OMFG; I am in Perth, I have the same system, the very same problem and solved it almost the same way and was in the process of writing it up.
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.
Tiny QOL change without too much work, you could install something like teamviewer on the tablet, and now you're able to control your AC remotely from your PC, your phone, or anywhere!
The MyAir (or e-Zone) app can already be accessed remotely. You install the app on your phone and pair it with your system by connecting to the same LAN. After the initial pairing it can be used from everywhere.
Hey - As the owner of a similar system I have a question for you - do you use their phone app to control your system from your phone in/out of the house, and did it still work after this?
Cool, that's all I needed to know, I'll be following in your footsteps at some point, thanks for taking the leap and doing all this :)
Now back to connecting an orange-pi zero to the petcube cam someone bought me for Christmas. I've found TTL pins on there and I want to know what's going on...
This is from my earlier notes, hope it helps some.
Pin 1: RS422 +/B
Pin 2: RS422 -/A
Pin 3: ? - appears to be unused; connected to unpopulated pad on PCB
Pin 4: GND
Pin 5: ~14.2v DC unloaded
Pin 6: GND
Pin 7: ?
Pin 8: ?
Shield: GND
Note: the RS422 protocol has a basic bus arbitration built-in to allow both ends to communicate. The control unit sends <U>Ping</U=xx> messages, after which it opens a slot for the Tablet to communicate back to it. At least on my system xx represents a simple CRC value that can be used to validate message authenticity. I haven't seen any AES encryption in use, messages I've seen are all plaintext, maybe the AES encryption was introduced in a later revision.
Interesting, not sure what's going on there then.. how recently was your system installed? Maybe they have updated the pinout on newer models? I'll go back and check though.
I got inspired, and have plugged in my scope, and then an RS422 to serial adapter, and I'm getting XML encoded (weird) CAN messages, which I presume are the same as what's on the CAN bus exposed on some of the control box's ports. I'll get out the can analyser tomorrow and check.
Now the trick will be to reverse engineer this protocol. Here's a tiny sample:
The AES encryption might be related to the android intent messages that are sent to the AAservice. I recall they had an encrypted mode and a "signed app" mode that AAservice will respond to
I have decompiled the apk and it produced a somewhat useful (but incomplete) package of Java source files, which can be useful for reverse engineering the serial protocol. For example:
<string name="parse_block_tag_ping"><U>Ping</U=db></string>
...
private static final byte[] f2305f = "getCAN ".getBytes(Charset.defaultCharset());
private static final byte[] g = MyApp.a().getString(R.string.parse_block_tag_ping).getBytes(Charset.defaultCharset());
private static final byte[] h = MyApp.a().getString(R.string.parse_block_tag_startu).getBytes(Charset.defaultCharset());
private static final byte[] i = "<request>Unknown</request>".getBytes(Charset.defaultCharset());
You can do the same, or alternatively ping me if you'd like me to email you the source package.
I have reached out to your email address (as described in your profile) with some additional information that I've been putting together. Let me know if you didn't receive my mail.
What the hell, why does a control system need an AES-secured control channel at all? The only possible intention is to make interop more difficult. If they wanted security then they wouldn't use a hard coded AES key.
The biggest maker of garage door openers in the U.S. has done the same thing. For a button that goes on the wall to open the door, now it sends an encrypted code instead of just shorting two wires so that you have to use their button instead of a regular doorbell button like people have been doing for decades.
I can't recommend ratgdo (Rage Against the Garage Door Openers) project highly enough. It implements the protocol and allows you to interact with the door: https://paulwieland.github.io/ratgdo/
The protocol itself is crazy, with obfuscated ternary data (instead of binary). People who reversed it are heroes.
Chamberlain and Liftmaster do this. They’re both owned by Chamberlain group and I believe they are the two most popular brands.
It’s caused tons of headache for people doing home automation stuff, especially since Chamberlain has cut off API access to home assistant. Then the home assistant people figure they’ll just rig a raspberry pi or something to short two wires, but then they hit this encryption nonsense.
I was looking into replacing the old unit with a new one with myq but then read about all the problems and decided to give this a shot. 3 years in and it's been a good decision.
so if the company has established they're willing to go that far to lock customers into their ecosystem and milk for $$$... it's not inconceivable that they also engineered (or chose not to fix) the cheap flash + chatty logging hardware failure for the same purpose.
I would switch brands instantly. This is a company that has no customer orientation and I have never seen a company recover from that (they might have financial success, but they will never create good products again). They probably will sell you expensive crap. This time the device was fixable, but the manufacturer worked against the user on that.
Shouldn't have to replace the aircon/heat-pump components, only the controller hardware. OP indicated that a new control system would be about $1700 (I assume AUD), or 14-17% of their 10k-12k estimate for the whole build.
Unless this scummy manufacturer also works with the aircon makers to lock those to their controllers. (That would be a great lawsuit to watch.)
They made the analysis, how long the flash will live and saw, that it will make it out of the warranty period. Thus they did not opt for more durable and expensive flash and/or software change.
I've seen this myself before. One process step before release of the control module was a write cycle analysis to make sure the unit will live for at least 10 years (i think) before the guaranteed write cycles of the flash memory were consumed.
You're both missing one of the more likely explanation.. that nobody gave much thought about how long the device would last. "It's solid state electronics, it'll probably outlast the warranty anyway".. I can imagine an aircon company puts a lot of effort into analyzing the air-conditioning unit itself to make sure it lasts at least as long as the warranty, with good margin. But I can totally see them winging it on an external control device, which was perhaps even a project they outsourced anyway.
I don't think actual malicious planned obsolescence is as prevalent as many believe. A device breaking right after warranty is not a good strategy to get repeat customers. It's also a huge risk if you miscalculated and you suddenly get a lot of warranty cases. You want a lot of margin there.
I've been involved in the design of a thing myself, where something the manufacturer hadn't clearly communicated - and we just barely caught - could have made the device die just around a typical warranty period for such a device. When we found out, of course we worked on this problem to make sure it didn't die prematurely.
Advantage Air doesn't produce ACs. They produce smart home solutions, including AC controllers. They're not winging it on an external control device, they're cheaping out on their main product.
Also, their claim is that they're not outsourcing. If you check their website, it claims everything is designed and manufactured in Australia.
Nevertheless, I'd have given them the benefit of the doubt if it were not for:
1. The only option being a full system replacement.
2. Communication protocol being encrypted.
3. App being locked down to certain hard-coded models.
None of these give me any hope that this is a well-meaning company that just has some issues.
Also, I think a company that sells a product most customers would only buy once or twice in their lives is not a company that expects many repeat customers.
> Also, their claim is that they're not outsourcing. If you check their website, it claims everything is designed and manufactured in Australia.
Looking at pictures like [1] and [2]
I suppose it's possible they're making their own generic android tablet control panel,
designed and manufactured in Australia
and they just happened to add a camera, side-mounted USB charging connector, a headphone socket, microsd card slot, and a battery charge level indicator, loads of space for a battery that isn't present, a connector named VBAT
and also a chinese-language bootloader
but accidentally forgot to include the power and data connector they need, poking out the back of the device
so they had someone bodge it on afterwards by hand with a soldering iron
but IMHO it's more likely they mean
"manufactured in Australia from components sourced internationally"
and one of those components is a generic android tablet.
Should've added a bit more snark to that line to properly communicate that I absolutely don't believe their claims that everything is designed/made in Australia.
It's very obvious they just went for the cheapest bottom-of-the-barrel tablet Alibaba has to offer on one of their main products. I wouldn't trust this company to do anything competently.
Locking in the model numbers for me is particularly icky. They are leveraging the Android and therefore Linux and open source communities efforts to make this custom display which would have cost them an arm and a leg to have custom built with half the features - then turning around and sticking two fingers up at those communities.
I generally treat my tablets and phones very well. I wouldn't trust a tablet, at scale, to last much beyond three years. By "at scale" that means, say, a replacement rate of less than 10%.
By contrast ACs are on the decadal scale.
Integrating a tablet can't work. It's a dumb idea from the outset.
Similar hardware can work. There are touchscreen UIs that do last for a long time, especially on an AC unit where they're not getting used all the time. But they aren't tablets. In particular I'd finger the lithium ion batteries optimized for tablet-style usage as something you don't put into a system you want to last about ten years. Most of my tablets "die" when the battery just becomes unusable.
And you probably want an LCD chosen for robustness rather than being the cheapest possible high resolution display... again, plenty of LCDs can last for a long time, but the trifecta of "high resolution", "cheap", and "lasts a long time" is asking an awful lot for a fleet of systems. ("Cheap" and "lasts a long time" is, by contrast, readily available; it just won't be pretty. But it'll work fine.) And by "high resolution" I don't mean "retina display", just anything suitable for a tablet. Ye Olde 640x480 is plenty for an AC display, even in monochrome.
You want something pretty, give it a way for a real app to access it on the network. Except don't bother, really, because there's no way you're going to maintain that for 10 years either.
> I don't think actual malicious planned obsolescence is as prevalent as many believe.
I've been saying this for a while.
Consumers are insanely price-sensitive while also short-sighted. They'll buy a $20 blender that will die in a year rather than the $100 blender that will last a lifetime.
Manufacturers know this and there's a race to the bottom on pricing. To get pricing as low as possible, quality and durability take a hit.
> They'll buy a $20 blender that will die in a year rather than the $100 blender that will last a lifetime.
One problem for consumers is that often it's very hard to tell which is which. There is no guarantee that a $60 item won't just be overpriced garbage which is as bad (or worse if they spent much of that money on unnecessarily complex features that reduce reliability) as the $20 one, so always picking the cheaper item that superficially might seem good enough is not necessarily irrational.
(of course this doesen't necessarily apply to all brands yet)
> Consumers are insanely price-sensitive while also short-sighted. They'll buy a $20 blender that will die in a year rather than the $100 blender that will last a lifetime.
It's so much worse than that... They'll buy a $500 blender that lasts 6 months if it comes with sufficient "smart" technology integration to make them feel like they're buying into a futuristic lifestyle that others can be jealous of.
Hence, home AC units controlled by fancy tablets (which are actually shit) instead of thermostats (analogue or even monochrome LCD digital units) on the wall. Because tracking down wherever your family members wandered off to with the control tablet is so much easier than simply turning a knob or pushing a button that never moves because it's screwed into place... It must be better, it's new and expensive....
