Hive Issues

Markee

After enjoying many years of reliable running with Hive, I’ve been having issues with the hub going offline 3 times in as many weeks.

The first two times I’ve had to call tech support who have talked me through a reset ( not what is on the guide on the Hive website to get everything online).

Each time has been on a Saturday, the first time the Hive tech support person admitted they had done some updates on the servers their end and had issues.

The second time they also admitted they were having issues, but interestingly the tech support person was saying things like “we are having issues” and “it’s not a finished product and is still in development” which doesn’t inspire much confidence!

Today it went offline sometime this afternoon, but the Hive status website was showing everything was good. It’s still offline.

I don’t really want to change, but I’m losing confidence in what I’m being told by tech support people and recent reliability issues.

What viable alternatives to Hive are out there that are not too different to make retrofitting straightforward as I’m keeping my options open?

I’ve read elsewhere moving the hub can help so I may try moving it, but nothing has changed recently that would cause issues.

I have Hive heating and 3 active lights.

Thanks in advance.

Lesmor

The only outage I have had was on a Wednesday caused by Hive's 3rd party service provider
you probably got a email apologising and explaining this and that "we have taken extra steps with our supplier to make sure this does not happen again".
no comfort if you had an outage yesterday

Make no mistake that all manufacturers smart tech relies on the providers "cloud services" to be reliable outages are inevitable and if the company ever stops trading or goes bust you are left with a dumb piece of expensive plastic
worse would be if they decided that the cost of providing support and reliability required them to force a monthly subscription on owners then what would we Hive owners decide to do.
to be fair to Hive so far support is free and I have found that they provided me with great support on a product that is now out of warranty not many companies do that

Yes there are alternatives like Nest but if they are smart devices that use an app then they all rely on cloud servers

Remember that the Hive heating can work as a stand alone system without the hub but unfortunately your bulbs wont

KayCS

No problem’s here with Hive other than what Lesmor said about the e-mail from Hive last week.

My bulbs are off during the day and the heating only kicks in a minute or two every hour this time of year so did not even notice any down time.

Could be local inference in your locality causing a break in comms between the hub and bulbs as I’ve had that once or twice over the year or so I’ve had it but hard to track down and normally just seems to fix itself, or next door turned their X-Box off.

Markee

All back online now.

They tweeted me back and asked for my details over DM, including the hub ID and a few minutes later it was back online.

I asked them if they’d done something and they just said “as if by magic” which is all I need to know really!

As frustrated as I’ve found it with going offline, their customer service is second to none and up there with Apple.

Lesmor

IMO it would take a lot to beat Hive plus they do keep adding new features
we were on Holiday when Hive had the outage it was good having Holiday Mode in case we forgot to turn the Heating and Hot water back on
for the first time we also made use of the Mimic mode for the lights
given that so far there is free support for any issues I am very happy with Hive

HMHB

I'm looking to replace my old thermostat and was thinking about Hive as a replacement. With my current thermostat I have about half a dozen timed events where it sets the temperature and I just leave the heating on all the time and control it by the temperature setting (so set it really low at 10pm so that it's off).

It looks like I can set up the same on the Hive system but then I'm confused about the hub. I assume I need a hub to be able to control the heating from a smart phone or iPad? I'm not overly bothered about that facility to be honest but not sure why Hive requires internet access?

Are the timings etc stored within the thermostat itself? So if I just wanted to replicate what I've got at the moment I could do it just using the Hive thermostat and not bothering with a hub?

Markee

To use Hive for your heating you need three components:

1. Hive thermostat.
2. Hive Hub.
3. Hive Receiver.

The Hive Thermostat does the temperature reading and activated the heating when needed.

The receiver takes over the old switched connection from your thermostat and enables the boiler (and pump etc) when heating (or hot water) is required.

The hub pulls it all together over a mesh (Zigbee) network. It needs an internet connection to allow you to access your heating (via the app) when away from home.

You also need the hub as this is the, er hub, that connects the thermostat and receiver so they can talk to each other.

HMHB

OK I think I understand now, the thermostat can't talk to the receiver without the hub ?

Edit - I've just read elsewhere on the internet that the thermostat communicates with the boiler receiver by RF so I think it should work OK without a hub. I'd just be limited to using the thermostat itself to program and change temperatures.

Puntoboy

The thermostats work perfectly without the hub, they connect directly with the receiver connected to the boiler. When you move house, they tell you to leave the thermostats/receivers behind and just take your hub. You're not allowed to leave the house in a position where the boiler doesn't work so the thermostats will function just like a regular wireless thermostat.

HMHB

Thanks everyone I've been looking at the Boost facility for the heating and have a question... Can you use this Boost to decrease the temperature for a specified period? I'd want to do that if I was going out somewhere.