The system uses RS422, with a base64 encoded AES key in the aaservice binary, and I was contemplating building an esp32 based open source implementation of the controller.
That's a crazy weird coincidence.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005918675239.html
The connectors on the small RJ45 daughter board are JST-SH 1.0
The yellow lead puts out 4.2v to replicate a Li-Ion battery (as far as I can tell). You can ignore this.
Red is positive
Black is negative
Green is usb d+
Blue is usb d-
https://git.nethack.net/rob/aircon
Essentially it just talks to the android tablet API to do things so it's no help if (when) the tablet dies, but it means I can do things like:
- have the entire unit turn on/off as needed based on average zone temperatures
- open/close vents based on room owners' devices being online, or temperatures of nearby zones
- dump zone temperatures to influxdb
That being said it's more likely the hardware mfg is just trying to claw in more margin.
I should really write that up at some point too.
Shame on this manufacturer.
I usually get the 'oh did not think of that' because logging is a serious afterthought in many cases. It is boring and you just drop in log4j and log away right?
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-West-Australians-called-sandgr...
People like you are the ones that make the internet worth logging on for.
(solid post, also solid rant, mate)
I would have used wood and nails. You must have terrifically strong emotions!
I specifically went for units that were IR controlled rather than any proprietary smart B.S.
For the smarts, I used cheap IR blasters from AliExpress and hooked them up to HomeAssistant.
I just mounted cheap Lenovo tablets to the wall to do the room-dashboard thing to allow controlling lights/AC without a phone.
These kind of horror stories only serve to reinforce my decision.
https://smartlight.me/smart-home-devices/wifi-devices/wifi-d...
Since there's no feedback mechanism, how do you solve for when the state of the unit(s) gets out of sync with HomeAssistant's?
It just doesn't matter that much in my experience. If an issued command didn't work, it's easy to tell anyway (it's hot/cold), and you can just repeat it. HomeAssistant also has bits of special handling for items that don't communicate their state back, called "assumed state".
For the rare times I want to control my AC when being away from home, I have an air monitor nearby. I can just check if the temperature/humidity has changed, and repeat the command if it didn't work. If you _really_ cared you probably could script it to do it automagically, but I didn't feel the need to bother.
https://tasmota.github.io/docs/Tasmota-IR/#sending-ir-comman...
If you are in the room, you'll know soon enough, otherwise I guess it could be possible to rely on the audio feedback (a light beep) that the AC probably emits when it successfully receives a command. (and add a temperature sensor to check that it's working properly)
I guess you should hide those remote in a drawer and remove the batteries when you start using homeassistant
The completely overkill setup would be to get a different remote control, get my DIY receiver to accept that and convert it to my AC unit's IR code, updating HA while at it. The remote's state would be out of sync still, but it'll keep the units in sync with HA.
I have Zigbee contact sensors that provide on/off feedback to HA by detecting if the louvers are open.
I built an esp32 IR sender and put Tasmota IR on it. It has first class support for the Daikin. It can't receive but it seems no need as it's 100% reliable.
Lennox uses a proprietary system like this one but the old school controls were visible on the control boards and due to a freak accident when an installer was levelling the floors for new flooring and cut the old wire I had a 5 wire thermostat wire installed instead of the 4 wire it came with.
Perfect.
$50 thermostat, wired it in. Powers on. Fan powers on. A/C condenser? Nada.
Official replacements were $700+, upgrades were $800.
Checked around, found an offerup seller selling the upgraded model for $400. Deal.
Met the guy, he gave strong, "I stole this, don't ask too many questions" vibes at first glance, and I was about to back out of the deal, but something clicked in my gut and I went with it.
Got it home, wired it up. Fan turns on. No AC. @#$@!#$%@#$^
On a hunch, went outside and checked the power for the heat exchanger. I had unplugged it for safety reasons but plugged it back in afterward, but gave it the snuggy test just in case.
Sparks shot out as it re-engaged. It's Alive!