Having worked with clients who apparently have little clue about technical details of what’s supposed to be their core tech, I’ll attribute to laziness or stupidity unless there’s ample evidence suggesting otherwise.
>I don't think actual malicious planned obsolescence is as prevalent as many believe.
Working in the electronics industry, I have never once heard anyone talk about this. Engineers love engineering, and if it was real their would be a whole field devoted to it. But there isn't.
Also, since this board is stacked with software guys...
Planned obsolescence is way easier to implement in software. How many of you have been asked to put a time bomb in a warrantied product?
Planned obsolescence is a term that lay people use to describe unfortunate breaking of things that are sufficiently complex to be considered "a magical black box". In reality it is just another apparition of Murphy's law.
Last time this topic came up on HN an engineer whose job it is to do these calculations and then re-engineer products not last as long popped into the thread
I'm pretty sure what happens in reality is that someone makes a crappy product and then the warranty claims keep coming and because warranty claims cost them money, they keep improving the quality until the warranty claims stop coming. It's not that they wouldn't improve the quality, it's that the bean counters don't see it in their spreadsheets and thus no time is allocated to engineers building the next revision.
In other words, _Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity._
This device should not need to write to storage. It has to save settings when the user manually changes them, which can't be more than a few kilobytes per year. Any other writes are likely an oversight on the developer's part.
Companies don't encrypt anything unless required. Except for code and databases...they encrypt and obfuscate those to keep people running back to them.
Anti circumvention laws don’t require good locks to provide the manufacturers a legal cudgel to use against anyone with the temerity to think they have the right to use and fix things they have paid for. The law (DMCA in the US, it looks like something called the Digital Agenda Act in Australia) is the real lock, not that AES key.
In theory, connected devices that control large energy loads ("large" on a household level of energy consumption) can be coordinated at scale to "attack" the power grid via instantaneously switching 1000's of units on and off at the same time.
That being said it's more likely the hardware mfg is just trying to claw in more margin.
I've got one of these systems too. Mine hasn't died yet, touch wood, but I was concerned enough about the possibility that I went as far as documenting the comms protocol and starting to design a pi hat to talk to the main control board.
Do it!
I don't live in Australia or have on of these systems, but I was intrigued by how the OP had gone around the company to save themselves 1500! I'm curious to see how people are resolving things like this, so that if I have issues myself sometime, I have ideas on where to start or what is necessary :)
sounds like the memory storage is failing on some sort of logging systems for these to be going down at the same time-ish (same number of logs per day written etc over cheap flash).
It is a conversation I have had with many a jr dev. 'ok you are logging this how much space is that going to take? how long do you want to keep it? what is your rotation schedule?'
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?
Reading the original post, wouldn't be a super cool idea to make a little ESP or RPI based system which acted as a controller for the airco and a network bridge? Then literally anything could interface with it. You wouldn't even need to wire it up. No need to install some shitty app from a company who are quite clearly c*ts.
I'm sure that they made things more difficult by employing proprietary hardware wherever they can (also to discourage competition), but yes, there are a bunch of sensors and actuators in there and any board with the appropriate i/o capabilities should be able to interface to them, however writing a working firmware would be next to a nightmare: how do you find developers who want to spend months reverse engineering an AC and also know enough about ACs to put together something that works?
Replacing household appliances brains with open counterparts would be a heck of a business opportunity to revive or prolong the life of dead/obsolete products, however I guess finding people who are interested enough to do that with FOSS, essentially selling only hardware and installation services would be really hard.
It's just a pin out interface controlled via software to turn things on or off. Its trivial. Get a raspberry pie, lookup the pinout docs stuffed away in your home manuals drawer, and write the measly logic required. The most difficult part is whipping up a UI and building the scheduling logic, if want/need it.
Timezone effect, I think. Just us and the whole of East Asia online now. The Poms and Europeans are just about to wake up, and the Americans have logged off for the night.
At least there's EU legislation that's slowly improving as well ensuring longer term warranties and the like. I hope that for household appliances like aircon or solar panels this warranty or support is set to its expected lifetime of 15-20 years. In this case, it should be mandatory that the control system can be easily swapped out by an aftermarket replacement, just like central heating thermostats are.
(in fact, replacing basic central heating thermostats with a tablet device has been very successful for one energy company in my country, see https://www.eneco.nl/energieproducten/toon-thermostaat/; it wouldn't have been possible if the thermostat data thing was some complicated / encrypted nonsense)
My own aircons are just simple individual items that are interchangeable between rooms.
There is no single control for the whole house but on the other hand I never let it run when I am away and I am never in 2 rooms at the same time so I just close the door so I only have to keep one room cool. I fail to see the need of an aircon I could control remotely with a smartphone or any smart bullshit system that control every room at the same time. And I think if I ever needed that I would probably just control the individual aircon via small esp32 with irtransmitter driven by a home server. That way the individual remotes would still be usable in case of an individual failure.
I have two separate aircons in our apartment. They both plugin to the wifi and I can control them locally from my home assistant instance. When hass detects nobody is at home, it will just automatically turn off both aircons with all the lights.
It is also handy if it is extremely hot like now and we're both out to monitor if it gets over 30 inside, so we can remotely get it cooler so the plants, cats or server will not suffer too much.
It's that golden hour where AU/NZ are up, Californian nerds are up and chilling and EU/UK are getting their first (or second) dose of caffeine. Just missing our East-Coast buddies :-)
They skimped on the tablet, grabbing a <$100 device for cheap. It should be a ruggedized / semi-industrial device with an expected lifetime as long as the device it controls, so at least 15-20 years.
That would set them back at least $800 (2021 prices: last time I had to spec a ruggedized tablet), which probably means $1200 out of the customer's pocket.
OTOH, they can find an industrial display + a Linux SoM (system-on-module) that can run linux or Android for under $200 in quantity.
Same diff though: no one cared, so they got what was cheap.
You have no idea how true this is :). I had to upgrade everything, the old site didn't even have SSL. But this annoyed me so much I wanted others to know how to fix it.
Super fun read. Reminds me of the old software cracking days… totally appreciate you sharing it, even though i likely will never have one of those AC units.
> You have no idea how true this is :). I had to upgrade everything, the old site didn't even have SSL. But this annoyed me so much I wanted others to know how to fix it.
People like you are the ones that make the internet worth logging on for.
I have some freak brain (and IKEA experience) which usually let's me do IKEA pretty well. What was it that happened in your case? I'm curious what brought you to that point.
Maybe they moved? In my experience, IKEA furniture that isn't solid wood (more and more of it is heading that direction to their credit) tends to not make it more than 1 move.
I just got done (mostly) reassembling a wardrobe. It's a bit more wobbly around the edges. I'm not sure if it's because I didn't put the shelves back in the exact spots (wasn't thinking and didn't label them during disassembly) or if it's something else, but once we decide it's not good enough for the room upstairs where it now lives, it's getting put in the dumpster.
I tend to assume that IKEA furniture shouldn't be actually taken apart once put together, and so far that's worked out fine for us. There are some pieces that are obviously repeatable (table legs screwed into metal mounting brackets) but with a lot of the steps you can feel as you're doing it the first time that it's not going to work well if you have to undo it.
True. Adding a few 2" screws (into pilot holes) makes an enormous difference to the rigidity of their (e.g.) wardrobes and kitchen units. Even on first assembly, but especially if you have to take apart and rebuild.
IIRC when we wanted to move one of the pretty large IKEA dressers that had to be at least partially disassembled to fit through the door there was no non-destructive way to dismantle it. And that was not about trivial things like the back panel being nailed, but about fasteners of the actual structural parts being inaccessible once you put the whole thing together. One would think that going through the assembly steps in reverse should work, but for some reason it did not. I ended up breaking few structural braces (~18x48mm pieces of fiberboard) at the back of the thing to take it apart and replacing that with wooden beams of the same size.
This "trend" of furniture being made of composite materials makes no sense to me. They're obviously so much weaker. I've had nightstands that sway like a tree in the summer breeze. Furniture today though doesn't feel much cheaper. Even the "luxury" brands these days, who charge big bucks, sneak in composite.
>This "trend" of furniture being made of composite materials makes no sense to me.
Solid wood is expensive, in a lot of the world.
And for furniture, you can't do a good job with cheap wood - if it twists or bows the doors won't close right, or the drawer will be tight. Need a hole in a particular position, but there's a knot? You're going to have a bad time. Wood with loads of knots doesn't look great. And of course, some types of wood cost a lot more than others.
Chipboard with veneer, though? It's super cheap. You can have any colour you like. It machines consistently, with no knots or checks like that. The response to temperature and humidity is even and consistent. If you need more strength, you can just order thicker boards. Sure, you can't leave it outside in the rain - but so what?
The main downside to flat pack furniture is a lot of people don't manage to assemble it right. A nightstand will end up in an awful state if the person who assembled it forgot to nail the back on properly, or used a short screw where a long screw was called for, or put a part in the wrong way around.
It depends, a lot of composite materials are actually stronger than just solid wood, while being lighter and easier to move. Sometimes there are too many shortcuts though.
Wood veneer over cheaper materials has been common for over a century at this point though.
It does make the furniture much lighter and therefore easier to move. I once had to move a plywood dresser and it was an experience i'd rather not repeat. Light furniture on the other hand is a pleasure to work with.
It was actually an order issue. I had ordered a child’s loft bed for pickup and went to go pickup when I got the email to tell me to do so. When I showed up they said they didn’t have it because they sold it. Apparently just because you order something for pickup doesn’t mean they can’t sell it off the floor.
I bought a bed that when built according to instructions would end up broken. I tried to blame my son, then I dug in on the details. Absolute garbage. Through it in the box,sort of, hauled it back in and demanded my money back. While I was waiting in line I was staring at signs exclaiming the policy about no refunds. Dude saw the look on my face and didn't say one word, just gave me money back. I ordered a replacement from Amazon made out of steel.
For the curious I did actually end up using very similar materials to ikea themselves. Pine for wood and melamine particle board. It cost me twice as much and took me 2 days to cut and assemble. Worth it.
