or Defer scheduled moments

Schedule Shifting is a very powerful energy-saving feature that lets you 🕚 advance or 🕐 defer key 'moments' within your daily routine on the fly.

To set it up, you assign start/end times to 4 named timespans — '⏰ Waking Up', '🥪 Lunch Time', '🍽️ Dinner Time', plus '🛌 Going to Bed' — as suited to your household. In daily use, several syntactic variations of these names are supported so 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 (at any time) to suit personal preference (tap on the text of the time-span to launch the on-screen editor).

For each of these blocks, you can choose which target zones (note that DHW is excluded) are affected when you mention the related span in a shift-command (observe the 🔢 texts showing the number of currently-assigned target zones for each block). Selection uses the familiar zone-selector you will already have seen for both groups and schedule-cloning.

Any time you invoke a schedule-shift command, EvoControl will check which of the target zones have any upcoming schedule-switchpoints that fall inside the block. If so, the switchpoint(s) in question will be advanced or deferred by the shift specified in the command (up to ±3 hours). You'll be told which zone will experience the initial setpoint and its shifted time-of-day, and on Echos with a screen you'll see a brief dashboard-popup where the next-setpoint appendage will visually reflect the changes. If you try to shift a block that's already passed for today, you'll be told so.

Some example schedule-shift commands:

"Alexa, open Smart Heat"…
Alexa, delay bedtime by 45 mins
Alexa, I'm going to bed 20 mins earlier than usual
Alexa, I want to get up half an hour earlier tomorrow
Alexa, defer getting up tomorrow by 30 mins
Alexa, I want to wake up later tomorrow
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, revert to baseline
Alexa, what time is bedtime today?
Alexa, what time is wake-up tomorrow?

Note that you cannot specify a day-name with this command, but you can mention today (default) or tomorrow. That's deliberate because shifting is cumulative 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 create/name them using the Echo's touchscreen scene-editor and activate them at will by voice/touch. Each involved zone has its own setpoint which you determine when creating the scene. Any zones you omit from a scene will be unaffected when you trigger it. Up to 12 activities can be saved and subsequently activated (and even scheduled) with or without a specified until or duration.

The 1^st example screenshot shown above is of an activity named 'GoodNight' which sets the Wardrobe zone to 19.5°, the Bedroom to 18°, the Bathroom to 22°, and leaves all other zones unaffected. Tapping Activate would trigger this activity, Edit will unlock it for editing, while the arrow keys will browse backwards/forwards through the other saved activities. New launches the editor to start creating a new scene from scratch.

The last screenshot shows the scene-editor and an example of activity-creation. Here, 4 zones have already been tapped to add them to an as-yet unnamed new activity. 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 for the activity when you're all done. If you tapped the zone in question again it would be de-selected, while tapping other zones will add them to the activity too. Tapping the and arrows above and below each tile sets the desired setpoint SP.

Some example scene-related commands:

"Alexa, open Smart Heat"…
Alexa, show activities
Alexa, show 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

Standby

When you first launch EvoControl Smart Heat, you'll see that an activity called Standby has already been created for you. This assigns a setpoint of 5° to all your zones, which is similar to what the HeatingOff system mode normally does. When the system is in true HeatingOff mode, it rejects manual overrides from your TRV valves or spoken overrides via EvoControl. The good news is that when this Standby activity is active, any overrides will 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

Normalisation

N.B. Activating a scene — even one that involves all zones — doesn't change the System Mode but rather the mode(s) of the involved zone(s). For that reason, to return to 'normal' you must retract the individual overrides. "Set all zones to Follow Schedule" or "Reset the System Mode" will achieve this. Saying "Set the System Mode to Auto" won't have any effect because it is already Auto!

You should also realise that the changes introduced by a 'previous' activity don't auto-revert just because you trigger a 'new' activity. If the new activity happens to address (some) zones included in the previous activity while that first activity is still active, the setpoints for those zones will indeed be updated. However, any zones touched by the old activity but uninvolved in the new one will remain 'adjusted' outside the scope of the new activity. This is by design, so you should be aware of reverting to either a saved ABC schedule or reverting all zones to follow-schedule if you want a new activity-activation to 'replace' a previous one. The command "Alexa, revert to baseline" can be very useful for this as it remembers which preset was previously assigned to each zone.

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.

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 and tappable arrows above and below the SP. 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 and buttons to bulk-change all the displayed zones by ± 0.5°. The and 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?

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
Delay going to bed today by half an hour
I'm going to bed 20 minutes earlier than usual
I want to get up half an hour earlier tomorrow
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?

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?

Eco/Boost Offset

Tell the Skill that which it cannot retrieve…

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

While Honeywell 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.

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).

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 Honeywell 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 Honeywell servers at most 1x per 15 minutes.
🌡️ Show SP on widgetThis determines whether the skill's dashboard-widget only shows the current temperature in each of your zones or also shows the setpoint/DHW-state. Only shown when you have installed the related widget on one of your Echos.

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: S-Blocks 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.

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.

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.

Any tiles hidden on the dashboard will also be hidden on the skill's dashboard widget.

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 DZ logo Domoticz or HA logo 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 Honeywell 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.

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

Real Outside Temperature

For DZ logo 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 HA logo 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 Honeywell-supplied weather for your location (if you enabled that feature in settings).

% 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 .

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.

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 DZ logo Domoticz, you will need to:

Set up a https connection towards Domoticz via a password-protected proxy such as apache, nginx or ngrok. 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: 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 HA logo Home Assistant, you will need to:

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 up to 4 controller devices (Evotouches).
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.

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".

Confirmation

Note that each time EvoControl sends commands to the TCC cloud it looks for a confirmation message from Honeywell. 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 Honeywell page to check for when it returns to service.

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.

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 Honeywell'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 Honeywell technical support (for whatever reason), Honeywell 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.

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.

Widgets

On any of your supported Echo Show devices, you can install 2 Widgets for EvoControl.

The first supports touch-activation of your scenes/activities. In addition to your regular 'Standby' activity, you'll see one named 'Standby ♾️' which automatically applies PermanentOverride to this oft-used feature. It also shows the DHW temperature and if any zones are calling for heat (when you have an RF/USB device connected). The second widget is a glanceable overview of the current state of your Evohome system.

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 and not when triggered by voice or touch from the 'full' skill experience.

Note that there is no feedback to indicate whether an activity-trigger attempt was successful (a widget limitation).

Activities are normally not actionable when the System Mode is HeatingOff. You'll see this on the widget in the form of disabled/greyed-out activity names with strikethru. However, if the only item in an activity is Hot Water ON then this can be triggered (with Evohome, Hot Water is actually controllable in HeatingOff mode). In Away mode, everything is blocked.

The second Widget does not control anything but does show you an entire system overview when swiped into view. If you have a HGI-80 in use, any zones with heat-demand will have a white border to them so that they stand out clearly.

Note that both Widgets can launch the 'full' skill by tapping on their headers. Both also show an icon for the current system mode in the top right corner, and a symbol with the number of zones calling for heat when you have a HGI-80 in use.

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.

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 buttons for ± 10 minutes 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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

EvoControl Smart Heat

A Custom Alexa Skill for Evohome

More than Voice Control

Savings and Comfort

Extended Capabilities

Highlights

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