The $50 one might have done the job, but no point in re-rewiring the whole shebang as the money is already spent.
If this system goes down, I'm going mini-split ductless. Forget this noise.
For one of the rooms i opted for a IR/RF transmitter and the RF covers any RF enabled devices in the house (433mhz + 315mhz[i think but haven’t tested])
There are a fair number of DIY thermostat projects online, but all that I have found were one-offs by their creators, or were for specific kinds of systems like boilers.
I've been batting around the idea of starting a general-purpose IoT thermostat that only uses cheap, widely-available components that anyone can easily duplicate with a BOM and 3D printer.
I use AC units that come with IR remotes (Samsung maybe??) but the timers don't work for some reason. It would be great to hand roll some automation, but I never "hacked" IR remote/receiver systems.
Home Assistant supports a huge range of integrations.
Personally I am using Broadlink RM4 Mini IR blasters. One in each room. They get added to Home Assistant as devices.
Then I use one of the climate add-ons that can send IR commands via the Broadlinks.
Out of curiousity, did you have any resources you were following to set this up? I'm pretty new to HA - basic devices etc seem fine, but I'm not entirely sure where to go next!
I'm using Broadlink RM4 Mini's I got off AliExpress. They've got a powerful enough IR signal that I've found I don't need them sitting way out in the open and obvious. One is tucked behind a TV and not quite in direct LoS, one is behind, but it reflects off the wall just fine, another behind a bedside table.
For the integration/Climate control thing I'm using SmartIR. Configuring it is a bit weird, you have to put it direct into the configuration.yaml file unlike other integrations.
smartir:
check_updates: true
climate:
- platform: smartir
name: Bedroom AC
unique_id: bedroom_ac
device_code: 1293
# https://github.com/smartHomeHub/SmartIR/blob/master/docs/CLIMATE.md#available-codes-for-climate-devices
controller_data: remote.mini4c_bedroom
temperature_sensor: sensor.airquality_ikea_bedroom_temperature
humidity_sensor: sensor.airquality_ikea_bedroom_humidity
power_sensor: binary_sensor.contact_bed_acI have a Broadcom one which works well but expensive.
The Broadlinks RM4 minis were pretty cheap on AliExpress. I think I paid about $15 each? Might have to wait for specials to come up to get the lowest price.
There is a very real need for modern variable-speed units, and vendors just keep fucking it up by using proprietary protocols locked into their ecosystem. TRANE in the US is similar.
And this is really annoying because variable-speed pumps solve all the problems with short cycling and oversized systems.
I was also told if my unit was a Trane, they weren't allowed to sell me the combo! (My unit is a Goodman.) What a rip off!
Temperature sensors are all standardized for the most part (well, they don't seem to be anything special) but I'm not sure about chlorinators... Mine has a strange (electrical) connector and 100% proprietary threads on the PVC connectors (that were easy enough to reverse engineer in OpenSCAD: https://www.printables.com/model/24144-t-cell-cleaning-stand).
Fortunately there's plenty of 3rd party competition for things like that. Even though I had a Hayward system I was able to purchase a compatible chlorinator off Amazon for a fraction of the price Hayward was charging.
I'm all about stupid, but repairable appliances now.
But the insane control systems compensate for it.
While it would be nice for the protocol to be documented (would realistically only be used by a very small number of users), the only real way you would be able to get a standard for something like this to work is if you went the Bluetooth route and did generic scenario-based profiles (e.g. HFP, A2DP, SPP), and optionally some "GATT" or "generic attribute" parameters. However, as we see with Bluetooth LE, everyone just uses GATT and implements their own little proprietary thing over it and you're back to the same problem.
Some of these systems attempt to be "smart" and just use the 24V C/W/Y1/Y2 etc protocol as a "standards compliant fallback". You don't necessarily lose ALL of the smarts, but the unit has to essentially use physics magic to make an educated guess about the information (for example, if you use a on-off thermostat, you can't really measure the temperature of the setpoint, so you don't know how close you are unless you somehow make an observation over many cycles.
