New Levels of Immersion Heater Control.

Mixed thoughts.

First step towards smarter control certainly - being able to use half-hour tariff data would be an obvious next step (together with the water temp it should be able to estimate the energy needed to get the required amount of hot water by a certain time and so pick the cheapest set of half-hours needed). A lot of potential there.

A few things I didn't like - firstly heat is probably the No.1 enemy of reliability with electronics - so sticking something that delicate not only in an airing cupboard but attached to a tank of hot water seem far from ideal to me. In many situations - e.g. with top entry - the buttons/display aren't going to be reasonably accessible in use either. OK mounted on the immersion head is convenient for sensing temperature, but overall I'd be happier with a remote mounted box (like we used to do for immersion timers).

I'm also dubious about depending on non-standard 3rd party technology as part of the solution - while it's convenient & cheap to have an app to make use of a mobile phone's big colour display and input controls and remote access facilities - what's the betting that the app won't work after the phone's been upgraded a couple of times? Or the wifi system it uses won't be considered secure enough to be supported? I installed a couple of IP security cameras a few years ago and already I have to maintain a separate PC account with a defunct browser to access them, as all the modern browsers refuse to use the 'outdated' features.

   - Andy.

Mixed thoughts.

First step towards smarter control certainly - being able to use half-hour tariff data would be an obvious next step (together with the water temp it should be able to estimate the energy needed to get the required amount of hot water by a certain time and so pick the cheapest set of half-hours needed). A lot of potential there.

A few things I didn't like - firstly heat is probably the No.1 enemy of reliability with electronics - so sticking something that delicate not only in an airing cupboard but attached to a tank of hot water seem far from ideal to me. In many situations - e.g. with top entry - the buttons/display aren't going to be reasonably accessible in use either. OK mounted on the immersion head is convenient for sensing temperature, but overall I'd be happier with a remote mounted box (like we used to do for immersion timers).

I'm also dubious about depending on non-standard 3rd party technology as part of the solution - while it's convenient & cheap to have an app to make use of a mobile phone's big colour display and input controls and remote access facilities - what's the betting that the app won't work after the phone's been upgraded a couple of times? Or the wifi system it uses won't be considered secure enough to be supported? I installed a couple of IP security cameras a few years ago and already I have to maintain a separate PC account with a defunct browser to access them, as all the modern browsers refuse to use the 'outdated' features.

   - Andy.