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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

#441

Post by paranoidrobot »

dfox wrote: post #433
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IR is fine for these things, it's not like they need much data. I have an IR ceiling fan, no issues there (even if the receiver is on a little wire that is supposed to stick to something but the sticktivity of the tape sucked), and a radio "smart" lighting system (just simple on / off switch on a plug socket). And some radio spots from IKEA, although I'm sure that can be hooked up to a "smart" system.

IKEA has consistent smart system that has the annoying feature that it works the wrong-way around for my use-case. The cheap IKEA switches can control IKEA peripherals only directly, you can't use them to control something outside of the IKEA ecosystem. As most of the things I want to control are either HomeKit native things or digital outputs on PLCs it does not work for me. So in the spirit of true overkill I have…

You should be able to integrate your IKEA and Homekit devices into the one if you use HomeAssistant.

The IKEA Tradfri system is all Zigbee based - I have a bunch of their light bulbs and strips, plus a few smart power plugs. I personally have them attached to my own Zigbee controller, but there's also a Home Assistant Tradfri integration if you want to keep using their Smart Hub controller.

There's also a Home Assistant homekit integration, so you can use HA to orchestrate events happening on the Tradfri side to trigger something in the Homekit side, or vice versa.

(I don't have the Tradfri smart hub or Homekit devices, so YMMV on specific possible options)

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

#442

Post by Suppafly »

bityard wrote: post #406
unkulunkulu wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IKEA? Thats a surprise, what happened?

Some IKEA furniture is great, some of it is terrible. 10-15 years ago, it was where you'd go when you needed a great-looking nightstand or coffee table for a fair price and didn't overly care how long it would last. These days, you can expect to pay a premium for the "IKEA aesthetic" and shopping experience. Personally, the main thing I can't stand is that you have only limited ability to "choose your own adventure"…

>Personally, the main thing I can't stand is that you have only limited ability to "choose your own adventure" and just go straight to the thing you're there to buy.

Sure you can, just go down to the basement area where you pick up all the boxes anyway. You only need to browse if you don't know what you want.

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

#443

Post by dfox »

paranoidrobot wrote: post #441
dfox wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IKEA has consistent smart system that has the annoying feature that it works the wrong-way around for my use-case. The cheap IKEA switches can control IKEA peripherals only directly, you can't use them to control something outside of the IKEA ecosystem. As most of the things I want to control are either HomeKit native things or digital outputs on PLCs it does not work for me. So in the spirit of true overkill I have…

You should be able to integrate your IKEA and Homekit devices into the one if you use HomeAssistant. The IKEA Tradfri system is all Zigbee based - I have a bunch of their light bulbs and strips, plus a few smart power plugs. I personally have them attached to my own Zigbee controller, but there's also a Home Assistant Tradfri integration if you want to keep using their Smart Hub controller. There's also a Home Assist…

My beef is with the fact that the battery powered switch wants to be paired with the thing it directly controls and cannot be used alone with it just controlling something that is on the other side of the tradfri gateway. The five button round one apparently can be used for that, but the two position square one can't.

By the way the tradfri gateway is weird piece of hardware, the thing is mostly empty and only contains small board with apparently the same RFSoC as all the other tradfri peripherals connected somehow to ethernet PHY…

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

#444

Post by connicpu »

bityard wrote: post #408
connicpu wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also just got AC last year, and while it doesn't have as many fancy features I'm glad I got one that works with standard 24V HVAC wiring. I built my own thermostat out of an ESP8266, I²C temperature sensor from adafruit, and three TRIAC circuits to control the fan, heat, and ac wires. Connected to MQTT and I can send control commands to it from my Home Assistant instance!

If you have the code for this publicly (or would consider making it so) I would be quite interested in it. There are a fair number of DIY thermostat projects online, but all that I have found were one-offs by their creators, or were for specific kinds of systems like boilers. I've been batting around the idea of starting a general-purpose IoT thermostat that only uses cheap, widely-available components that anyone ca…

My first model is pretty janky and definitely built as a one-off, lots of hard-coded stuff in the arduino code I wrote for it that are specific to my setup. I've been thinking about making a new, more streamlined version that could be fully assembled by a fab and sent ready to flash and wire up into an HVAC system. And of course, I'll publicly release the KiCAD files and code for that when it's ready! :)

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

#445

Post by Suppafly »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #63
teslabox wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But HVAC supply shops will sell them to you, you don’t need to be licensed or anything to buy them. My local HVAC supplier doesn't sell to non-licensed people. I think they don't like dealing with returns from people who don't know what they're doing. I needed a 24vac transformer once. My dad used the same HVAC company for his office for a long time, they still remembered him, and had the part I needed in stock. My…

I’ve heard of this in the past. Usually the shop will sell to you without a license if you’re affiliated with an HVAC company, because you might be some unlicensed peon picking up parts for the installer or technician down the road. But they often have no way to verify whether you’re a HVAC person for things that don’t require a license vs some clued in homeowner, so you can give them a made up LLC name and say you w…

> Purchasing refrigerant requires an EPA number.

Why can I buy as many cans of it that I want for my car then? Is the stuff used in house systems that different?

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

#446

Post by Marsymars »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #30
irjustin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Carrier back in the 2000's had a problem with their heat exchangers in their gas furnaces failing far more often than they should. They were sued, settled, and part of the settlement was an extended warranty of the heat exchanger, including labor. Great, right? The local carrier dealer lied and said the unit wasn't under warranty. They lied again when reminded of the class-action settlement, claiming only part were i…

I'd have let the dealer do the install, and then only brought up the fact that it was under warranty afterwards.

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

#447

Post by Arrath »

cameldrv wrote: post #401
gstar wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

God that's just insane.

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

#448

Post by OkGoDoIt »

xandrius wrote: post #385
consteval wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus Christ are they amateurs? These are steel boxes on wheels and we're dealing with the same issues as shitty 200 dollars android tablets from 10 years ago.

That's because all who gets hired at these hyper-fast startups are fresh graduates who can do leetcode by heart. The people who have been in the field for a decade or more can't be arsed putting up with all that and so you get stupid issues which were solved years ago but the devs were not aware of them.

So where do those people go to work instead? I want to work with them.

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

#449

Post by OkGoDoIt »

nairboon wrote: post #204
Lammy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very convenient for them and also easy to accomplish by buying the cheapest parts. It's probably eMMC-based and writing a logfile constantly. Source: every Android that has ever died on me in this exact way (four and counting)

I recently had an otherwise perfectly fine eMMC-based Samsung phone degraded to unusable floppy disk speeds. My guess is that their "RAM Plus" feature (aka swap) combined with the memory hungry modern android apps turned out to be a nasty timebomb. Which has or still is bricking millions of smartphones after a few years of usage.

Sounds like fixing that would be really bad for Samsung’s bottom line. Higher cost of materials initially, less frequent upgrades, and only a very small subset of super technical users even realize what the problem is.
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