Epic failure of Wiser system

MikeP007 · ‎2023-01-03

I have just returned from an overseas trip. When I left I put the Wiser system into away mode.

When I was travelling home 31/12/2022, I tried to take the system out of away mode so that I would have heating and hot water upon my return.

However, the app would not connect to the Wiser Heat Hub. I figured that my WiFi might be offline so thought I would just sort it out when I got home.

However, when I did get home, I found that the WiFi was working fine, but the heat hub had a flashing red LED. Also when I retried the app I get a Connection Error screen. I was able to over-ride the problem by manually pressing and holding the buttons on the heat hub to start the heating and hot water.

I had plans to see family new years eve so I just left it with the heat running like that, knowing it would be off by the time I returned. Sure enough on my return the heating and water had gone off and I still had a red flashing light on the heat hub.

I powered off the whole system and boiler via the fused spur and powered it back on again - still a red flashing light so I boosted the system with the manual override and went to bed.

This morning 01/01/2023 - the light has now returned to a solid green so in hope that it had recovered itself I grabbed my phone - however the app still cannot connect to the heat hub and if I look at rooms I get an unhelpful message that says "Your home is looking quite empty...."

Obviously with no functional support over the holiday period I'm quite disappointed that the device has failed so dramatically - can anyone help recover my Heat Hub and Room Thermostats

Interestingly, the hot water does still seem to be switching on and off via the original schedule

.

Kind regards

Mike

MikeP007 · ‎2023-01-06

I have a Linksys Velop whole home WiFi system with 6 nodes covering the entire house and garden - the hub itself is no more that 5 feet from the nearest network Node - so connectivity is not a problem.

However, after speaking with tech support, I managed to reset the whole system and set up again from scratch - a little annoying as I think the Alexa app is still trying to talk to old devices so the voice control is not currently working

See Answer In Context

PhilHornby · ‎2023-01-03

@MikeP007 wrote:
However, when I did get home, I found that the WiFi was working fine, but the heat hub had a flashing red LED.

The flashing Red LED does indeed signify that the Hubᴿ wasn't connected to your WiFi router. It could just be a 'distance thing' - Wiser have some suggestions HERE . There's a longer list HERE

This morning 01/01/2023 - the light has now returned to a solid green so in hope that it had recovered itself I grabbed my phone - however the app still cannot connect to the heat hub and if I look at rooms I get an unhelpful message that says "Your home is looking quite empty...."

I've had some similar, recent failures with V6.1.5 of the app. (they used to happen a lot a couple of years back - but stopped).

What seems to happen, is that the App's data gets lost or corrupted - and has to be reconfigured. (In my case, the App forgets the IP address of the Hubᴿ and can't find it through broadcasts, because of the segmented nature of my network).

If you press the "Setup" button on the Hubᴿ, you should be able to connect directly to its own "Wiser_xxxx" SSID. This seems to populate the App with enough data that it all starts working again when returned to the main WiFi network.

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3 Channel Hubᴿ, 13xiTRVs, 8xRoomstats and 2xSmartplug/Repeaters. (UK)

MichaelPaterson · ‎2023-01-04

this did exactly the same to me today, the method above worked for me, must be a common issue with latest software / firmware update

Fozzie1960 · ‎2023-01-04

Same thing has happened to me today.

Fozzie1960 · ‎2023-01-05

Further to my previous message.

On my iPad I see the "Your home is looking quite empty...." message but on my iPhone everything is working fine. One thing I have noticed is the Wifi signal has dropped from a full signal to one bar.

MichaelPaterson · ‎2023-01-05

from wiser status website, looks like problems with the wiser server

Service Notes Status

Cloud services	We are working on it
In-home equipment	Everything is working as expected.
Alexa Voice Service	We are working on it
Google Home Voice Service	We are working on it
IFTTT Service	We are working on it
Home Heating Report	We are working on it

PhilHornby · ‎2023-01-05

@MichaelPaterson wrote:
from wiser status website, looks like problems with the wiser server
Service Notes Status

But the Wiser Cloud Service is (generally) only used when it can't find the Hubᴿ on the local LAN - or you're out-and-about.

In my case, it sometimes tries to use it (because the Hubᴿ lives on a different network segment and it can't find it by 'probing'). It doesn't succeed with the Cloud Service either, because it's currently firewalled-off to stop unexpected updates!. I connect to the Hubᴿ via the correct segment and it remembers its IP address and I can then access it from the main House LAN ... except recently it's started forgetting everything it knows!.