I think that reasonable attempts to address this problem could involve some kind of extension to the old 24V interface - say, by offloading the actual "policy" part of system control to the "thermostat" i.e. have something that goes from 0-10V where 5V is off, 0V is full cooling and 10V is full heating. This allows you to choose your own temperature sensor situation, but complicates setups where more than one zone or thermostat is required. Of course, it will be very difficult for the industry to settle on a solution to this. Qualcomm's Quick Charge 2.0 was a very simple protocol similar to this, which was essentially self-documenting and not something that needed versioning, but of course, needs changed, 3.0 came and went, 4.0 came and went, and by the time USB C and USB PD came around you ended up with a full on data protocol API with all the OSI layers and of course, vendor specific extensions.
You could define some complicated protocol where you don't conform to a standard but you publish an API for your system (of course, there is no incentive to do this), and larger vendors like Control4 or Lutron, Crestron can program their products to interface with it. Unfortunately this doesn't allow the customer full choice over thermostats, because now you have to deal with N vendors x N thermostat vendors, which isn't scalable and you'll end up in dependency hell.
The closest thing I can think of to a standard, and the way it is solved in larger buildings, is through something called BACnet. It appears to use the Bluetooth model of "scenario based profiles", with all of the disadvantages that come with that, but the primary disadvantage is that it has to be to some degree manually configured to route data where it needs to go - and I don't think this is something installers are currently equipped to do at home scale.
Realistically, the "thermostat" is just a vestigial component in modern terms and really, it's just a user interface and thermometer now. Without getting into the wish to have open sourced app control or whatever, it's hard to define what the "thermostat" does and what the "system" is doing, and whether the device that sits on the wall is really a "thermostat" deserving of being interchangeable anyway. I have heard from a friend that does home automation integration that many clients don't like the default thermostat because it doesn't look very aesthetically pleasing. In this case, I'm definitely sympathetic to the need for customizability but it seems difficult to achieve in practice.
Alas, vendors that interface with customers do not sell appliances - they sell "solutions", specifically solutions to the problem of their own making, i.e. them inserting themselves between the buyer and the appliance they're buying.
There really is nothing complicated there. I have some background in lift (elevator) systems, and they have similar requirements. Modern lift systems use variable frequency drives for smooth start/stop, and they came up with compatible protocols that allow users to mix-and-match controllers.
In the end, there just needs to be a simple protocol to command the motor to run at a certain speed. It can be CAN-based, it can be based on RS-485, etc. For additional smarts, throw in readings from the sensors inside the AC units (pressure, coils temperatures).
Then the control units can be made by third parties. They can do all kinds of prediction-based logic, complicated PID controllers, whatever.
> Some of these systems attempt to be "smart" and just use the 24V C/W/Y1/Y2 etc protocol as a "standards compliant fallback". You don't necessarily lose ALL of the smarts
You actually do with TRANE units. They become completely dumb, not even 2-stage emulation.
> The closest thing I can think of to a standard, and the way it is solved in larger buildings, is through something called BACnet.
I have BACnet at home, for wired temperature/humidity sensors, the same RS-485 network is also used for Somfy shades ( https://github.com/Cyberax/py-somfy-sdn ). BACnet is a low-level system, and it needs higher-level profiles. But yes, exposing the motors and the sensors inside the AC units over BACnet would be a great start.
Any tablet worked. The only reason it die not work ootb were completely arbitrary restrictions.
The control boxes can do whatever complicated things they want. But the interface to control them should and can be standardized.
What a fun, completely coincidental quirk that that time appears to fall outside the warranty window, hey?
https://www.tesla.com/support/8gb-emmc-recall-frequently-ask...
My guess is that their "RAM Plus" feature (aka swap) combined with the memory hungry modern android apps turned out to be a nasty timebomb. Which has or still is bricking millions of smartphones after a few years of usage.
