These articles, over and over again, are what have made Hacker News one of my regular go tos for amazing ideas and creative ingenuity.
Turning a dumb AC unit smart (without losing my security deposit)
81–90 of 176 posts
Re: Turning a dumb AC unit smart (without losing my security deposit)
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Multi use rooms require TVs. Projectors cannot handle ambient light without being a fire hazard.
>Multi use rooms require TVs That seems an overstatement. I now have one in my entire house (don't have kids). There's a fairly large TV panel on one wall in basically a sitting room. Otherwise I just use a computer. A relative basically has TVs in every room. I guess it maybe made sense when he was rebuilding anyway but it still seems excessive to me who might sit down to watch a movie or show but doesn't have live…
I was responding to projectors...
Re: Turning a dumb AC unit smart (without losing my security deposit)
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Multi use rooms require TVs. Projectors cannot handle ambient light without being a fire hazard.
If you are rich you have single-use rooms. Hell, even I have a sleeping room, a cat room and a hacking room. It's not that expensive. The cat room doubles as a mini-cinema. Ambient light is dealt with having nice thick blackout drapes. This is not some rocket science, it was done for like a hundred years. edit: actually in my former apartment I just bought a roll-down projector screen that completely covered the wind…
My point was it isn't as simple as projectors are better.
To be clear I only know this because I was totally going to swap to a projector once I bought a place only to realize they don't work well during the day.
Re: Turning a dumb AC unit smart (without losing my security deposit)
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
It always kind of blows my mind that I keep seeing "smart TVs" which have a bunch of integration options for high-end AV installations (rich people's houses, etc.) but no API that you can integrate with to just handle toggling channels/inputs/power states/volumes. (I did get my last Sony Bravia integrated with Homekit so that I could control inputs, volume, etc. via the Home app, but that's not really what I'm lookin…
I think the standard control for TV is the RS-232C port on the TV. https://community.home-assistant.io/t/serial-projector-contr... from a quick search.
I'm surprised we haven't seen a cheap, USB powered Bluetooth RE-232C dongle for home assistant yet.
Re: Turning a dumb AC unit smart (without losing my security deposit)
#85Instead of attaching the motor bracket with a binder clip, consider sticking it down with some sort of removable adhesive? 3M command strips should be very strong/secure, while also allowing for adjustment and will detach without residue when the time comes.
I think you could use the two shafts to align and attach the mounting bracket by drilling two holes the proper distance apart. Drilling holes is pretty easy compared to cutting straight lines and I think most people are more likely to have a drill. If you use a piece of wood, the additional thickness can help the shafts to keep the wood perpendicular. You might not need any additional fastener, and the lack of fastener could help it return to a neutral position after operation rather than migrate. Also, slowing down the stepper motor can reduce unnecessary forces and the likelihood of malfunction.
Re: Turning a dumb AC unit smart (without losing my security deposit)
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Multi use rooms require TVs That seems an overstatement. I now have one in my entire house (don't have kids). There's a fairly large TV panel on one wall in basically a sitting room. Otherwise I just use a computer. A relative basically has TVs in every room. I guess it maybe made sense when he was rebuilding anyway but it still seems excessive to me who might sit down to watch a movie or show but doesn't have live…
I was responding to projectors...
But you also seem to also be saying that a lot of rooms require TVs.
Re: Turning a dumb AC unit smart (without losing my security deposit)
#87Glad I have a remote control with 40 year old tech that does the same thing.
Re: Turning a dumb AC unit smart (without losing my security deposit)
#88The "couple a stepper motor to a shaft" API is so much better than any "smart" appliance API. Speaking more seriously, I wish classes of appliances would expose some simple analog and digital interface pins in a standardized configuration to let users choose whatever automation or monitoring hardware they want. HVAC equipment does this with standardized thermostat terminals. I'd love to see that on other types of app…
>HVAC equipment does this with standardized thermostat terminals.
yes, they standardize thermostat terminals, but they should allow additional inputs such as a measure of radiant heat entering through the boundary surfaces. I have to change my thermostat far more because it's a sunny day than I need to because of different outdoor temperatures. Bear in mind, I shouldn't have to change my thermostat at all† (except perhaps between summer and winter)
† perhaps my biggest pet peeve, and I have many, is that 99% of the population—including engineers from top universities—believe that if you feel warm you should imediately max-out your A/C thermostat, and when you get cold you should shut it off. It's a thermostat, its job is to turn on-and-off to maintain a temperature. I never touch the one in my car and it works great. (as mentioned, I need to change the house thermostat, see solar radiance‡ above)
‡ I once had the pleasure to work with a great mechanical engineer, he designed climate systems for art museums and other public and billionaire buildings, and I described my radiant heat problem and he said "that would be super advanced, I've never heard of any systems that do that."⹋
⹋ another one of my pet peeves is footnotes. In general, they require a massive context shift, as if it's not a problem to keep your place while you look in another place. But notice how I've threaded mine so they do not require congnitive leaps.
Re: Turning a dumb AC unit smart (without losing my security deposit)
#89> The rest of this blog post is a walkthrough of a software engineer’s approach to home automation and building custom hardware, and let me tell you: both the final product, and the journey to get there, are hella jank. IMHO it's not that bad? With the disclaimer that I'm also a software engineer who dabbles very very lightly with electronics and has no mechanical engineering expertise. But the overall approach of do…
That's what I did. Just an esp32 relay board with a tiny screen and a knob. Then I put more esp32 sensors in each room to get individual temps, with HA logic to select which room the thermostat pays attention to. If HA dies for some reason it falls back to a local control and I'm back to the same situation as before, a thermostat that only pays attention to the temperature in the hallway it's installed in. All the bo…
Nice. I don't have any ESPHome thermostats right now, but I have an ESPHome fridge/freezer temperature monitor. I adopted the same idea: it should integrate with HA when HA is available, but it should be useful even when HA is down. So in addition to exporting the raw temperature to HA, the alert threshold is kept on the device rather than in HA so it can locally compute the alert state. This triggers a directly wired piezo buzzer, in addition to an HA phone notification.
You do have to set the "api: reboot_timeout: 0" if you don't want it to reboot itself every 15 minutes while HA is down. I persisted the alert threshold to flash though so even if it does reboot it comes right back up and works fine.
Re: Turning a dumb AC unit smart (without losing my security deposit)
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are no air ducts to move air between the units. They are old brick buildings and retrofitting central air you might as well tear down and rebuild a lot of the time.
Which of course means they should use heat pumps, since the copper lines don't need nearly as much room (I suppose you'd still have to put a drywall wall in front of one brick wall potentially). Even just putting a bunch of mini-splits on the roof (instead of individual window AC units) would be an improvement, seems like.
The only difference between a heat pump and an AC is a reversal valve to change which direction you’re pumping the heat in. (Of course obviously an AC fundamentally is a heat pump, but setting that aside.) That makes it very hard to puzzle out what you mean by this comment.