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Freeing a Xiaomi humidifier from the cloud

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Re: Freeing a Xiaomi humidifier from the cloud

#61

Post by wnevets »

piskov wrote: post #54
wnevets wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On a tangent note: don’t use ultrasonic humidifiers. Unless distilled water is used, they create a shit-ton of pm2.5 particles. Not according to my uHoo air quality monitor. I have had one running a few feet from the monitor for over a week and there hasn't been any notable increase in PM2.5 particles.

Last time I checked (brought my sensor to the office to one room with ultrasonic) it showed 101/105 ug/m3 for pm2.5/pm10 In the next room (where there were none) it was 6. Depends on the water, I guess.

How large is the space with the humidifier? My space is wide open and that might be the biggest reason for my lack of increased PM2.5 readings.

Re: Freeing a Xiaomi humidifier from the cloud

#62

Post by beachy »

esaym wrote: post #8
piskov wrote: post #2

On a tangent note: don’t use ultrasonic humidifiers. Unless distilled water is used, they create a shit-ton of pm2.5 particles. Use evaporative humidifiers (just disks with myriads of small notches for water to cling on and a fan): https://us.smartmiglobal.com/pages/smartmi-evaporative-humid...

> Use evaporative humidifiers You don't have to buy one either. A suspended wet towel with a fan blowing on it will work very well. If you want to get fancy, have the last inch or two of the towel sitting in a tray of water.

My brother's house in Perth, Australia has an antique air conditioning system in the roof space that works in exactly this principle. 4 blankets that wick up water and have air drawn through them and into the house by a fan. It's in disuse now but I understand they were common and quite effective in the day.

Re: Freeing a Xiaomi humidifier from the cloud

#63

Post by somenameforme »

Cpoll wrote: post #60
somenameforme wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The age 40 includes childhood mortality! It's difficult to get records from prehistoric humans for obvious reasons, but as early as Ancient Greece you had the upper class living about as long as we do now a days. A study of men of the time found the average life expectancy to be 71.3 years. [1] And while the Bible includes plentiful mythological components, it also includes many historical and contemporary accounts.…

> The length of our days is generally seventy years, or eighty years if one is strong Which translation is that? Or are you paraphrasing? Most translations don't include "generally," and therefore read more as an upper bound "if one is strong" than an average.

Just a poor memory translation. Yeah, generally is incorrect - though I think the correct phrasing also implies an average age of natural death, rather than an upper bound. There were certainly plenty of people living past 80. In the aforementioned study of Ancient Greeks, there were at least 3 centurions - Aristarchos, Democritos, and Gorgias. Granted 1400BC is a thousand years yet prior to that already ancient time, but life peaks seem to be relatively unmoving for humans, and so I don't see any major reason to think there would have been a major difference between 400BC and 1400BC.

Re: Freeing a Xiaomi humidifier from the cloud

#64

Post by numpad0 »

piskov wrote: post #2

On a tangent note: don’t use ultrasonic humidifiers. Unless distilled water is used, they create a shit-ton of pm2.5 particles. Use evaporative humidifiers (just disks with myriads of small notches for water to cling on and a fan): https://us.smartmiglobal.com/pages/smartmi-evaporative-humid...

Don't use evaporative humidifiers(the motorized wet towel). I don't know if it actually cause legionellosis, but it's not very sanitary, and the sanitizing additives for those are known to be actually harmful.

Use boiling type humidifiers (basically just electric tea kettles).

Re: Freeing a Xiaomi humidifier from the cloud

#65

Post by klatchex_too »

wnevets wrote: post #61
piskov wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I checked (brought my sensor to the office to one room with ultrasonic) it showed 101/105 ug/m3 for pm2.5/pm10 In the next room (where there were none) it was 6. Depends on the water, I guess.

How large is the space with the humidifier? My space is wide open and that might be the biggest reason for my lack of increased PM2.5 readings.