The underlying flash memory is trash and the controller already does a ton of heavy lifting to keep the data coherent.
Great, right?
The local carrier dealer lied and said the unit wasn't under warranty. They lied again when reminded of the class-action settlement, claiming only part were included and said would cost a fortune in labor.
When I called Carrier and told them what their factory authorized gold/preferred/whatever-they're-called dealer was pulling, Carrier confirmed I was correct and even verified the unit's serial number and said that if the dealer had checked the SN, they would have found it was covered.
The dealer then said 'fine, but those parts are going to take weeks to get from the warehouse' knowing damn well I had no heat, in the winter. They had us over a barrel and they fucking knew it, and I didn't have any way to prove that claim wrong.
At the end of the day, I could probably buy an aftermarket fan off the Internet and install it myself, spending far less than the certified technician would charge to install the "free" OEM replacement part.
I had a Phillips 4K LED TV I purchased on sale in April 2021. The TV was glitchy, and I'd get all sorts of weird problems with it - but nothing really terrible.
Then two weeks into January this year, the picture suddenly becomes a jumbled mess of vertical stripes. One second it's fine, the next second it's broken.
Luckily we have a general 5 year warranty period here in Norway, and TVs are expected to last for at least 5 years. I called the shop, and they told me to just bring the TV.
When I get there with the TV, I notice two other identical TVs. I check out the note that hangs on them, and see that they are broken, with the same symptoms as mine. Both had purchase dates around March / April 2021.
I can only assume some component failure.
Isn't that the point of the warranty? They tell you they think the product will last for X years, and then it lasts about X years, just like they warranted.
Honestly, I think something needs to be done so that companies are held liable for expensive products failing and needing expensive repairs after a year or two.
It will most likely be "How do we restrict this hack" and will eventually get into more restricted/quirky hardware & software.
It would be interesting if someone already in AC repair made it part of their business though. That's when you'd see the teeth come out.
A couple of weeks ago my AC blower fan stopped working, the compressor would run. I went up and found out that the capacitor was bad, and took a picture of it, buying a replacement. Took about 15 minutes to replace and I probably saved myself at least $400 (no AC is an emergency in the desert, and they will charge you accordingly).
Fixing household appliances can be fun too!
We've got some pretty fucked up protectionist rules about what you can and can't do in/to your own home. It's nuts.
Now, nobody is actually watching most of the time, so you're usually fine, but it's as stupid as being illegal to replace a tap or existing light fitting. Every so often state governments review the rules and get swamped by trade associations who say the rules are there to prevent people being 'scammed' by untrained 'handymen' and are there for your own protection. This regulatory capture means that legally you need to complete a four year apprenticeship before you're allowed to change a plug! And another one if you want to do any basic water plumbing.
I wouldn't be surprised if what the guy did in this blog is strictly speaking illegal - for instance when it comes to data cables, you need to be a qualified electrician with data specialty to install them. You can plug ethernet cables into your computers yourself (wow! such privilege!), but if you install them even by getting some stick-on plastic conduit and passing the cable through that, you're in contravention and could potentially be fined, up to thousands of dollars. For sticking some plastic tubes to the wall in your own house.
Obviously there is some acceptable line here, but I think the States handles this decently well enough. In Austin where I live you can get what is called a “homeowners permit” in a lot of cases. Meaning the city will come look at your work and as long as it’s up to code you get a legal permit just like a contractor would get (https://www.austintexas.gov/page/homeowners-permit). You can only do this to your own home so it’s not a shortcut to running a chuck in a truck business without a license.
What I think we really need to do though is make publishing these control standards mandatory under right-to-repair laws - no one should need to be reverse engineering them, you bring a product to market you have to provide the complete spec for it's software interface and data.
Do that, and I bet we'd find in a few years every new appliance would support a common serial port standard and come with a code page in the manual for it (ironically the prevalence of Tuya-smart stuff has come very close to making this happen, but they go to absurd lengths to lock you out of the wi-fi microcontrollers).