@Fozzie1960 wrote:
On my iPad I see the "Your home is looking quite empty...." message but on my iPhone everything is working fine.

That seems to demonstrate that the problem is in the App, not the Hubᴿ. The fact that it's affecting both the Android and Iphone versions points to some coding error with both versions of the app.

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3 Channel Hubᴿ, 13xiTRVs, 8xRoomstats and 2xSmartplug/Repeaters. (UK)

PhilHornby · ‎2023-01-05

I wrote:
But the Wiser Cloud Service is (generally) only used when it can't find the Hubᴿ on the local LAN - or you're out-and-about...

Unfortunately, I'd chosen this outage period as the time to test what happens if you manually delete the Android app's data. In the first instance, it just says "your password is required" ... and refuses to login. Quite an expected failure, I suppose if the Cloud Services are down 😟 - though a 'proper' error message would have been helpful!

At the time of writing, these services are still supposedly down, but it finally let me login! (which casts doubts as to how timely the information on the status page is.)

On finally logging in, I was told my home was empty and I'd better add something. It offered me a choice of a Hubᴿ or a 'bluetooth Digistat'! ...

...I politely refused both and did the "connect to Wiser_xxx SSID trick", to get my previous home back 🤔

I still had to reconfigure the app (Room Order, Home screen options etc) and noticed that I can no longer add a 'Bluetooth Digistat' to the system. I'm so disappointed 😃

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3 Channel Hubᴿ, 13xiTRVs, 8xRoomstats and 2xSmartplug/Repeaters. (UK)

MikeP007 · ‎2023-01-06

I have a Linksys Velop whole home WiFi system with 6 nodes covering the entire house and garden - the hub itself is no more that 5 feet from the nearest network Node - so connectivity is not a problem.

However, after speaking with tech support, I managed to reset the whole system and set up again from scratch - a little annoying as I think the Alexa app is still trying to talk to old devices so the voice control is not currently working

MikeP007 · ‎2023-01-06

The whole system could be improved if they adopted a 'cloud first' architecture where your app on your device created and saved your config to your cloud account and then the hub retrieved the config from the cloud at a specific interval/heartbeat or even on a push notification.

This would give a more consistent mode of operation - you would want some sort of device notification to inform you that your latest change(s) to schedule or config have been downloaded and applied by your hub.

Then upon resetting the hub and logging in to the app you could have a pop-up that says - previous config detected in the cloud, do you want to apply this config to current hub or discard it and set up from scratch, maybe with an option to view the config or receive a PDF description by email.
Would be equally useful then if you had to install a new hub due to a failed component.

PhilHornby · ‎2023-01-07

@MikeP007 wrote:
The whole system could be improved if they adopted a 'cloud first' architecture where your app on your device created and saved your config to your cloud account

It might be useful to be able to save/restore configs to the cloud - but I would hate it if the system relied on cloud functionality. Schneider make a virtue of the Wiser system's ability to continue without an Internet connection, but as I'm slowly discovering, that's not entirely true. There's the aforementioned need to validate a Username/Password (at least when initially setting up the App) - and also I've just realised that you cannot manually set the date & time. So at some stage, my firewalled off Hubᴿ is going to drift away from reality...

(Remember when Google bought an early SmartHome company - and remotely disabled it 😮 )

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3 Channel Hubᴿ, 13xiTRVs, 8xRoomstats and 2xSmartplug/Repeaters. (UK)

robertwigley · ‎2023-01-16

Oh no. That's the main benefit of the Wiser system, that it's not reliant on the cloud. Every other system out there basically fails to work properly if your internet is down. Other than not being able to connect to it remotely, Wiser carries on just fine.

jondavies · ‎2023-02-02

@MikeP007 wrote:
The whole system could be improved if they adopted a 'cloud first' architecture where your app on your device created and saved your config to your cloud account and then the hub retrieved the config from the cloud at a specific interval/heartbeat or even on a push notification.

That would be a retrograde step - it makes the entire operation of your heating system dependent on your home wifi, your internet connection and the cloud servers all working.

One really great thing about the existing design and architecture is that, once setup, the hub will happily run your heating system the way you programmed even if your home wifi dies. And if your home wifi is up, but your internet connection is down, then everything works locally. The only dependence on an internet connection and cloud servers is for firmware updates and out-of-home control.

That's a level of independence from the cloud is the key selling point for me and many others.

Jon