Some IKEA furniture is great, some of it is terrible. 10-15 years ago, it was where you'd go when you needed a great-looking nightstand or coffee table for a fair price and didn't overly care how long it would last. These days, you can expect to pay a premium for the "IKEA aesthetic" and shopping experience.
Personally, the main thing I can't stand is that you have only limited ability to "choose your own adventure" and just go straight to the thing you're there to buy. I don't want to spend 25 minutes wandering through their corporate-curated displays to get to the kitchen faucets.
I think they still have a good price on AA NiMH batteries, though.
Edit: I am speaking to the US stores, I have no idea what IKEA is like closer to their homeland.
>Personally, the main thing I can't stand is that you have only limited ability to "choose your own adventure" and just go straight to the thing you're there to buy.
Sure you can, just go down to the basement area where you pick up all the boxes anyway. You only need to browse if you don't know what you want.
I love it too but this only becomes worthwhile if you manage to promote this post in social media somewhere. If you don't already have a strong social media presence or don't personally know anyone who does you can forget about it.
And here on HN you really have to get lucky, post at the right time and hope the flagging gangs don't get you.
I could not disagree more. This sort of thing is a public service. Even if only a dozen people find it valuable, it can be exceedingly valuable to them. It's worth putting this sort of thing on your website for that reason alone.
In complete agreement, I will add an anecdote from my experience:
I have a tiny hardly updated blog where I post stuff I do and assume nobody at all will ever read it. A month ago I got an email from somebody asking about a detail because her granddaughter's toy has the same problem that my daughter's did. It is so rewarding that some work I did for myself can continue to have value for people across the world.
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.
Yeah there’s very few edge cases, imo, where you need the feedback.
I have home assistant controlling an air conditioner in one room. (Well, mostly Node-RED.)
Every couple minutes it checks the temperature in the room and makes a decision on whether to call for cooling and tells the AC to turn on or off.
If it’s already on and cooling and it tells it to turn on… it’s a no-op, nothing happens. If it tells it to turn on and the command doesn’t go through… the room will stay warm so it will try the same thing in a couple of minutes. Same thing the other way (turning it off).
The remote has no feedback. I have found Tasmota IR 100% reliable over 3 years.
It sends the whole state on every transmission so the IR has no receiver.
If the message sent over IR always contains the full state, then it's only a matter of checking that the message was received.
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)
Not all state is necessarily transmitted over IR. For example, my unit has a button on the remote to turn the LED on or off; over the air this is just a toggle, only the AC knows which state the LED is in. (That said, that particular issue is easy enough to handle since changing any other parameter turns the LED back on, putting it back in a known state; there's no way to keep it off.)
AC is typically something you only need when you are inside the house so it is not like any freak situation would occur. If it happens only super occasionnally at worse you just set it the homeassistant state using the remote manually.
I guess you should hide those remote in a drawer and remove the batteries when you start using homeassistant
Similar problem here. I've thought of getting IR receivers to also listen for the remote's IR signal, since you have to be able to encode the IR protocol anyways. But even then sometimes the AC unit doesn't get the signal from my remote, so I'm unsure if that's a remote issue or receiver issue.
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.
A lot of remote controlled air conditioning systems (like mini-splits and windows units) send the entire state of the remote via the IR blaster every time a key is pressed so there's no chance of the two getting de-synced.
I got the Daikin for the same reason. You have to pay extra for a wifi module but after reading the reviews on their app, they mostly said, it kinda worked but largely useless.
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.
For Daikin, https://github.com/revk/ESP32-Faikin works well, and is tidier (and I think more featureful?) than an external IR port. Its existence is why I bought a Daikin!
I have a lennox heat pump in my house and the main thermostat controller went out a few months ago.
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.
IR is fine for these things, it's not like they need much data. I have an IR ceiling fan, no issues there (even if the receiver is on a little wire that is supposed to stick to something but the sticktivity of the tape sucked), and a radio "smart" lighting system (just simple on / off switch on a plug socket). And some radio spots from IKEA, although I'm sure that can be hooked up to a "smart" system.
IKEA has consistent smart system that has the annoying feature that it works the wrong-way around for my use-case. The cheap IKEA switches can control IKEA peripherals only directly, you can't use them to control something outside of the IKEA ecosystem. As most of the things I want to control are either HomeKit native things or digital outputs on PLCs it does not work for me. So in the spirit of true overkill I have few switches that contain OrangePi Nano (I had somehow absurd quantity of these laying around as leftover from previous even more misguided project)
You should be able to integrate your IKEA and Homekit devices into the one if you use HomeAssistant.
The IKEA Tradfri system is all Zigbee based - I have a bunch of their light bulbs and strips, plus a few smart power plugs. I personally have them attached to my own Zigbee controller, but there's also a Home Assistant Tradfri integration if you want to keep using their Smart Hub controller.
There's also a Home Assistant homekit integration, so you can use HA to orchestrate events happening on the Tradfri side to trigger something in the Homekit side, or vice versa.
(I don't have the Tradfri smart hub or Homekit devices, so YMMV on specific possible options)
My beef is with the fact that the battery powered switch wants to be paired with the thing it directly controls and cannot be used alone with it just controlling something that is on the other side of the tradfri gateway. The five button round one apparently can be used for that, but the two position square one can't.
By the way the tradfri gateway is weird piece of hardware, the thing is mostly empty and only contains small board with apparently the same RFSoC as all the other tradfri peripherals connected somehow to ethernet PHY…
I did the same, i recommend getting the moes or similar IR blaster (tyua under the plastic). Treat yourself and get a combo temp/humidity sensor + IR.
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])
I also just got AC last year, and while it doesn't have as many fancy features I'm glad I got one that works with standard 24V HVAC wiring. I built my own thermostat out of an ESP8266, I²C temperature sensor from adafruit, and three TRIAC circuits to control the fan, heat, and ac wires. Connected to MQTT and I can send control commands to it from my Home Assistant instance!
If you have the code for this publicly (or would consider making it so) I would be quite interested in it.
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.
My first model is pretty janky and definitely built as a one-off, lots of hard-coded stuff in the arduino code I wrote for it that are specific to my setup. I've been thinking about making a new, more streamlined version that could be fully assembled by a fab and sent ready to flash and wire up into an HVAC system. And of course, I'll publicly release the KiCAD files and code for that when it's ready! :)
Ah, do you have some tips for someone who wants to do something similar?
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.
funny - I literally bought a broadlink ir blaster today and got it hooked up to HA about 15 minutes ago, looking to do this exact same thing.
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.
Reddit and Google was how I chose which one to go with.
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.
Ugh. The whole "smart aircon" industry needs a good-sized asteroid wiping them out of the existence.
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 think there's probably a case for some regulation to force at least a minimum set of open standards, because that would make it possible to e.g. switch between systems based on intermittent renewable generation etc.
Also there's the variable-speed furnace/AC fan. These heavy bastards, with an add-on brain, are very expensive when they go bad. In my case, the brain part was fine, but the fan motor died. They wouldn't sell me just the motor, just the combo for $900US! And, if I install the combo, it voids the warranty. (I did install it, I'm the homeowner not a repairman.)
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!
I think home EV charging equipment is heading in the same direction as well. Very few have local and open APIs and instead depend on the vendors cloud service for control.
I don't know where you live, but in Europe there is a standardized backoffice management protocol that you can link up to basically anything in modern chargers. Except the cheapest of the cheapest.
I have mine running through EVCC.io, setting it up was as simple as throwing that thing in a docker container and figuring out the IP address of the chargepoint.
Yeah, but EV chargers are not that complicated. They are just smart contactors, with maaaybe some load management (EVSE can command the vehicle to reduce the charging rate).
Worst case, you just buy another one. It'll set you back a couple hundred dollars. Unpleasant, but not a big deal.
Air conditioning systems can easily cost more than $10k.
I am confused - aren't these boxes basically fancy three phase outlets? They probably have some safety fuses and some comms equipment, but the 'core' of the system is basically copper wire that connects you to the grid.
> aren't these boxes basically fancy three phase outlets?
That entirely depends LOL
So for AC chargers you are correct - 1 or 3 phases that go through a relay and, where required by code such as in Germany, a DC-sensitive RCBO, plus a small control board negotiating with the vehicle and monitoring voltage/current on one side and, again depending on where required by code, negotiating with the grid operator.
DC chargers are one hell of another beast, these have to contain all of the above plus powerful rectifiers, smoothing capacitors, EMI compliance...
Here in the UK at least they're generally single phase and required to moderate the power delivered to the vehicle based on the current electrical load in the house because most properties have quite low main cut-out fuse ratings. Bonus complications if you have solar or want any kind of access control.
At least swimming pool equipment is mostly just turning things on and off. If you look at the controller board for any given pool "timer" it's just a bunch of relays (for the pump, lights, and valves/servos).
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 just spent an afternoon recreating the custom threads on a Hayward chlorinator for my dad so I could 3D print a temporary replacement part. These don’t even use standard pipe fitting thread. -_-
Technology doesn’t matter, it’s all about relationships between dealers and manufacturers (or dealer/distributor/manufacturer, I am unfamiliar with this particular industry.) That holds true both for HVAC and pool equipment (and fire alarm systems, irrigation, etc etc)
If you can’t sell your product to the dealers because there in bed with the incumbents and the incumbent products generate service call work for the dealer, it doesn’t matter how good the tech is.
This is a people problem, not a technology problem. It can’t be solved by a couple programmers.
Pool equipment isn’t usable out of the box like a car or a thermostat, someone has to install it and service/maintain it.
Unless you want to build your own nationwide network of installers, you’re relying on third parties who already have existing relationships with pool equipment suppliers, which is why I said it’s a people problem and not a tech problem.
I am looking at replacing my A/C system, and having worked on the single stage single speed one that's currently installed, and looking at the insane shit everyone ships that's more complicated than your basic gas forced air furnace coupled with a single stage 16 seer A/C unit, there's no way I would ever buy something else. Every parts house has got inexpensive replacements in stock for the simpler units and service is easy; good luck if you have go find the unobtanium variable speed motor or control board that Lennox or Trane just happened to stop making the moment your unit stopped working.
Largely my take as well... I just want the simplest thing that works at this point... I'm heading in that direction as I need to replace appliances as well. So far this year, the microwave, range and dryer have all died. The microwave was the single biggest safety hazard I've ever seen, and they say you shouldn't work on them yourself... what happens when it turns on if the door is open? Or, you discover later, it's actually just on all the time even though the light is off and the fan isn't running.