My fitbit wifi scale, which I love and has been doing a great job for the last 10 years has now lost support to pair it with the new fitbit app, thanks Google!
Perhaps someone has already made a home assistant plugin that does this?
I've done this repair myself, it takes maybe <15 minutes and is almost impossible to mess up. Even if you were find spending a couple hundred dollars to have someone come out and do it, you'd still go hours at least without AC. Which depending on the time of year can be miserable.
You don't need the same model number as the original cap, it just has to have the same voltage rating, capacitance, and number of terminals. You might have to get creative with the mounting solution if the new cap is different than the old one in terms of shape or size.
Also, pro-tip: when you replace a the cap in the outside unit, install it upside-down so that water doesn't pool on top of the cap and rust it out from the top.
I have a gas furnace and I also keep a spare ignitor handy. It's not a matter of "if" those go bad, it's "when."
Just don’t cook yourself with the remaining good capacitance.
Personally, I wonder what could be done to temporarily get the capacitor to “kick” for a few more times to get your home temperature down as you get your replacement. Chill the capacitor?
It stopped heating and it turned out there are solenoids that control the natural gas flow. Quick disassembly (back when products were made for easy repair) and swapping out two $8 solenoids from Amazon and I was back in business.
It really is an easy repair. Needs a screwdriver and knowledge enough to shut off the electricity to touch the wires. According to code every one of these condenser units outside has a disconnect right there so you don’t even need to turn off the power at the breaker box. Just pull that disconnect, open up your outdoor condenser unit, snap a pic of the specs on the capacitor (it’s the only thing that looks like a soda can) and order one off Amazon and stash it somewhere. It’s a tiny part. It will take like 5 minutes max and save you several hundred bucks and a lot of sweat eventually.
FWIW, when ac dies it’s usually in this order of root causes:
Float switch: your condensate drain line got clogged because it just does and you need to clear it. You can proactively prevent this by pouring bleach or vinegar down the line periodically (what clogs it is usually some sort of gnarly plant like growth from all the moisture) or if it’s clogged you need to clear it. The hvac guys will charge you 300 bucks to blow pressurized air through the pipe or you can literally just duct tape a wet shop vac to the thing and suck it out yourself. Attachments can be purchased on Amazon for reasonable price.
A capacitor issue is the second most common. If it ain’t the float switch almost always it’s the capacitor. You can increase your capacitor longevity and also decrease your electric bill by changing your air filter regularly but also hosing down the outside condenser coils every few months or so. Almost everyone knows about the air filter but few people know about hosing down the coils. This makes a HUGE difference. We are talking like 20-30% of your electric bill in hot climates if you don’t do it. Just take a hose and spray downward on the grates and get all that dust and dead grass from mowing out of there. You won’t hurt the thing. Why does this help? Well, it’s better to think of AC not as adding cool air. There’s no such thing as adding cool air. Only removal of heat. How does heat get removed out of your house? Through that condenser unit. If those grates are clogged up the heat cannot escape and the unit must work harder to do less effective job. So keep those coils clean.
Everything else after that is way less common. Yeah compressors do die. Motors die. Refrigerant leaks. Computer components die. Thermostats fail. However it’s very rare that the issue is something other than these two things in comparison. Like probably 80% of all HVAC residential calls are probably the above two things I mentioned.
Fun read otherwise and wonderful to see someone stick it to them this way, but that type of thing really pisses me off.
Redirecting your customers to a third-party/pirate APK redistributor of unknown authenticity... reality defies parody.
But more importantly, what's the actual threat vector here? This isn't his personal phone. Just don't connect the tablet to your Wi-Fi. What's it going to do, sneakily increase your temperature by 1 degree?
Why even build those warnings in, if you're going to make your own mechanics ignore them.
As the sibling comment mentions, they are signed files.
