[tado] Upcoming changes to the tado° API

[andrewfg]

Tado has announced its intention to drastically rate limit access to its cloud API. There is a discussion thread in the Home Assistant repo concerning the negative impact on HA developers and users. The negative impact on OH developers and users will be identical. So I am opening this also as a separate OH issue as a placeholder in order to capture OH specific discussions.

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In the meantime I have developed a new binding #19340 that allows HomeKit devices to be integrated. The Tado internet gateway supports HomeKit so it may be possible to use this new binding to integrate your Tado system. Note however that I personally have a very old Tado internet gateway that only supports HomeKit protocol v1.0 and since the new binding is based on v1.1 I was not able to test this myself. However if you have a newer Tado internet gateway that supports HomeKit protocol v1.1 you are welcome to try the new binding and eventually give me feedback.

[andrewfg]

Ping @tado-com ..

[openhab-bot]

This issue has been mentioned on openHAB Community. There might be relevant details there:

https://community.openhab.org/t/tado-api-limits/166127/11

[lsiepel]

Another reason to ditch cloud based systems for basic home systems. They all intent to force you to get a subscription. Heating, doorbell I have seen so many.

My personal recommendation get a plugwise system. No cloud, full local access. And a perfect openHAB binding haha

[andrewfg]

The Tado gateway (bridge) communicates through two eco systems as follows:

1. WAN: it communicates with the Tado cloud server for remote monitoring and control.
2. LAN: it supports the HomeKit eco-system for local monitoring and control.

The current OH binding talks to the cloud server via the WAN via its respective Tado specific API.

And obviously our 'solution' could be for the OH binding to change from the WAN model to the LAN model. In other words to implement a HomeKit client in OH.

This would be a massive undertaking since the HomeKit eco-system is an absolute monster. Note however having a HomeKit client in OH would not just be a specific fix for this Tado use case, but would eventually also allow integration of other HomeKit equipment, so the effort might be worthwhile. => Any thoughts?

Pinging @andylintner as you are the author of org.openhab.io.homekit which is a HomeKit server by which OH items may be exported to the HK eco-system. Perhaps you have some insights about the feasibility of implementing an OH HK client allowing items to be imported? Do you think we could leverage any of your OH HK server code for such a client?

[andrewfg]

Pinging @andylintner

It think Andy may have gone dormant (??) so also pinging other HomeKit server code owners @ccutrer @yfre

[lsiepel]

Some work was already done by @kgoderis see maybe you can join forces.
#14094

[Nadahar]

Another reason to ditch cloud based systems for basic home systems. They all intent to force you to get a subscription. Heating, doorbell I have seen so many.

I couldn't agree more. Cloud is unreliable, you never know when the terms change, you never know when the cloud is shut down, or they decide that your "device is too old", and you never know who they sell your data too (or if they get hacked and the information "stolen").

I wrote a new binding for Mill devices that is purely local, just to avoid the cloud, even though an existing (cloud based) binding exists.

Is HomeKit the only option for LAN control? I wouldn't want to rely on "Apple tech", since it shares many of the same problems as cloud control - you never know when things will change, when things will stop being supported etc. That said, I don't know anything about the HomeKit protocol - is it at the very least an open protocol?

[lsiepel]

If not mistaken, matter is also supported.

Matter or homekit, they both will not cover 100% functionality. So it will remain some sort of hybrid situation.

[andrewfg]

If not mistaken, matter is also supported.

Tado has two product ranges -- Tado and Tado X -- the former supports HomeKit over LAN and cloud API over WAN. Whereas the latter supports Matter. Haha.

[Nadahar]

Tado has two product ranges -- Tado and Tado X -- the former supports HomeKit over LAN and cloud API over WAN. Whereas the latter supports Matter. Haha.

I'd say that Tado seems to make some pretty terrible decisions then. I don't know much about Matter, but from the little I've seen, it seems pretty bad. The IPv6 requirement, for one, is bad for privacy. And it seems to me to have too much "sabotage potential" by large companies, some have already made sure that their devices to work with their bridge etc. Not to mention the complexity and reliance on certificates (if I remember correctly). Any device that is firmware locked to only work with certain certificate authorities are basically worthless to me.

[AndrewMRQuinn]

If not mistaken, matter is also supported.

Tado has two product ranges -- Tado and Tado X -- the former supports HomeKit over LAN and cloud API over WAN. Whereas the latter supports Matter. Haha.

Devices prior to V3+ do not support HomeKit. I believe the cloud API is the only option for V2 installs, so moving to HomeKit would effectively drop support for them.
On the upside, V2 users have probably been around long enough to have been grandfathered into auto-assist, so they should have 20,000 requests instead of 100.

[andrewfg]

@AndrewMRQuinn interesting insight. I think some of my equipment is indeed v2. However I did get an an email from Tado warning about the rate limitation. So we'll see. Also my mDNS does show the Tado HAP service. But in any case I will try to develop a local LAN solution.

[AndrewMRQuinn]

@andrewfg I got the email today as well. I think the availability of HomeKit depends on the version of the internet bridge. I have a mixture of V2 and V3+ devices, but my bridge is V2. I don't see any mDNS traffic from Tado on my network.
The V3+ bridges look like this: https://shop.tado.com/products/internet-bridge-1
The V2 ones are more box-shaped and don't have the pairing button.

A local solution would be ideal for V3+. Presumably that would give more control in the event of a Tado cloud outage as well.
For V2 users, I see there's a "Refresh Interval" configuration property on zone/mobileDevice things, set to 30/60 seconds by default. Perhaps the appropriate workaround is increase that value until it's under the API rate limit.