I'm all about stupid, but repairable appliances now.
Yep, and it's annoying because variable speed units themselves are _better_ than the old classic one or two-speed units. They are more economical, quieter, and mechanically more reliable.
It just takes time for all this stuff to iron itself out. Consider how long it took for practically every heating and A/C system to become largely the same.
The problem with having standards for this kind of thing is that different units have different needs for communication and different levels of being smart. For example, some units want 2 temperature sensors and some want 3. The method used to control the system can be relatively complex - some systems are using physical models of the characteristics and positioning of sensors to do fancy control, and there are probably at least 5-15 data points involved in a typical system.
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.
Make it a certification requirement (UL or whatever) for the manufacturer to maintain a gold-level OSS Home Assistant integration, and all those problems would solve themselves in a heartbeat.
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.
> The problem with having standards for this kind of thing is that different units have different needs for communication and different levels of being smart.
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.
I agree that it should be standardized, but not with your argument.
Yes, any tablet worked, but it required running an app customized for the hardware. That only proves that we can standardize at the level of Android app APIs.
Very convenient for them and also easy to accomplish by buying the cheapest parts. It's probably eMMC-based and writing a logfile constantly. Source: every Android that has ever died on me in this exact way (four and counting)
It's been a big pain for Tesla as well, where their tiny 8GB emmc on the center screen would fail since they logged to it too much... 134,000 vehicles recalled eventually after they denied it was an issue.
Jesus Christ are they amateurs? These are steel boxes on wheels and we're dealing with the same issues as shitty 200 dollars android tablets from 10 years ago.
That's because all who gets hired at these hyper-fast startups are fresh graduates who can do leetcode by heart.
The people who have been in the field for a decade or more can't be arsed putting up with all that and so you get stupid issues which were solved years ago but the devs were not aware of them.
That affects the infotainment computer only so driving is unaffected. You just wont be able to check your speed etc. But yeah, it's way too common of a mistake.
I don't know how their cars' UI is designed (and I hope I never have to) but if it's the only way to determine car speed or battery capacity, then this goes well beyond infotainment. No wonder they were forced to do a recall.
I recently had to fix the radio in my car for the same reason. Pioneer installed the firmware onto a cheap SD card that they have hidden inside the radio and requires disassembly to replace. Of course they don't offer the original firmware anywhere, luckily someone online has backed it up and I found the file on reddit.
With bottom-of-the-barrel (and/or "value add") IoT garbage, hardware suppliers are a commodity, and under competitive pressure, the winners will be ones that can make cheapest hardware that just about outlasts a typical warranty period of their customers' products. Shorter-lived parts will not bring repeat business; longer-lived parts will get value-optimized further. Failing just after warranty period is Just Right.
Depending on the particular consumer group, this could also backfire in the long term. With consumer warranty being ridiculously short. They will increasingly notice the pattern, that devices from brand X always brick shortly after warranty is over. And maybe moving to more trusting, but pricey brands.
Unfortunately, there are almost no "pricey brands" left that serve the middle range of price/quality. Most of them sold out to or just became replaced by bottom-of-the-barrel shit sellers, that are happy to continuously cycle through dozens of fly-by-night brands. It's still possible to get quality work done, but that's one of the few very premium brands and/or bespoke work; if you have to ask, you can't afford it.
(Just look at Amazon marketplace if you think I’m exaggerating.)
Customers have been "noticing" this pattern for couple decades now; it's not just in tech, but everywhere across the board - from foodstuffs, through appliances, sports equipment, clothing, hygiene, all the way to computing. Unfortunately, this is a pattern in the same sense a tsunami is - you notice the wave is growing and about to flood everything around you, but there's fuck all you can do about it.
> you notice the wave is growing and about to flood everything around you, but there's fuck all you can do about it.
Depends. For some product lines there's the "commercial grade" stuff available - for TVs, look into Digital Signage product lines and add some sort of TV stick (or an rpi) to them for the brains, for power tools look at what the tradespeople use (it's probably Bosch blue series, Makita or DeWalt), for kitchen equipment ask your nearest restaurant. For computing, I'd go to Apple (if your ecosystem supports it), Lenovo/Dell/HPs business line stuff (you don't need to buy the next day on-site package, but you want the models that do have that as an option because that's the ones that are both made for easy repair and have better components in the first place) or Framework. You pay quite the hefty premium over Chinesium stuff, but it's worth it.
Only thing I'd stay far away from if you're not trained on how to use them is cleaning supplies of all kinds, hair and body shampoo as the commercial ones are way stronger concentrated and you can do serious damage to your (or your loved ones) bodies if you, say, leave them on too long.
> you notice the wave is growing and about to flood everything around you, but there's fuck all you can do about it.
In terms of online shopping, if the distributor cooperates with the consumer then there is something to do about it.
One of the largest Swiss online shop started to share warranty statistics of all products. That information is quite useful to avoid the cheap and soon to break stuff. Of course it's not perfect, since it only tracks faults within the 2 year warranty period. But it provides a proxy signal for quality. But maybe that only works in smaller markets with less incentives to game the statistics.
I think its worse than that because they don't actually have to log so much. This is choice a developer made, but it would cost nothing (except salary for competent staff) to make the correct choice.
SDs and eMMC also usually have the same feature as the famous IBM “DeathStar” HDDs from the 00's: the thing gets completely hosed when it loses power when write is in progress.
I do not have exact statistics but I believe that this is the most common failure mode of SD cards in embedded systems that we supply (but a friend who works for certain ARM and PowerPC SoC vendor told me that he has statistics that disprove my theory, so take that with a grain of salt).
I recently had an otherwise perfectly fine eMMC-based Samsung phone degraded to unusable floppy disk speeds.
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.
Sounds like fixing that would be really bad for Samsung’s bottom line. Higher cost of materials initially, less frequent upgrades, and only a very small subset of super technical users even realize what the problem is.
That's where the wear levelling comes in, still expose 8GB of space to the host device, but internally have I dunno, twice that in cell capacity that you can move bits to as other cells wear out.
Its a shame mobile devices don't have a SMART equivalent, would be nice to have some warning as something approaches the end of its life.
You do, most SSD controllers already implement this. Have you ever wondered why most SSD's come in slightly odd sizes like 100GB instead of 128GB? The extra space is put aside and used for wear levelling and other maintenance tasks.
I also remember a guide a while ago on how to reprogram a SSD to operate in SLC mode instead of MLC. You lost disk capacity but gained a large performance boost and a reduced error rate.
If I remember correctly it's also about eMMC having a much shorter life than UFS or similar storage. Though yes, unnecessary logging isn't helpful either. (Quick post-googling edit: apparently both use NAND, it's more about wear leveling apparently that makes the differences.)
knowing a lot of these companies. it wouldn't really matter if it fell inside of the warranty. they would simply screw a lot of people over until there's a class action lawsuit (or whatever equivalent is in that country) where they get a slap on the wrist for not honoring warranty claims.
Carrier back in the 2000's had a problem with their heat exchangers in their gas furnaces failing far more often than they should. They were sued, settled, and part of the settlement was an extended warranty of the heat exchanger, including labor.
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.
My A/C unit is fairly new but there are signs the condenser unit fan is starting to go. Since it is still under warranty for parts (not labor) I thought I would be able to just get a replacement fan and install it myself. But no, the manufacturer will only deal with a "certified technician," who of course charges an outrageous amount of money (many hundreds of dollars) to replace the fan. When I asked the technician why the labor cost so much, they gave me some song and dance about how the prices were set by their central office (true) and that the cost also included filing the paperwork to make a warranty claim (seriously?).
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.
Just as a data point for those in Canada (maybe US, but I'm not sure if it's the same company), I have a Senville unit, bought from their website, and they sent a replacement plastic (yes, it's a plastic bead in a piece of rubber) bearing for the indoor fan for free with shipping free too a few years ago, after providing the unit's serial number and the original name on the receipt. The unit was in-warranty. They claim that you have to have the unit professionally installed to get the warranty, but nobody asked for this at any point (could have been due to triviality of the part). Either way I was pleasantly surprised by the willingness to provide parts, even though the documentation of part numbers and models/generations on their site isn't super clear.
It's now out of warranty, but most of these units are built by either Gree (some Trane, Tosot, Gree, some Lennox iirc) or Midea (MrCool, Eco-Air, Senville, Pioneer, Carrier), so searching for the "canonical name" of your system can be helpful in finding parts. (usually, its of a pattern like "M5OG-48HFN1-M", can be found with meticulous googling for catalogs). There is a lot of parts commonality between units. You have to be creative with finding parts on AliExpress as they go by any number of names that you wouldn't expect, and a lot of this stuff is bought by eye (or random dimensions, of which there are some canonical ones for each part) and not by part number unfortunately.
This reads similarly to how with certain medical insurance you only pay a flat $5 (instead of the full price of $25+) for common meds that you can get for $1.50 outside of insurance...
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.
> What a fun, completely coincidental quirk that that time appears to fall outside the warranty window, hey?
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.
HVAC systems are usually advertised as lasting at least a decade, but the warranty is usually only a year or two.
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.
I don't think they'll care about this. Probably only 1% of their customers are capable of "hacking" this. As long as the tablet replace is cheaper than getting a new AC unit from another company it's fine for them.
Yes, which is very sad. Nearly all things go into this direction. I still remember the old days of jail breaking the iPhone, and the cat and mouse chase with Apple.
They would have to put the condition inside shared library .so and use Android JNI. Make it complicated and hide the string tablet model throughout the code, just enough time to frustrate whoever is decompiling the so file.
If they want to really do it wrong (or right, from their PoV), they require the communication with the base station to be signed with a certificate signed by their root CA, and put the private key of that certificate in the TPM.
In defense of this, remember that any random person can download and install this app on any android device. It does make sense to have a clear failure mode in this case. Anyone willing to pull out a soldering iron to attach a new tablet is perfectly capable of working around this.
1. Someone owns one of these systems which is functioning perfectly well.
2. They stumble across a link allowing them to download the controller app, and so they install it on their normal tablet, expecting to be able to control the system from their tablet
3a. It doesn't work, so they contact technical support. Technical support wastes a bunch of time before figuring out why the app isn't working, only eventually to realize what's going on.
