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Air Con: $1697 for an on/off switch

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Re: Air Con: $1697 for an on/off switch

#241

Post by mianos »

paranoidrobot wrote: post #108

I installed AC in my home in the last year. I specifically went for units that were IR controlled rather than any proprietary smart B.S. For the smarts, I used cheap IR blasters from AliExpress and hooked them up to HomeAssistant. I just mounted cheap Lenovo tablets to the wall to do the room-dashboard thing to allow controlling lights/AC without a phone. These kind of horror stories only serve to reinforce my decisi…

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.

Re: Air Con: $1697 for an on/off switch

#242

Post by lexicality »

torginus wrote: post #233
pzlarsson wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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.

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.

Re: Air Con: $1697 for an on/off switch

#243

Post by saylisteins »

ranebo wrote: post #115
gstar wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, and you just need one of these and a TTL to RS422 converter off aliexpress to replicate the interface: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005918675239.html The connectors on the small RJ45 daughter board are JST-SH 1.0 The yellow lead puts out 4.2v to replicate a Li-Ion battery (as far as I can tell). You can ignore this. Red is positive Black is negative Green is usb d+ Blue is usb d-

This is all fantastic info. I have included the details and a link to these comments at the bottom of the post. Great work!

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!

Re: Air Con: $1697 for an on/off switch

#244

Post by mianos »

athrun wrote: post #148
paranoidrobot wrote: post #108

I installed AC in my home in the last year. I specifically went for units that were IR controlled rather than any proprietary smart B.S. For the smarts, I used cheap IR blasters from AliExpress and hooked them up to HomeAssistant. I just mounted cheap Lenovo tablets to the wall to do the room-dashboard thing to allow controlling lights/AC without a phone. These kind of horror stories only serve to reinforce my decisi…

I was thinking of doing the same but IR control only allows for unidirectional communication with the unit. Since there's no feedback mechanism, how do you solve for when the state of the unit(s) gets out of sync with HomeAssistant's?

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.

https://tasmota.github.io/docs/Tasmota-IR/#sending-ir-comman...

Re: Air Con: $1697 for an on/off switch

#245

Post by gwd »

aledalgrande wrote: post #2

That "not on AA hardware" error from an app running on a plain Android tablet should be criminal.

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.

Re: Air Con: $1697 for an on/off switch

#246

Post by mianos »

dvratil wrote: post #153

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.

In case you want to connect it to HA, Tasmota IR supports my Daikin via an esp32 IR sender really well.

Re: Air Con: $1697 for an on/off switch

#247

Post by mrgaro »

paranoidrobot wrote: post #108

I installed AC in my home in the last year. I specifically went for units that were IR controlled rather than any proprietary smart B.S. For the smarts, I used cheap IR blasters from AliExpress and hooked them up to HomeAssistant. I just mounted cheap Lenovo tablets to the wall to do the room-dashboard thing to allow controlling lights/AC without a phone. These kind of horror stories only serve to reinforce my decisi…

Gree HVAC units have built-in wifi which supports fully local remote control and there are OSS packages (including home-assistant).

Re: Air Con: $1697 for an on/off switch

#248

Post by kokey »

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.

Re: Air Con: $1697 for an on/off switch

#250

Post by kokey »

cyberax wrote: post #98

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.
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