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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

#421

Post by tracker1 »

rpcope1 wrote: post #382
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 am looking at replacing my A/C system, and having worked on the single stage single speed one that's currently installed, and looking at the insane shit everyone ships that's more complicated than your basic gas forced air furnace coupled with a single stage 16 seer A/C unit, there's no way I would ever buy something else. Every parts house has got inexpensive replacements in stock for the simpler units and service…

Largely my take as well... I just want the simplest thing that works at this point... I'm heading in that direction as I need to replace appliances as well. So far this year, the microwave, range and dryer have all died. The microwave was the single biggest safety hazard I've ever seen, and they say you shouldn't work on them yourself... what happens when it turns on if the door is open? Or, you discover later, it's actually just on all the time even though the light is off and the fan isn't running.

I'm all about stupid, but repairable appliances now.

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

#422

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

hunter2_ wrote: post #124
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I couldn't find a Canadian (or any foreign) retailer that would ship to the US, but I found tons of US retailers that allow self-entry (as an alternative to uploading a signed prescription) as I described.

ContactsExpress ships to the US. There is at least one other that escapes me.

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

#423

Post by ryankshaw »

e44858 wrote: post #394
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…

Some units have a 5V UART port that's easy to connect to HomeAssistant and has two-way communication: https://static.xtremeownage.com/blog/2023/pioneer-mini-split...

I did something very similar with my Pioneer minisplit. but i used this esp module you can just buy. Super simple and cheap:

https://smartlight.me/smart-home-devices/wifi-devices/wifi-d...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6GEfzVhwCE

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

#424

Post by BizarroLand »

Scoundreller wrote: post #360
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone reading this should find out what capacitor they need and buy one off Amazon, they're all I've done this repair myself, it takes maybe <15 minutes and is almost impossible to mess up. Even if you were find spending a couple hundred dollars to have someone come out and do it, you'd still go hours at least without AC. Which depending on the time of year can be miserable.

> and is almost impossible to mess up Just don’t cook yourself with the remaining good capacitance. Personally, I wonder what could be done to temporarily get the capacitor to “kick” for a few more times to get your home temperature down as you get your replacement. Chill the capacitor?

It depends on the failure mode of the cap. If it has blown its dielectric, then chilling it may cause the plates to separate enough to boost the capacitance, but it is more likely to just be a waste of time.

Aside from that, you could strap on other capacitors as long as their voltage is the right value. A daisy chain of 50mf capacitors to shore up the blown capacitance might buy you a day or so of usage.

Best bet, if you have an old broken microwave nearby, would be to pull the cap from it and wire it in.

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

#425

Post by coupdejarnac »

spikej wrote: post #407
cameldrv wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest maker of garage door openers in the U.S. has done the same thing. For a button that goes on the wall to open the door, now it sends an encrypted code instead of just shorting two wires so that you have to use their button instead of a regular doorbell button like people have been doing for decades.

Which company, and which product did you see this with?

Chamberlain devices do this. Genie devices do not.

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

#426

Post by nairboon »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #251
nairboon wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. (…

> you notice the wave is growing and about to flood everything around you, but there's fuck all you can do about it.

In terms of online shopping, if the distributor cooperates with the consumer then there is something to do about it. One of the largest Swiss online shop started to share warranty statistics of all products. That information is quite useful to avoid the cheap and soon to break stuff. Of course it's not perfect, since it only tracks faults within the 2 year warranty period. But it provides a proxy signal for quality. But maybe that only works in smaller markets with less incentives to game the statistics.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34536344

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

#428

Post by paranoidrobot »

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?

For me the only way it can get out of sync is from power failure in the AC, or someone using the remote. Putting the remote away solves the last.

I have Zigbee contact sensors that provide on/off feedback to HA by detecting if the louvers are open.

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

#429

Post by dfox »

lolinder wrote: post #330
yurishimo wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they moved? In my experience, IKEA furniture that isn't solid wood (more and more of it is heading that direction to their credit) tends to not make it more than 1 move. I just got done (mostly) reassembling a wardrobe. It's a bit more wobbly around the edges. I'm not sure if it's because I didn't put the shelves back in the exact spots (wasn't thinking and didn't label them during disassembly) or if it's somet…

I tend to assume that IKEA furniture shouldn't be actually taken apart once put together, and so far that's worked out fine for us. There are some pieces that are obviously repeatable (table legs screwed into metal mounting brackets) but with a lot of the steps you can feel as you're doing it the first time that it's not going to work well if you have to undo it.

IIRC when we wanted to move one of the pretty large IKEA dressers that had to be at least partially disassembled to fit through the door there was no non-destructive way to dismantle it. And that was not about trivial things like the back panel being nailed, but about fasteners of the actual structural parts being inaccessible once you put the whole thing together. One would think that going through the assembly steps in reverse should work, but for some reason it did not. I ended up breaking few structural braces (~18x48mm pieces of fiberboard) at the back of the thing to take it apart and replacing that with wooden beams of the same size.

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

#430

Post by paranoidrobot »

rich_sasha wrote: post #231
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…

Ah, do you have some tips for someone who wants to do something similar? I use AC units that come with IR remotes (Samsung maybe??) but the timers don't work for some reason. It would be great to hand roll some automation, but I never "hacked" IR remote/receiver systems.

Start Simple is my suggestion.

Home Assistant supports a huge range of integrations.

Personally I am using Broadlink RM4 Mini IR blasters. One in each room. They get added to Home Assistant as devices.

Then I use one of the climate add-ons that can send IR commands via the Broadlinks.

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