Yes, it was out of warranty, but it's abhorrent that anyone should have to purchase a whole new anything when a small portion of it can be replaced independently.
There is no specific time when the consumer guarantees no longer apply to products. They may apply even after the manufacturer's warranty period has past.
Essentially, there’s a statutory warranty that exists regardless of any warranty term quoted by the manufacturer, and the manufacturer is on the hook if the product is not fit for purpose or sufficiently “durable”.
[1] https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/buying-products-and-servic...
The real problem is that the quoted replacement price is so high, given that we know the tablets themselves are like $30 each.
They could control the whole system over POE with a bog standard usb to ethernet adapter, make the app easily run on any android device and charge the customer less for a better more reliable product, but rather than do that they rigged up some janky interface and built a custom enclosure hired out to an overseas manufacturer who bought the parts for $20 and charged the middleman $100 for them, who then charged the dealer $250 for them, who then charged the installer $600 for them, who then charged the customer $1600 for them. (Got to get that 2.5x margin on hardware every step of the way, after all!)
If they had gone with a POE system, wiring would have been cheap, replacement parts plentiful, and customer satisfaction would be sky high. Sure, you would sell fewer full systems, but to me that is a small price to pay for having the most useful and interesting systems on the market with fans creating all sorts of mods and integrations for your equipment and becoming customers for life.
We had an Advantage Air system installed last year, and the cheap, low-powered nature of the tablet was immediately obvious. Nice to know it can fairly easily be replaced with any old device or phone as and when it craps out.
You know that tablet is cheap and is going to die. Figure out the procedure to replace it with something that doesn't suck before you've lost your heat/air conditioning.
I have several Daikin split units and installed Faikins on them. https://github.com/revk/ESP32-Faikin
Having the PCBs made, flashing them, sourcing the connectors,and installing them was a bit involved, but setting them up in home assistant was one of the best things this nerd has ever done.
I wish there was an over-arching collective of hackers who would teach the principles, and help collaborate to decipher these protocols and help build software and microcontrollers to replace proprietary systems like the one Advantage Air has. I bet a simple ESP32 could handle this.
Nice write up though
Just had to deal with this recently. My gas oven control panel died and one would think to replace the control panel ($300 ish part), but I had my doubts. Pulled everything apart and hooked up a meter to what should be the power coming from the cord, no continuity. Took apart everything on the top two levels of the stovetop to find a thermal switch buried under there that had failed. That thermal switch is forever OOS (was $35 at least for a replacement if you could find one), so I hopped on amazon and bought a 5 pack of microwave thermal safety switches with the same cutoff temps for $6 that fit the push connectors. 10 year old higher end gas oven was fixed for about $1 in parts.
Probably would have been at least $200 from an appliance repair company just for the labor of having to take apart the entire stovetop to get there. Not sure how many people would even bother although it was about $2k new.
How many hours did you spend taking it apart diagnosing the problem, though? I'm guessing at least 2? $100/hr for that seems pretty reasonable to me.
(Granted, I agree with you in that I'd prefer to figure it out and repair it myself, even if it would take me 5x as long as someone trained to do it.)
I've had countless of times where simple/cheap part replacements have negated the need of a very expensive fix, or a complete replacement of a device, it's very satisfying.
I can vividly remember one case, almost two decades ago where a 10 cent o-ring (hardware shop price) has saved an old but otherwise fully functional Ice cube maker and has stopped me from having to buy a new one, or invest relatively too much in a workshop retrofitting it with a replacement to an old, no longer produced valve, at least according to said workshop. To top it off, it has been working perfectly ever since.
I wish there were more organized resources, as well as help forums for DIY repairs/retrofits for household appliances and other common devices. Way too much stuff gets thrown away because of simple part failures and that's just no good.
I’m contemplating writing an end-to-end manual for a set of laser machines I maintain, including missing schematics, gerber/eagle/fusion files and binaries for the MCU, how to flash it etc. Some parts which are required for servicing are only handed to manufacturer-employed technicians (I obtained those too from retired people). It’s been a riot to get everything and to learn how to disassemble, troubleshoot, fix, reassemble these machines.