I think the parent poster is correct that it depends on the water.

I have a couple ultrasonic humidifiers, if tap water is put in them it immediately sends the AQI on my air quality monitor into the "Dangerous" level. I have the monitor upstairs and it detected it when my girlfriend put tap water in the humidifier downstairs.

Purified or distilled water works fine. I bought a counter top water distiller because it was a pain lugging 15 gallons of water into the house every week all winter. You can see the residue of whatever was in the tap water at the bottom of the distiller after it runs and it doesn't look like anything I would want to be breathing.

Re: Freeing a Xiaomi humidifier from the cloud

#66

Post by kjkjadksj »

piskov wrote: post #2

On a tangent note: don’t use ultrasonic humidifiers. Unless distilled water is used, they create a shit-ton of pm2.5 particles. Use evaporative humidifiers (just disks with myriads of small notches for water to cling on and a fan): https://us.smartmiglobal.com/pages/smartmi-evaporative-humid...

Drying clothes indoors is also effective. When I set up my laundry rack rh can surge by 30%. I imagine setting up a tray of water under a ceiling fan might be similarly effective.

Re: Freeing a Xiaomi humidifier from the cloud

#67

Post by kjkjadksj »

wnevets wrote: post #30
piskov wrote: post #2

On a tangent note: don’t use ultrasonic humidifiers. Unless distilled water is used, they create a shit-ton of pm2.5 particles. Use evaporative humidifiers (just disks with myriads of small notches for water to cling on and a fan): https://us.smartmiglobal.com/pages/smartmi-evaporative-humid...

> On a tangent note: don’t use ultrasonic humidifiers. Unless distilled water is used, they create a shit-ton of pm2.5 particles. Not according to my uHoo air quality monitor. I have had one running a few feet from the monitor for over a week and there hasn't been any notable increase in PM2.5 particles.

The ones I had for a bit basically fogged out the apartment immediately and left white (i’m guessing salt) deposits all over everything. I know you are supposed to use distilled but it’s cost prohibitive at the rate these blow through water unless you also have a home distillery.

Re: Freeing a Xiaomi humidifier from the cloud

#69

Post by dangus »

bsder wrote: post #23
dangus wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty crappy one-size-fits-all advice in itself. If you’re willing to use distilled water, ultrasonic humidifiers have their own advantages over evaporative. I’m personally willing to buy distilled water. It’s a dollar per gallon, and we only need the humidifier during a short few months. You can even buy a small countertop water distiller for under $60.

> If you’re willing to use distilled water, ultrasonic humidifiers have their own advantages over evaporative. Unless you are anally retentive about cleaning it, ultrasonic humidifiers vaporize microbes into the air. There have been loads of studies about this. The only real way to avoid this is to use the humidifiers that are boiling the water.

The real pro tip is to get a whole home humidifier. They aren’t even that expensive. But I haven’t taken the plunge yet.

They avoid all these issues and require way less maintenance than any other solution.

Re: Freeing a Xiaomi humidifier from the cloud

#70

Post by skeledrew »

This got me thinking about how my AC is somewhat ticking me off. A couple years ago I bought a smart AC, and when I got around to wanting to use the smart feature (via the app), I learned that I need to create a Tuya account and connect via that. Today I'm still manually pushing the buttons, as I wasn't having any of that, and the community Tuya tools I found out there are dependent on an account.

A couple weeks ago I took a preliminary look jailbreaking it. Main thing holding me back is a fear of bricking it and being left with an expensive, oversized paperweight, as the electricity here tends to chip at random times and could do so just at a critical point of the process. It also bugs me that I can find 0 information about the device; it's like the "Bluesonik" brand doesn't have an internet presence. But perhaps one day I'll just throw caution to the wind and attempt a Tasmota flash (without even knowing if the board is supported) and hope for the best, similar to when I rooted and flashed my first Android phone for the first time 15 years ago.

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