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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

#361

Post by totallymike »

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, .

It becomes infuriating to think of all the waste that's generated from these little stupid things.

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

#362

Post by gwd »

passwordoops wrote: post #305
gwd wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider the following scenario: 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…

There's nothing wrong with this scenario per se, but there's a 100% chance this is not the reason for their decision

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.

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

#363

Post by hunter2_ »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #217
hunter2_ wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Reading all that, I'm happy my part of Europe is a bit behind the tech curve here. I mean holy fuck, "native mobile app" and "getting contacts" do not belong in the same sentence in any sane universe.

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.

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

#364

Post by quickthrowman »

xvector wrote: post #215
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of these examples, and others, sound like an underserved market.

Exactly. This is what happens when a market is so small they can overcharge for terrible technology. I figure a couple of SWEs could make a startup that completely disrupts these industries with objectively superior technology.

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.

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

#365

Post by nehz »

gstar wrote: post #340
FLT8 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're right! The serial bus isn't encrypted! 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: setCAN 0201000…

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

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

#366

Post by Snild »

Hendrikto wrote: post #265
liminalsunset wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 proba…

Are you a lobbyist? You spent so much effort arguing for something OP has shown to be just plain false. Any tablet worked. The only reason it die not work ootb were completely arbitrary restrictions. The control boxes can do whatever complicated things they want. But the interface to control them should and can be standardized.

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.

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

#367

Post by raxxorraxor »

Liquix wrote: post #139
gstar wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It 100% is designed so that you have to use their hardware.

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.

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

#368

Post by sumtechguy »

virtue3 wrote: post #116
gstar wrote: post #70

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.

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). Shame on this manufacturer.

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?

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

#369

Post by riskable »

datahack wrote: post #100
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.

You think this is bad? Try swimming pool equipment.

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.

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

#370

Post by datavirtue »

squarefoot wrote: post #276
radicalbyte wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

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.
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