But am I ever pissed at the manufacturer and the aftermarket for screwing people over. The markups on simple items are insane and they remove tags and IDs so you don’t know what the parts are. At this point I don’t care what’s proprietary information and what isn’t.
You either waste a tons of money on consumer grade product, and spend even more when they break, or you become a domain expert, hacking your way through it and running HomeAssistant (or similar)
Just get up and use a remote control people. It's not that hard. You really don't need an app to do it remotely. Your life will be fine.
That USB dongle was bodged on to the USB port D+/D- pins going to the tablet's SOC. If you then connect a PC to that port, you have two hosts (SOC & PC), and one peripheral on the same pair of data lines. No bueno.
I can't believe the bodge job inside that tablet. It looks like the prototype became the final product.
[0]quotes because looking at that FTDI chip though my bet is it's actually serial over Cat5...
Not only the remote would never be where it belongs, but I just had to plug in a shelly to have a full automation connected to my home assistant.
The vendors really wanted me to go for their solution until I met a guy who said sure, this is what he did too.
One of the shellies failed right after two years (warranty time in the EU) and fixing costed 20€ + 1 day. In the meantime my automation was replaced with my finger.
Please do this via a script on GitHub
Then it'll make it easier for other people to use on other tablets
It has some very cheap looking digital controller system with a ridiculous amount of complexity around it. There are 2 separate computers involved somehow. Just for spinning the blower. I was operating under the impression that an induction motor could be powered directly from the AC mains.
The complexity is certainly not adding to any sort of comfort, etc. The overall system is unbelievably noisy. This is all so clearly engineered to require as much maintenance as possible on purpose.
It would take me months of figuring to determine how to take 2 wires and turn them into 40. The easy part is throwing it into the plenum in such a way that the wires hang within millimeters of the rotating assembly.
(1) I'm working on monitoring the inverter (Deye) thru a RS485 interface using a small SBC that connects to the IoT restricted VLAN. Will report here as soon as it's ready but will require time. I wonder if the same could be achieved with the AC units (Hisense). One could learn remote signals and send them say from a ESP* board through WiFi, but there would be no feedback from the AC units.
This demonstrates where the new tech products are bringing us: to scrape everything and buy the entire thing again.
This is the direction of the automotive industry as well, so in the future you won't be able to repair a car easily too.
Next time it dies I plan to try to find the defective relay, desolder and resolder it myself. Imagine how much better it would be if there was a read out with an error code on a fridge with easily removable relays you could unplug and replace. I know it is not a priority to make these kinds of things repairable, but I wish it was.
It would be cheaper to ship a replacement PCB with the fridge.
It's definitely predatory practice by the vendor. I wonder how much it would cost to pay someone with your skillset to do this hack -- probably comparable to what they wanted you to pay, if not more?
This almost merits an angry on-site visit, sheesh.
DIY is the way to go, only if you know what you are doing.
The code seems to allow for both "PIC7KS6-EZ" and "PIC7KS6" unless I'm misreading it.
1. PoE to USB
2. Smali debugging
Funnily, I thought it was serial over CAT5 because we have a couple of old network switches that are configured like that.
Defense in depth, baby! (against customers)
Why have one proprietary component when you can have two...
Since it's not just a generic non-programmable serial chip I assume it's also doing something more. But it doesn't do Ethernet so I bet it's not actually PoE but like... power+serial over Cat5
>> actively monitor temperature and adjust vent opening angles and fan speed to achieve desired temperatures across multiple zones.
