131–140 of 496 posts
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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.
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.
Germans tend to obsess over rules and processes in bureaucratic contexts and when it infringes on others but are very open with personal freedoms.
> 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…
How many hours did you spend taking it apart diagnosing the problem, though? I'm guessing at least 2? $100/hr for that seems pretty reasonable to me.
(Granted, I agree with you in that I'd prefer to figure it out and repair it myself, even if it would take me 5x as long as someone trained to do it.)
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…
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.
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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.
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…
A nice solution to a completely self-inflicted problem. Next time just get a dumb thermostat, or perhaps, if you're so inclined, something cheap off-the-shelf like an ecobee.
Fortunately there are some heat pumps that allow you to use any old thermostat; they figure out the right speed to run at using their own temperature sensors.
Regardless, this wasn't really the thermostat: this was a control system that monitors temperatures in each room/zone, and opens and closes the vents to hit the temperature targets in each zone. Pretty sure no dumb (or even generic smart) thermostat can handle that.
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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 onli…
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
Optomitrist asks if your current prescription is ok, asks you to stand 20ft back and read a few letters and you’ve got a script you can use wherever.
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. That's a crazy weird coincidence.
For a small place there's a lot of sandgropers on HN somehow
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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.
It 100% is designed so that you have to use their hardware.
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For a small place there's a lot of sandgropers on HN somehow
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.
Also congrats to the OP! Sadly, european aircon appliances are usually built the same way (last only as long as the warranty).