3b. They can't get the app to work, and so slag the system on social media.
Both have costs both to the people who end up downloading it, and to the company -- costs which could be avoided by having a simple error message.
There can be multiple reasons to do something. It's a simple, effective way to avoid some legit issues that doesn't require much if any testing; by itself it's a perfectly legitimate business decision and doesn't need to be illegal.
Paired with their attitude towards repairing the broken tablets, it's clearly also a part of their "planned obsolescence" scam.
This is pretty simple to solve for. Eg. Have the app provide an ID the customer can quote to the CS rep; Have the app also log this ID, along with the system it's being run on, to the cloud/an interface that pops up an "unsupported system" message to the CS agent on entering the ID.
This is when smart gets stupid. I'm a bit worried about this with my nest and other smart devices, but even with normal air conditioners there are a few stupid simple problems that will cost you hundreds of dollars!
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).
The great thing about Australia is that that is probably illegal here.
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.
Reminds me how, in USA, it’s the only civilized nation I’ve been to where you must have a prescription to purchase contacts and glasses. Everywhere else I’ve been will just sell you whatever magnification you need at the pharmacy.
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.
There's an easy hack for the contact lens (and maybe glasses?) situation. There is a consumer protection law meant to ensure eye doctors can't stop you from using any retailer you want (otherwise they'd essentially make themselves your retailer), and it works like this:
You place an order with the retailer (online retailers typically allow you to simply type in your prescription values when adding lenses to your online cart; you don't need to show an official written prescription) and specify your doctor's name and phone number. Upon receiving your order, the retailer must call the doctor to see whether the doctor objects (invalid prescription). The retailer is to ship the order only if there is no objection (including no response at all) within 8 business hours. So just give the retailer the name and number of someone who won't immediately object, which is quite easy (e.g. a permanently closed office).
Of course, you need a refraction to know your prescription values. But once that's done, if your vision doesn't change over time, this allows you to ignore the expiration date of the prescription.
US based online contact vendors reject orders without a signed prescription. The doctors intentionally don't sign them. The workaround is to order them from Canada
I couldn't find a Canadian (or any foreign) retailer that would ship to the US, but I found tons of US retailers that allow self-entry (as an alternative to uploading a signed prescription) as I described.
As will several other retailers, but only in some states. As someone in an excluded state, I considered whether enabling Mock Location on my phone would get me past that check (I think they require you to use a native mobile app, so I assume they use location from that?) but then thought of the method I mentioned earlier instead.
Haha well the thing is, a vision exam requires that you read letters of a certain height from a certain distance while proctored, and presumably this is quite difficult to achieve in telehealth with more open computer systems. Of course some folks can figure out how to break anything (I mean, just plug a projector/TV into your phone with a usb-hdmi adapter and now the letters are huge?) but I think it keeps things easy and reasonably accurate among normies.
I purchase my glasses from Zenni, and I don't believe I've ever had to give them the name of my doctor.
On the other hand, maybe I typed that in when I was first signing up two decades ago, and the optometrist I gave them has long since gone out of business?
I also order from Zenni and have never had to provide my doctor's info. They happily create lenses with whatever prescription I type in, and for me personally it usually takes a couple years for it to change enough to warrant new glasses. (I still get an exam annually)
Getting a prescription when you don't know what you need makes sense. Getting one just because your last one has expired (1 year) is the off-putting aspect.
My first thought is - how do you get the contact information for a closed office?
My current hack, which is not as great as yours, is to put a reminder on my calendar for a few days before my 1 year prescription ends. If I order new contacts in the one year period for another year’s worth of contacts (even if I am not out yet), I essentially get to go 2 years between visits. I will try your hack next if I can figure out a good way to get contact info for an office that won’t object.
Google it. When places like this go out of business, local news articles get written. Or just pick randomly among ones still in business, worst case your order gets canceled?
There's an even bigger hack: use photoshop to modify the prescription. My wife has been doing it for years. This is helpful since sometimes the prescription is over-specific and points to contacts you don't like.
I considered that of course, but something about the signature on it (as opposed to self entry which has no signature) made me very uneasy. And doesn't the verification phone call (which fails unsafe, luckily) happen either way? Maybe not.
They must not be making this verification call since we've been doing this for years. Yes, it's straightforward forgery, so your unease is warranted. But I have no problem breaking pointless laws.
Yeah my beef isn’t around the actual requirement of determining your prescription. Obviously you should wear eyeglasses/contacts that match your vision requirements. I think this is especially relevant when we are talking about usage with a drivers license. The ridiculous part is the arbitrary 1 year renewal. As you imply it is really only necessary to recheck that often when your vision is changing a lot which is usually not something that happens after some period in your 20’s.
Neat trick though. I got lasik a few years ago but I would do this if I hadnt
> Reminds me how, in USA, it’s the only civilized nation I’ve been to where you must have a prescription to purchase contacts and glasses
Anecdotally this is far from true. Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, and the UK for example require a prescription for anything more complicated than reading glasses.
There are plenty of reasons why, mostly summed up by your comment about “whatever magnification you need” - eyeglasses for distance vision are infinitely more complex than “magnification” and if you’re buying anything other than reading glasses without a proper exam and matched lenses, you’re doing yourself harm.
Unless of course you are talking about reading glasses, in which case you’re also wrong, as you can get those for a couple of bucks pretty much anywhere in the US with no prescription.
> [...] the Netherlands, [...] for example require a prescription for anything more complicated than reading glasses.
I have never needed a prescription to get (non-reading) glasses in the Netherlands. In fact, there are webshops where you can purchase any pair of glasses (obviously, you have to enter the values of an eye examination).
I'm not sure that's true about the UK and prescription glasses. When I moved back here I packed my glasses up in storage so was going to be without for 6/8 weeks before our stuff arrived. I went onto Glasses Direct[1] and ordered 2 new pairs of glasses for £50 by putting in my prescription details from another country. The glasses themselves are regulated as medical equipment, but you could go on there and buy any prescription you want and nothing will stop you.
> Anecdotally this is far from true. Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, and the UK for example require a prescription for anything more complicated than reading glasses.
I’m in Canada. To order glasses I just punch the few numbers from the optometrist into any random website and glasses show up. That’s… kind of necessary if you want lenses that actually correct for your vision.
With Americans in this thread talking about them trying to verify with the optometrist and stuff… I don’t think we’re in the same league at all.
I am not sure about Canadas situation since that is where I used to order my contacts from before I got LASIK several years ago. I don’t recall having to provide a script then. But Mexico and several other European countries I’ve been to (Sweden as an example) it’s absolutely the case you can just walk into the pharmacy and grab the magnification you need with no prescription. I am actually surprised you were able to provide that many counter examples but I’ve never tried to buy contacts in the countries you’ve listed outside of Canada
> it’s absolutely the case you can just walk into the pharmacy and grab the magnification you need with no prescription.
I don’t understand how this could possibly work. Contact lenses have at least three parameters to define the lens. It’s not just “magnification”.
If you have an astigmatism, there are two more, and a further two if you have presbyopia (for a total of up to 7). Almost everyone has presbyopia by the age of 65, so it’s not some rare condition.
Do these pharmacies you speak of just have aisles upon aisles of contact lenses?
When I was in Germany, I saw vending machines where you could buy contacts. Sure, there's a lot of possible values, but they probably only stock the most popular ones.
Here in Japan, you can easily buy contacts from optical stores. They have several shelves behind the counters where they stock many varieties. Sometimes they even put a bunch of unsold/unpopular ones out front for 1/2 off (a lot of these are color contacts). I get mine online; I don't need a prescription.
One thing I did notice, as someone with astigmatism, is that the number of possible values is less here. My axis back in the US was 100, but here I have to use 90; they just don't carry them in all the possible axis values here.
Not aisles upon aisles but yeah for instance in Apotek, a big pharmacy chain in Sweden, there is usually a whole wall of them with little drawers to pick from. As sibling comment mentioned there isn’t every combination available so presumably you have to special order some if you have some weird combination but for myself who never had astigmatism at all it was perfectly fine.
Yeah in the UK where I spent most of my life, it seems like you do whatever you want, pretty much. Golden rule - you don't touch gas plumbing. And you don't mess with your circuit breaker board/RCDs etc. I think installing new ring circuits may be off limits.
Anything else? Go for it. I fitted a bunch of taps and a toilet, changed single sockets to double+USB sockets, changed light fittings, fixed poorly wired lighting circuits, installed Cat-6 through the walls to a few rooms, all sorts of stuff. And none of it was anyone else's business. You can (should?) get a professional inspection and safety certificate before you sell the house, but that's about it AFAICT.
I'd be happy enough with the situation in Austin, so long as the city inspections were cheap or free. I'd be happy enough to do a short course in the basics before getting some sort of permit. Where we are now is nuts.
(But at least I can buy a pair of generic reading glasses pretty much wherever here!)
The inspections themselves here are reasonably priced, but it’s still annoying to deal with the city because they operate in 1995. There’s no portal for scheduling inspections for homeowners, you have to call them. They don’t tell you when they will show up on the day they will perform them, so you have to be available at home from 7-17 ready to instantly answer the door at a moments notice the second they knock or you will miss them and have to reschedule
The pricing is reasonable enough - it’s cheap enough to actually be worthwhile to do several things yourself that normally you’d have to pay a contractor for. I did it when I ran some electrical conduit to my garage to add a few 120V receptacles in there.
My general rule of thumb is also I won’t touch gas. But also anything like plumbing that is INSIDE walls I usually am looking to have a professional handle as well. It’s harder to fix knucklehead DIY mistakes when they are covered up behind drywall.
It does make me want more plumbing setups like I’ve seen in Europe. When I lived in Sweden I loved for instance that a lot of bathroom plumbing is completely exposed, so DIY’ing plumbing work is actually pretty accessible. Here where you have to dig into the walls to get at it makes it much less appealing since not only do you have to be a a decent plumber you also have to be a decent drywall person as well.
Watching "Scrapheap Challenge" has taught me the UK has a lot of regulations about steam engines.
One of the behind-the-scene videos was something like "that old steam-powered whatever they just happened to find in the scrapheap? Yeah, we've got the inspection certificate right here."