Who actually wants this junk? Air conditioning is a simple series of bang-bang controllers. A handful of relays turn things on and off as needed. There is no need for "vent opening angles". Vents are open or closed, pumps on or off. The thermal mass of the structure keeps everything within a narrow band as systems cycle. And then the oxymoron buzzwords like "actively monitor". No. Unless it has a little arm to spin a wet bulb, it passively reads the temperatures and sends and over/under signals as needed, something that for decades was done with a blob of mercury on a spring. The moment this system even hiccupped, I would gut it and replace with basic 4-wire thermostats in each zone.
Ah .. takes me back.
For any one thing, it feels like not a huge deal. Oh well, a thing is broken and needs replacement. But at scale, it feels like this is how everything ends up dying, lately.
For example, our LG microwave, oven, and dishwasher all started to fail around the same time simply because the awful membrane buttons collapse or just stop working. You'd expect to start considering appliance replacement when the actual parts that do the _work_ can't function anymore, not because you simply can't turn it on anymore.
I would love to not send three heavy appliances to the landfill just because of a few buttons that don't work anymore, but I have more money than time. What's more, how long will it be until (made up hyperbole incoming), say, the input button on a TV also fails, and then you can only use HDMI 2 until that port wears out from swapping things into it, or, <insert basically any other thing you could possibly own that can be rendered useless simply because the power button stops turning it on>.
It becomes infuriating to think of all the waste that's generated from these little stupid things.
I for one was upset when I bought a HiFi amp from Cambridge Audio (CXA-81) and it came with an IR controller. The only way to be able to control that amp through the app is by means of a DAC which costs another couple of thousand dollars. I refused to accept this as my solution. I wrote a web server that used a Raspberry Pi Zero W and an IR transmitter along with a rudimentary Android app that had a series of buttons which corresponded to the functionalities I needed.
If anyone is interested the web server (written in Go) that the Android app talks to is located here https://github.com/ozfive/CXA81-IR-Remote-Server
I will upload the the Android app source in the next week.
Like some of the commenters, I've been thinking about the growing frustration with these kinds of business practices. It really makes you wonder about the balance between smart technology's convenience and the long-term costs they can impose.
What do you think would be the most effective way to encourage companies to offer more consumer-friendly solutions, especially for minor issues like this? Should there be stronger regulations, or is there a market opportunity for more open-source, user-modifiable systems?
Muradiallaberdee@gmail.com
As I creep closer to retirement, I look forward to spending some of that time contributing to the fight against abusive bullshit like this.
Then to your tablet question: even on simple non-zoned systems, lots of manufacturers have totally moved away from oldschool thermostats that have simple fan/compressor/power/etc.. wires, in favor of "communicating" systems. "Communicating" means there's a proprietary protocol that their thermostats, control boards, and other misc electronics in compressor/condenser assemblies speak; for which there is no standard. A handful of modern advancements kind of necessitate this, such as variable speed compressors (yea, you could totally control that with normal electrical hardware, but....no one cares).
Couple all that with people willing to pay damn near anything to cool off when its 97f outside, and you end up where we are today.
Companies won't stop fighting it. We mustn't stop fighting for it.
Now imagine a service doing this, with a manager and all the overhead.
Next time just get a dumb thermostat, or perhaps, if you're so inclined, something cheap off-the-shelf like an ecobee.
Fortunately there are some heat pumps that allow you to use any old thermostat; they figure out the right speed to run at using their own temperature sensors.
Regardless, this wasn't really the thermostat: this was a control system that monitors temperatures in each room/zone, and opens and closes the vents to hit the temperature targets in each zone. Pretty sure no dumb (or even generic smart) thermostat can handle that.
In Australia there are exactly zero heat pumps on the market that you can use an ecobee with. It just isn’t an option. There are no off-the-shelf options.
You don’t have to pay $1700 for this garbage $50 tablet, but it is the default that every installer will offer you without mentioning any other options (and the only options are the manufacturer’s proprietary controllers). In this case his builder procured it for him without even telling him the price. He may not even have been given a choice. You have to be extremely motivated to stay on top of every decision like this along with the thousands of other decisions involved in building.
You don't get asked what you want or a choice in changing it to a different device...