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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

#251

Post by TeMPOraL »

nairboon wrote: post #208
TeMPOraL wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel this may be natural selection at play. 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. Fai…

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.

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

#252

Post by keshet »

ale42 wrote: post #225

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.

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

#253

Post by zb »

antisthenes wrote: post #87

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.

You must be American.

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.

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

#254

Post by XorNot »

cbanek wrote: post #66
XorNot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 1…

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.

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

#255

Post by michaelt »

yuye wrote: post #230
audunw wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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. T…

> 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.

[1] https://www.myplacenz.co.nz/are-you-making-the-most-of-your-... [2] https://blog.hopefullyuseful.com/blog/advantage-air-ezone-ta...

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

#257

Post by SahAssar »

gwd wrote: post #245
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.

If that was the motivation it should be a warning, not a hard error.

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

#258

Post by rocqua »

pxx wrote: post #43
biggc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How big can these capacitors be? Does replacing it require any safety precautions besides turning off the power?

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…

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?

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

#259

Post by Hawxy »

ctippett wrote: post #155

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 perio…

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.
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