Australia is definitely one of the most rule-obsessed countries, even in comparison to Germany, where I’ve lived for the last decade or so. Parts of my parent’s house back home are heritage listed, some rules make sense and some are bizarre, especially regarding the garden.
Heritage listing is it's own thing. What I hate is the rules surrounding...essentially any home services. Like it took me a long time to realize when people in the US were saying they "needed to get something up to code" what they meant was, that they themselves didn't feel up to doing the work and it would cost them. But like...you can. You can just call the guys and double-check what needs to be done and do it yourself and get it inspected.
Whereas in Australia the answer is, it's all illegal, and if you're not a licensed whoever then they don't want to tell you how it should be done in case gasp you do it yourself.
So of course everyone does do it themselves, and lies about it. And the quality of workmanship from the trades is...poor.
Yeah it's not like the work done by the trades is always a shining example of competence.
I can and often do do a better job on things myself, because I have more time and I care about getting it right. And with the apparent trade shortage (at least in part caused by how much you need them for real basic shit), it's expensive and half the time the bastards won't answer the phone or don't show up to appointments. So stuff gets done on the down-low or it just doesn't get done at all.
Gotta love the signs at the hardware store saying "You can buy this stuff but if you even think about installing it yourself, that's illegal!"
I moved back to Perth from Berlin last year, and yeah, agree completely. Germans have a reputation for being rule-obsessed but they're lax compared to the Aussies, who have a reputation for being larrikins that is almost completely undeserved. It's all "beer & bbq on the beach" until you find out that's illegal and the police will pour out your beer on the sand and fine you for the bbq.
See also "Wowser", the opposite side of the coin. At some point it seems the wowsers gained the upper hand.
What's left of larrikinism unfortunately seems to be cooked in the head these days. Australian politics is sorely in need of some decent larrikins, but they seem to be AWOL.
Yeah it’s striking whenever I visit again. I guess there’s that famous quote about Australians being the descendants of not just criminals but also jailers which makes sense.
Germans tend to obsess over rules and processes in bureaucratic contexts and when it infringes on others but are very open with personal freedoms.
The nice thing about my Mitsubishi Heavy Industry units is I've got a bunch of MHI-AC-Ctrl[1] modules tucked into them talking to the service interface with Home Assistant. The neat thing is it doesn't just control it, it also makes all the internal sensors and codes available.
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).
I'd love this, but right now I'd be happy with a team reverse engineering these things and not getting hit with some kind of IP lawsuit from whatever company. I think there's going to be a lot of abandoned-ware IoT stuff, mostly because the company wants to turn the software off because they don't make money from supporting old products.
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!
One problem I've found with a bunch of my own stuff though is microcontroller firmwares. Tons of devices have some type of microcontroller running them, and if the CPU is what goes (which happened on a bunch of Yamaha amps I've dealt with) then it goes right up in the air as to whether sourcing a replacement part is practical because you can't even get a binary blob to shoot onto it.
Network-connected home Mitsubishi units can be controlled with the MELCloud API (same api used by mobile app) which makes it easy enough to write scripts that grab current temp, settings, power usage.
Perhaps someone has already made a home assistant plugin that does this?
Everyone reading this should find out what capacitor they need and buy one off Amazon, they're all <$20.
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 have to be careful with Amazon/eBay caps, as they can be cheap chinesium garbage. I look for name-brand caps when I can and try to get them off eBay, Grainger, or Repairclinic.
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 depends on the failure mode of the cap. If it has blown its dielectric, then chilling it may cause the plates to separate enough to boost the capacitance, but it is more likely to just be a waste of time.
Aside from that, you could strap on other capacitors as long as their voltage is the right value. A daisy chain of 50mf capacitors to shore up the blown capacitance might buy you a day or so of usage.
Best bet, if you have an old broken microwave nearby, would be to pull the cap from it and wire it in.
Don't buy electronics components from marketplaces of any kind. There are reputable parts suppliers and for things that are common and in stock it will probably even be cheaper and faster than buying the same thing (of unknown provenance and quality) from who knows what seller on random marketplace.
Please don’t suggest buying electrical parts off Amazon, that’s criminal negligence. On second thought, please do not give any electrical advice on the internet.
Buy it from McMaster Carr or Grainger, please!! If you do this repair yourself, short the contacts of the capacitor (ideally with a correctly sized resistor) to discharge it before handling it so you don’t electrocute yourself.
McMaster will get it to your house next-day in lots of places too, and you don't have to deal with the local hvac supply house refusing to sell to a walk-in customer that isn't an employed hvac tech.
I did something similar for a clothes drier. The thing was ancient (mid-80’s) but was fantastic. It was huge and you could dry maybe 3 comforters under an hour.
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.
+1. Repair all sorts of stuff... Capresso burr grinder, little plastic knob broke off inside, repaired with a 10c washer and glue... worked great for years and you'd never know...
I highly recommend people who live in hot environments to keep a spare capacitor on hand. Even if you know how to fix it, if the AC dies when your local HVAC supply store is closed (eg not between 7am-7pm Monday through Saturday usually) you’re either stuck paying out the nose to a contractor who has one on hand during emergency hours or you’re sweating it out waiting for the store to open. While they are readily available components that consumers can purchase, they aren’t things that Walmart carries. But HVAC supply shops will sell them to you, you don’t need to be licensed or anything to buy them. You can also just get them on Amazon, likely for cheaper than the HVAC supply shop will sell them to you.
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.
I want to emphasize for others how important this comment is. I live in suburban Atlanta and last month the AC failed. Can you guess what day and time it failed? Yep, 8AM on 96F/70% humidity SUNDAY. And we moved into this f*cking old house a year earlier after moving across the country so no local knowledge of contractors. After about 15 minutes in google maps I call up my best guess based entirely on internet vibes. After some hemming and hawing which is best described as a verbal biopsy of my wallet ("it's going to be $200 for showing up") the dude shows up. We get to talking as one does (I DIY everything) and he says I'll show you how to fix it, it's very likely the capacitor is the problem.
So he unscrews the panel, pulls off the leads, puts in the new capacitor and voila.
Then the guy says basically exactly what the above para starting with "A capacitor issue...", including hosing down the coils.
So in 10 minutes I learned another mandatory skill on a Sunday morning, and it only cost $675. (Yes I know better than to place my tongue across the capacitor connectors)
Last year I fixed the condensate drain line clog myself, by uh, well, I was in a hurry, blowing into the pretty grotty drain line. I did purchase the exact model pump for a spare.
> But HVAC supply shops will sell them to you, you don’t need to be licensed or anything to buy them.
My local HVAC supplier doesn't sell to non-licensed people. I think they don't like dealing with returns from people who don't know what they're doing. I needed a 24vac transformer once. My dad used the same HVAC company for his office for a long time, they still remembered him, and had the part I needed in stock.
Two summers ago my AC didn't sound right. IIRC the outside unit was clicking on and off. I pulled the breaker. Eventually I decided the problem was with the contactor (a switch controlled by 24vac). I took pictures of where the wires were connected and pulled the contactor. For no particular reason I started taking the old contactor apart, and found a cricket in the middle. I removed the bug, cleaned out the cricket residue, put the contactor back together, and returned it to the outside unit. My AC system resumed working perfectly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contactor
I’ve heard of this in the past. Usually the shop will sell to you without a license if you’re affiliated with an HVAC company, because you might be some unlicensed peon picking up parts for the installer or technician down the road. But they often have no way to verify whether you’re a HVAC person for things that don’t require a license vs some clued in homeowner, so you can give them a made up LLC name and say you want a cash account. It takes a fair bit of confidence to pull this off though. Easier and cheaper to order off of Amazon usually anyway
FWIW there are some things that DO require licensing. Purchasing refrigerant requires an EPA number. Almost no shop will sell you full on ready to install systems without a contractors license. But off the shelf components like this don’t require one and they have unlicensed helpers coming in all the time buying stuff, so confidently pretending you’re one of those is usually enough in a pinch.
I had some more R134a added to my car recently. The mechanic said when he had his shop, he would have completely evacuated the system to measure how many ounces of refrigerant were still in the system. He also said the old R12 systems were less leaky than R134a. R12 was phased out because of the ozone layer.
I think refrigerator and AC repair companies are required to capture and recycle the refrigerant - they don’t seem to have the equipment to capture and measure refrigerant like auto mechanics.
R22 (phased out refrigerant for home AC) has chlorine in it, while R134a doesn’t have chlorine, making it easier on the ozone layer. R134a is being replaced with R1234yf.
The best refrigerant is CO2, but this has the greatest tendency to leak.
>I think refrigerator and AC repair companies are required to capture and recycle the refrigerant - they don’t seem to have the equipment to capture and measure refrigerant like auto mechanics.
I'm pretty sure they capture it and then sell it back to you while making you think that that isn't what's happening.
A lot of supply houses only sell to people with an account setup. It's not that you need to be a liscenced contractor, they just aren't setup for retail sale. This often extends to not even having a till, customers create an account with net 30/60 terms.
A good way to check if a place does retail sale is to ask for the city desk when calling in.
It's actually worse than that here in Austin. The was only 1 store that would sell me a individual capacitor when mine failed. That one failed about 3 days later. I did some research online and apparently there was just a massive production run of capacitors that were imported to the US and are known to be bad. Supply houses were just looking to offload them.
Now I could take it back for a warranty replacement, which would give me the same defective unit.
As a result of this, I don't even recommend buying components locally any more. The capacitor from amazon cost about $12 and is still working years later.
I also live in Austin and got my recent capacitor replacement from Johnstone when mine failed on a Saturday and I didn't have a backup handy. It was, IIRC, around $50. Significantly more expensive than Amazon.
The capacitors size themselves are small. They slightly vary but are almost always the size of a medium Red Bull can. They are sized to your unit though so you can’t just buy one without looking at the specs and expect it to work. But the specs are printed on the side of the can and if not can be derived from the specs on the unit itself.
