Finally got my Hive thing. The engineer ran off before he'd finished it (5.30pm wasn't it) with the words 'it just takes a bit of time to pair' which meant the thermostat was still attempting this an hour later like some kind of tiring electronic foreplay.
It's a bugger to set up since three devices have to talk to each other which involves getting them all into pairing mode, which involves a festival of precise clicking and holding of random buttons. The only exception is the hub which has a pairing button. Which, of course, appears mostly undocumented. Some of it comes close to taking the piss, holding two stiff buttons on the thermostat while inserting the batteries (which was evidently unnecessary, just rebooting the thermostat was fine). Designers of consumer hardware take note – pairing a Sonos speaker, for instance, involves pressing a single button and getting a cheerfully responsive ding.
Anyway, some time and swearing later... Top tip, lock the doors until you're sure the engineer has finished everything.
Seems fine, warm stuff came out as planned and the shower was hot. Only real other gripe is the scheduler which doesn't let you schedule past midnight in any intuitive way (you have to 'pull' the slot from the next day) – fine once you know how, but a bit of a software fail that left me scratching my head for several minutes. Otherwise, it's all fairly straightforward to control via the app and a lot better than the clunky old wall-mounted controller. You can nudge your schedules about quite easily, like this morning as my wife is working from home, so it's a few seconds to start the heating at 7.30 rather than 5.30am. Previously that would have involved twenty minutes with the options on the controller which frankly I wouldn't have bothered with.
You can turn it on by shouting at Alexa. Unfortunately, you can't switch it back to the schedule by shouting at Alexa. This seems to be the curse of every Alexa skill though, you can do but never undo. It's like the developer of every skill does half and then breaks for lunch and never comes back (which I suppose has a kind of symmetry). To be fair, quite useful if you wake up before the heating is scheduled to come on – previously you'd have to risk hypothermia and tripping over a cat headfirst down the stairs in your rush to press the advance button in hallway cupboard.
Yeah, yet another bloody hub in the technological cupboard of shame under the stairs.