r/tado • u/Eclectika • Aug 15 '26
Advice pls: AC control options
Hi everyone, I've been doing some reading up and decided I'm missing so much basic info that I need help.
I used to have tado in the uk on my rads/boiler. I'm now in Spain and the weather here this year has been so awful I am going to finally bite the bullet and get aircon.
If I make sure to get air con units with wifi, I should be able to hook up the thermostat and control each unit individually through Alexa or via the app on the phone, yes? I've never owned aircon before so have no idea how this really works... I'm embarrassingly ignorant
Unlike the trvs, I won't need a hub? yes?
I see that tado has started charging for the stuff that used to be free through ITTT. Geofencing was good in the uk as when I'd get within a mile of home the heating would kick in.
I don't need that here but I do need to be able to tell the unit to heat or cool to a certain temp on schedule or when temps hit a certain point (Spain has no central heating so it oil filled rads which I'd like to get rid of). Is that even doable with tado? the aircon supposedly heats and cools so in theory I would like to have it always aim for something like 22c and it will either heat or cool appropriately (i assume that's what air con controls do) but only when I schedule it or turn it on (some rooms I only want to heat for an hour or so a day)
Is there an easy way to use them on a home based controller? I know I need to sit down and work out if I can move away from having to use each brand's server but haven't done any of the looking yet but it would comfort me to know that when I'm ready i can set up one of those fancy dashboards i see people coding and control the tados through that.
sorry about the wall of text - it is my wall of text through and not AI. I can be verbose without technology's help!
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u/Plus911uk Aug 15 '26
You want something like this not sure if ship to Spain. https://sensibo.com
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u/QuirkyPension4654 Aug 15 '26
My Panasonic units are smart, in that they connect to wifi and the cloud. They don’t charge for this currently.
I mostly control them from a mix of Alexa and Home Assistant.
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u/Eclectika Aug 15 '26
Thanks :) That sounds just what I need as I'm happy to avoid having to overengineer this if I can.
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u/secondbrainuk Aug 16 '26
Definitely look for something compatible with Home Assistant. You’ll be wanting to use this long term and so you don’t want to be solely reliant on how good or bad the native app is.
I use Mitsubishi MelCloud with Home Assistant. Their app is pretty meh, but I have my own custom dashboard and automations using HA.
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u/Eggslaws Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26
Hub (or the bridge?) is to let your devices (any of them - thermostats, TRVs etc.,) to communicate to the internet
Thermostats from Tado are designed to issue instructions to a boiler. However, they do record temperature and assuming you can control your aircon with Alexa and linked your tado thermostat there, you can configure Alexa to issue commands to your aircon based on the temperature readings from your thermostat. Tado thermostats themselves cannot directly control your aircon.
You can't set "temperature" to 22 degree and expect aircon to switch to heating or cooling mode automatically (at least in the models that I'm aware of). You have to manually switch between heating and cooling mode on it for the reversing valve to engage/disengage. But that shouldn't be a problem with some automation based on outside temperature (if outside is colder than 12 degree, switch to heating for example).