As far as their danger there really isn’t any beyond getting shocked from dealing with live wires. Technically they can retain a bit of a charge so I’ve seen recommendations to wait X amount of time before touching them with your bare hands or to discharge it by touching it with an insulated screwdriver to discharge it but the risk is pretty low. Once the power is off (either at the breaker or via the disconnect at the condenser unit, power only goes in one way to those things so if you turn it off in one place there’s no way you’ll get a zap) it’s a soda can with 3 wires going into it. You just disconnect the 3 wires from the old soda can, remove it, replace and connect the new one. Not that much harder than changing a light bulb.
the capacitors are connected across the motor windings and are there essentially as a way to shift the phase of the current waveform. note that this is a two-phase power special; you don't need start or run capacitors if you're using 3-phase power (uncommon in North American residential settings, but YMMV worldwide)
when power is disconnected they are not charged at all. it's not like the capacitors you might find in a CRT
So what you are saying is that the capacitors are effectively shorted with the motor coil, and hence they have a drain resistor that has effectively no resistance?
My A/C failed in the same way and with some help from youtube and a multimeter I debugged it to the same problem. Replaced it with this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GSU47TQ
There's a bunch of similar capacitors on Amazon (or your local hardware store). They're about the size of a soda can. I believe the "old" capacitor in your A/C can zap you if you don't ground the lines together when you pull it out, if you watch youtube videos for this repair they'll ground it with a screwdriver or other metal object.
Turn off the power or pull the local disconnect. Also, short out the capacitor before touching it. You can do that by connecting the terminals with your screwdriver. There are plenty of yt vids explaining the process.
When I see large capacitors (for me it’s more girth than my little finger), I have alarm bells going on. One « soda can sized » can definitely kill you. It should be discharged before messing with it. You can buy capacitor drains (basically a big ass resistor) that you put across the capacitor’s legs to drain the energy in it.
Some do it with an insulated screwdriver but that’s dangerous because it’s a short, can ark, fuse the driver to the capacitor, and result in a bad day.
it's recommended to give it some time if it's been running and to short across the terminals with something, like a screwdriver that has a non conducting handle. It's nothing too ridiculous.
What a waste. Real great for the environment for this company to (probably) just be junking a ton of hardware in perfect working order every couple years to make a buck.
Fun read otherwise and wonderful to see someone stick it to them this way, but that type of thing really pisses me off.
> The original ezone tablet had been running Android 6.0, this Samsung was still on 5.0 but I didnt think that would cause any issues so I got started on doing what was clearly missing: The required apps. All ezone apps are available both on the Advantage Air website and the apkpure site. I only learned of the apkpure site from a post claiming he had been directed to it by a AA tech support person.
Redirecting your customers to a third-party/pirate APK redistributor of unknown authenticity... reality defies parody.
The apps are signed, so it's possible to compare signatures against the originals. I haven't seen any reports of signatures not matching from Apkpure, though certainly possible.
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?
AFAICT you need to have it connected to the internet so that their phone app can connect (presumably via cloud servers) to the control tablet and provide controls from your phone in and out of the house.
Also if you want to integrate the air-con with general smart home stuff.
Android doesn't surface app signatures beyond requiring that updates share the same signature while the original is installed. I thought a potential app could exfiltrate data, voice, do crypto mining, act as an unauthorized VPN exit node for commercial VPNs or cyberattacks, etc.
I was just reading an official Volvo technical bulletin for an issue that can occur in a latest XC90....the manual literally says "download this patch, load it into the patching software, you will get a warning about the patch not being signed and invalid for this car, click ignore and then click proceed anyway".
Why even build those warnings in, if you're going to make your own mechanics ignore them.
Isn't this exactly what SolarWinds did when someone bypassed their build system and inserted a backdoor? Made a tweet about how users could just accept the unsigned build?
Reaffirming my belief that I want nothing “smart” controlling critical infrastructure in my home. What if it were dead of winter, would he have been able to control the heat?
There are thermostats, among other things, that use standard protocols and still work in a “dumb” way if not connected. You just need to do some homework.
The thing in the article is a thermostat-zone controller system, where the tablet is part of the multi-zone controller, and there aren't really separate thermostats.
In the US, it's common that the input to each zone controller is just a open/close contact, so in the worst case you can call for heat by shorting the right wires together.
I have a smart thermostat that I use the provided app to control, but one of the reasons I went with it is that there's also an http server in the device firmware that can be used to control it (so if they totally ruin the app or turn off the server or whatever, there's a way out).
There needs to be a law that any hardware/software that goes into people homes has to be gplv3. Instead we get braindead ai bills that are threatening to kill open models…
Amazing! I love everything about this. However, also being in Australia, I would have tried my luck with Consumer Affairs. Our new house was equipped with a gas boosted solar hot was service. The gas booster died a year out of warranty and instead of replacing just their proprietary booster unit, they said the whole system would need to be replaced at a cost to me of $10'000+. A few weeks of back and forth (and limited hot water) with consumer affairs made enough noise and the company caved and replaced the booster unit for free.
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.
Great write up. Australia has pretty good consumer protection laws.. I feel like the warranty period offered by the manufacturer could/should be superseded by the Consumers Guarantee Act – it seems reasonable to expect an AC unit to operate and work for more than a few years.
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.
That was my first thought - the Australian Consumer Law statutory guarantees would almost certainly come into play here, and this would be worth requesting assistance from the relevant state/territory Fair Trading.
Came to the thread to mention this. I imagine the control system attached to an A/C system expected to last 10+ years should also last as long under the ACCC.
I just had look and seems most have a warranty of five years, it doesn't seem there are many outliers to that. Funnily though it seems the AC unit is most likely going to operate many times longer, as the OP points out just the controller isn't working properly, and how long would a consumer be willing to fight this in the summer in Perth.
I’ve used the Australian Consumer Law several times at this point and most times you say to the customer service rep “The Australian Consumer Law gives guarantees of acceptable durability that I do not think this product has met. How are you planning on remedying the situation?”
They’ll then generally go to speak to a supervisor.
The’ll then come back and say they’ve been instructed to help you escalate to ‘senior management’.
A day later they’ll contact you with how to get your product fixed for free.
I’ve not had a significant delay, but you’d be spewing if it was a heat wave in summer.
Given this is in Australia, I’d have thought that a threat to enforce your rights under the Australian Consumer Law[1] would get some action from the manufacturer.
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”.
It's unlikely that the company itself makes these tablets, they probably buy bulk off Alibaba or something and they all probably fail at the same time because the were all made at the same time.
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 must have an open-source policy for hardware like this. Billions if not trillions of dollars are being wasted every year because of these shitty companies. I know I am dreaming but maybe in 100 years, humanity will evolve.
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.
I would probably replace it now while everything is working.
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.
You can also plan it out so it's a neater install if you do the installation now, rather than when it craps out. I know for a fact that if I had to do what this guy is after this quest with no functioning air con, that tablet is dangling out the wall for about 2 years until I bother to look at it again.
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.
At least in the UK some enterprising soul has faikins on Amazon selling quite well. I got a couple just to stash if ever needed but for now daikins app is okay and works w home assistant. For now.
When our Fujitsu aircon was installed the installer said it's worth a lot of money to be able to make it wifi controllable. When I looked into what the components cost to make it do that, I saw what he meant. Fortunately I was able to use an ESP32 on the same bus as the wired remote and some code from https://github.com/FujiHeatPump/esphome-fujitsu to create my own remote interface. As a bonus it also told me what temperature the unit thought my room was at, which was always around two degrees more than reality, which allowed me to set a target temperature that worked more reliably.
I had a similar situation with my shutter blinds. The company wanted €500 to install a "smart hub" to enable voice control instead of their little remote. To hell with that, I ordered a couple of servos and an esp8266 and 3d printed some little fingers that would press the buttons on the remote and added the whole thing to HomeAssistant via ESPHome. Cost me less than €30.
I disassembled one of our gate opener's remotes, and hooked the button contacts to Raspberry Pi Zero's GPIO pins. Pi runs a tiny go webserver and Cloudflare tunnel. I hit an obscure HTTPS URL (via button on a phone's homescreen), gate opens.
I remember someone posting something about their garage opening whenever they open safari, as Safari replays GET requests from open tabs when it is un-suspended, although can't find the post right now.
Basically, they had your setup exactly, but they leave the tab open in Safari and whenever they open Safari to browse the internet, the garage door opens.
I didn't dare to hook up Pi with garage opener as well. Our gate auto-closes after a configurable delay, but garage does not. If I trigger the garage opener by accident while I'm not at home, the garage stays open for anybody to come in and take stuff. So I'd need some sort of "is garage currently open" sensor, but I want to keep things simple.
It's really pleasing to me how the "analogue loophole" continues to work. Previously, recording music through the Line Out, or what have you. Now, using a robot to press the supplied remote. It's delightful.
> Forcing customers to replace an entire system just because the cheapest component failed might be really profitable
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.
Had I been able to work on it for an entire day, it probably would have been around 3-4 hours, but took longer because I had about 30-45 mins a night and then had to clean up so the kids didn't get into the mess.
The oven was down for about a week as a result, but you can make do with an air fryer and a toaster oven for quite a bit.
For an experienced tech I assumed at least $50 for the house call and then a few hours for the disassembly and reassembly.
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.
Ranebo, post step by step instructions and full source code. Post full photos of circuit board and interconnects. Go fucking wild.
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.
This post well summarises everything that is wrong with the current domotic / home automation space.
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)
The future is looking like an incredibly huge pile of crappy cloud software that no one asked for, no one understands, perpetually stops working, and no one can fix except by replacing it by an even crappier, faster breaking piece of junk.
Because USB is not a multi-tap network. It's a point-to-point between host and peripheral, or host and host pretending to be a peripheral (OTG mode).
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.
The "PoE"[0] board was also a USB device wired onto the pins for the single USB port on the board. USB is not a multidrop bus - if you directly wire two devices to a single USB port it will not work, you need an active USB hub.
[0]quotes because looking at that FTDI chip though my bet is it's actually serial over Cat5...
Cheers, I am looking at this for our system but it is still working so I didn't want to mess it up, but was planning for the eventuality... I've been reverse engineering the app, so your post has cleared a few things up for me :)
The plan is to get rid of the tablet and put a Amazon echo hub or HA on a tablet that directly controls the aircon in the future
Feel free to reach out, a few people from this thread seem to be doing similar things, including looking at the protocols involved and interop requirements. It would be good to combine efforts if you're that way inclined.
As far as HA integration goes, there's already an adapter available that uses the HTTP API that the tablet exposes. This of course still requires a working tablet though.
The next step for an open solution would be to either write a replacement for the tablet API that talks directly to the control box using RS485 (which will have the benefit of allowing existing integrations to work as-is), or perhaps even ignore the original API and start from scratch with something custom built for HA integration.
The original HTTP API that the tablet exposes is relatively straightforward, but it also commits quite a few sins against HTTP, such as mutating state on GET requests (making CSRF type attacks trivial). This makes a like-for-like replacement a little less palatable in my eyes.
The other tricky thing is that the tablet code is where a lot of the state is kept and the smarts of the system are located. Zone names and config, schedules, temperature sensor pairing, ... replacing the tablet API completely like-for-like might be tricky, but doing just enough to support HA integration (maybe submitting a patch to the existing integration to support the new custom API) is probably a much easier task. There should be no need to rebuild features that HA already has such as scheduling etc.
On a much, much smaller scale - this is why I insisted on having my roller covers driven by a physical button on the wall, instead of some proprietary radio.
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.
I followed the same logic when deciding what kind of blinds control to choose building my house few weeks ago. Now I am in the planning of adding automation to it. Did you use Shelly Plus 2PM or are there any cheaper options to choose from (they seem to start at 30€ in my country shops)? Did they fit nicely in the wall switch socket?
I initially got the Shelly 2.5, now discontinued. The one that failed was changed to a 2 PM which is 31€ on Amazon in France (you could probably get better deals (I just checked with Amazon Germany and they are at 25€).
I mounted them right next to the roller (in the roller enclosure) and if I did not have that possibility, I would have done it close to the ground to have good access. I do not have a socket per see, rather a small switch on the wall not inside the wall, this is not permitted where I am)
I had a look at cheaper solutions in the past but gave up - I do not have a lot of rollers so the cost difference is likely to be minimal. I like the fact that they work well and it is really a kind of mount-and-forget kind of setup.
I really love this article! But I'm also confused about the fourth paragraph of "ok I'll fix it myself". Why does cutting datalines worked? My intuition is you need to cut the USB 5v lines and keep the datalines so data can be transferred without interference. I'm totally a noob about datalines and chips so could you please provide a further explanation thank you so much;)
I had a look at the furnace blower fan motor in my 2023 construction home.
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.
I had AC installed in my new house just after putting solar a few months ago, and I was very clear that I wouldn't use anything that would depend on any external services: no apps, no connections, nothing: if I want to monitor the inverter I have to go up there to read its screen (1), and AC have to be all usable with IR remotes.
(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.
My fridge stopped working last year. We called a repair technician, who swapped out the whole PCB and charged us a few hundred dollars. In retrospect, I think it was one bad relay on the board...
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.
I wasn’t lucky enough to have a “repairable” refrigerator according to the repair man. An 8 cent capacitor had dried out and failed, which I discovered with a $150 tool.
I’ve had a fan die TWICE now in my fan. It blows the cold air from the bottom freezer up to the top refrigerated portion, so it’s catastrophic when it happens. At this point I just have a third fan in the garage in a box in reserve so I don’t lose $100+ in groceries. It’s ridiculous how poorly made these “durable goods” are. And how expensive these repairs would have been if I wasn’t the smallest bit handy.
Is this tablet doing anything else beside the small user interface? Is that interface worth a tablet, or can it be done with 3 push buttons, a small LCD and a microcontroller?
By using an android tablet they leverage the existing OS/UI/Java ecosystem to write a (fairly simple) app. Recreating that from scratch would require a lot more development.
Sure, it saves development time & money. But if they anyway need some kind of custom interface... problem is, the lifetime of the tablet is way lower than a corresponding "dumb" system. I'd see the advantage of using a tablet if you have lots of controls (let's say you control the temperature for 6 rooms, you can see more info, etc.). By the way not everybody wants to have yet another touch screen in their home, but that's another story.
This kind of perverse incentive driven behaviour is rife in large established businesses. At every stage you get asked “Do you want to spend money and effort solving this problem for the customer, at the cost of substantial revenue, or do you do nothing except shrug and make an excuse, and watch the money roll in?” If you aren’t deeply invested in the long term quality of the company there’s not a lot of personal incentive to do get former.
We installed Daikin AC in our house two years ago. Luckily, those units can be controlled locally (no cloud) via Daikin app (which says is unsupported and I should update to another app, but that one requires creating an account so screw that) and, more importantly, via HomeAssistant. What makes me really sad is that of all the "smart home" appliances we have, the AC is the only one doesn't go through cloud.
Great story and write-up! I’m currently going through something similar myself: I bought a Meaco air con unit that uses its own proprietary app to control it over wifi, and there seems to be nothing anywhere online about that protocol or how I might integrate it with Home assistant. Model is MC Series Pro 8000 in case anybody ever cracks the case…
I have a Carrier Infinity heat pump, and have been running https://github.com/acd/infinitive on a raspberry pi zero flawlessly for years. Cost less than $10 and with Alpine Linux running from ram, it still has the original SD card.
Great write up, and good on you for pushing through to make this work.
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.
So, this is the part where customer care stuffs say to each other "It's not a bug, but a feature" and who knows how many people get trapped in their story like they had found an old tablet in the back of a van that could be bought for $400.
DIY is the way to go, only if you know what you are doing.
> My old tablet’s model name was on a sticker on the inside of the case, but looking at the code I saw it needed the -EZ identifier tagged to end. So the string I was to return was “PIC7KS6-EZ”.
The code seems to allow for both "PIC7KS6-EZ" and "PIC7KS6" unless I'm misreading it.
You are correct this was actually and error in my re-collection. I remembered when writing that it was missing something but mistakenly thought it was the EZ. In fact the model number on the case was "PIC7KS" without the 6. Good spot.
Ah, in that case you were free to add any of {"6", "6-EZ", "-EZ"} because the code includes "PIC7KS-EZ" as well; you probably did choose "-EZ" after all!
This is brilliant. Great write-up. I'm glad it's already on archive.org since this is nice and detailed. Much appreciated, man. I learned so much here:
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.
> Adding a simple “system” chooser to their software applications would give solutions to everyone, while the custom POE connector would ensure they still need their hardware.
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
It seems like in this particular situation if you had a mainland chinese friend, he would have been able to source a replacement tablet panel for the cheap on 1688.com for ~50 USD.
>> This control system is operated by a cheap POE powered Android tablet on the wall of the living room.
>> 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.
slight off topic: I have quite a few low end Android phone bought between 2013-2017, only 1 of them is still bootable, all others cannot pass recovery like author’s tablet. Is it something related with older Android versions or just the cheap flash they used in if?
Ridiculous and arbitrary points of failure is a gigantic pet peeve of mine. See every charger unit that has the cable hardwired to it.
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.
There are so many companies that I am sure countless individuals have come along and have solved a problem for themselves that many other customers probably have. These solutions hardly ever surface.
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.
It's really impressive to see how determination and a bit of technical know-how can overcome such blatant profiteering by some companies. The effort and ingenuity put into fixing the system rather than just paying for an overpriced replacement are commendable. It's a clear reminder that proprietary smart systems can sometimes backfire, pushing customers to seek alternative solutions or even become DIY experts out of necessity!
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?
I’ve just got to say that this kind of thing enraged me. Who cares about the impact on people hit with sudden expenses? Or the environment when we dispose of e-waste? No, we want to goose profits by being despicable.
As I creep closer to retirement, I look forward to spending some of that time contributing to the fight against abusive bullshit like this.
To start, aircon is an incredible racket in general a lot of the time. Good companies exist, but lots of others, especially in the USA, have been bought up by big holding companies and converted in to profit maximization new-system sales machines. Techs get paid pretty poorly, and helpers get paid worse than mcdonalds/target in a lot of areas. There's not much financial incentive for someone to get really good at understanding residential a/c systems for repair/diagnosis anymore in most places.
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.
This is why I chose to replace my basic forced air gas furnace and basic 16 seer single speed single stage A/C unit with the same thing. Every part on these is relatively simple, largely serviceable and every parts house coming and going will have something that fits. I disagree with others that any of the more fancy stuff is any more reliable (and Dad worked as an HVAC master tech for a long time and also agrees with this) and I can't believe people pay for more complicated stuff when so far as I have ever seen it's 90%+ snake oil and drives the initial price and the cost of repairs up astronomically, and largely cools or heats the house all the same. I am well aware that Bryant, Lennox, Trane, Mitsubishi and everyone else coming and going has got the more complicated garbage that talks something more complicated, I just really don't get why you'd double or more the cost of things when you can get something that just works for less. I also don't understand the obsession with "smart" controls on any residential single family home when a basic programmable thermostat already does basically everything.
I'm sure as everyone piles onto the mini-split hype train, there's going to be even more fleecing of homeowners for maybe middling quality hardware and installs. Someone (either the HVAC company owners or the hardware manufacturers or maybe both) is making an absolute killing on this; maybe it's time for a career change.
the one thing I'll say about some of the more complex systems is this: if you have a small/medium size house and can get by with a single zone, or need multiple zones but can/are-ok-with having a dedicated system per zone, I 100% agree with you. If you need a single system with multiple zones, the variable speed setups can be a lifesaver to make sure you can tune everything correctly for every combination of active zones without having intermittent head pressure issues; especially if you have any suboptimal ductwork.
> I also don't understand the obsession with "smart" controls on any residential single family home when a basic programmable thermostat already does basically everything.
don't get me started on this. all this "learn your schedule and adapt conditioning to match where you are" is literally the one thing you ARENT supposed to do with efficient heat pumps, which are becoming more and more common. You set it at a temp, maybe you let it bump up 1-2 degrees in the heat of the day and then back down later at night, but any more than that is LESS EFFICIENT and more expensive overall. I don't get it.
This is entirely too much bullshit to run an aircon, what the hell are we doing? A tablet should _never_ be required just to control the heating/cooling.
People underestimate the economic side. This person probably earns 6 figures (if not, he should). Fixing this himself probably costed more than $1697 in his time.
Now imagine a service doing this, with a manager and all the overhead.
Unfortunately a lot of the new variable-speed heat pumps require a proprietary thermostat. You can use a dumb thermostat with them, but then the unit runs at full tilt all the time, which is inefficient (more costly to run) and probably increases wear on it.
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.
It's funny because if that was an option people would do it, but most installers have their control system included when the install and setup the system.
You don't get asked what you want or a choice in changing it to a different device...
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.