Chris, one of my biggest worries is that your startup will get acquired or go out of business and then the firmware will leave me with a $14,000 brick.
What if I want to keep using the cloud-based thermostat when your servers get shut off or moved to another system, or if something like Google Nest closing down their API happens after you've exited?
This is an expensive system with an expected long life, and I'd want some guarantees that I can control it entirely myself.
I totally get this concern. Any good piece of critical home infrastructure should be able to operate without the cloud or an internet connection. Following this logic the thermostat + heat pump combination can operate fine without the cloud. You leave some optimized behavior on the table like demand response and weather response, but everything else will work (you'd have to manually enter your TOU rate plan to get that energy optimization).
Would your company be willing to provide an open-source local-first websocket-based integration with https://www.home-assistant.io/ or use the new Matter + Thread standard to provide it for everyone?
If that's available, this would be my top choice as I'm actively shopping for all-electric heat pumps
The important bit is to have an open API that can be connected to from the local network (or via Matter + Thread, etc), and via a cloud. Then anyone can develop a client. This also has benefits in UX: the latency to update is much lower than cloud based polling, since that's almost always rate limited.
The closer anything is to the bottom of the chart here, the better. When buying something as expensive as a heat pump, I wouldn't even consider something that isn't at least local polling:
That being said, I'm not opposed to value add things via cloud services. Want to get the weather via a cloud service, even if that changes the schedule? Totally fine! But ultimate control must be local.
Agreed, this isn't a $100 thermostat that I can just pull off the wall and replace - we're talking an expensive investment with a 10+ year lifespan. That said, even for my thermostat not being bound to the cloud was an important reason I went with Emerson/Sensi (the only value-add I lose if their cloud goes down is usage reporting, everything else I can do with the native Homekit support).
An API that is public, well-documented, and easy for other systems to securely integrate with would mean that customers get the integration they want. If someone builds a better way to utilize your system, then you just got value-add on your product at basically zero cost.
Amazon can hook Alexa into it. Google can hook their Home thing into it. And whatever comes next, whatever doesn't even exist today, should have an easy time integrating, continuing to add value.
Completely agree on this point. I've worked over half a decade with smart home systems, and it's just so much easier (and cheaper!) to integrate well documented, open APIs (and please make them secure, I have nightmares of all the open, unencrypted UDP based alarm systems) that is purely local. This means we would highly recommend these products even tho we made zero money off them, and customers would actually prefer them as well - it's well beyond the time of people naively buying this stuff, and they know that clouds can just "go offline".
What also can't be underestimated is the tinker community. Many people in the smart home business are tinkerers themselfs; create a great product for them and they will inevitably try to use it at their job. But this really isn't only applicable to integrators, really.
If you support home assistant then I am far, far more likely to purchase this. My wife and I are buying a house sometime over the next year and one of my higher priorities is getting a heat pump. At the same time though I also refuse to use cloud based services and instead prefer to run my own home assistant installation.
You should consider this a huge marketing opportunity- the home assistant people are obsessed with perfecting HVAC (half of these people have their own weather stations) and are also the kind of geeky first adopter who will push useful tech on all their friends. It's also not a small community, as the subreddit alone has over 222k people on it.
Chris, I think there's a lot more here to uncover. Most of your competition has no sensitivity, and almost no openness, about these aspects. I think this could become a really important part of your go-to market, but also a differentiator vs other products.
I'm a VC since recently, but have been a tech guy for a long time. Feel free to ping me if you'd like to discuss it further. $HN_username at gmail.
HA user here as well, having a non-locked down API at minimum (i.e. not actively trying to stop folks using it), through to an open and documented api (would be great), through to open firmware (would be best) and or releasing your own integration for HA would likely get you those kinda customers.
If people have a preferred way of integrating their devices, like home assistant, I'd want to make that possible for people to do with Electric Air.
Re the sizing question - this is a part of the site that needs improvement. 12kbtu is 1 ton. The 48kbtu system is a 4ton system, but rated at 5F, if you're in a more temperate climate, two of these will likely have plenty of capacity for you. It's also likely that your current system is oversized.
The good news, at least, is that almost anything will work. You don't need full Matter support for Home Assistant folks to be happy. The bare-minimum, local REST api built on a Monday by an intern will do it. Someone will write the Python code to fully integrate it. I get that there would be some security concerns there, but you get my drift.
If worried about security concerns, just provide a common port interface (RJ-45/RJ-11) on the unit with a simple, well-documented, serial-based protocol on RS485/RS232. You can sell an add-on device to bridge that to Ethernet/simple API, and easily replace/recall that inexpensive module if there are issues.
The hackers will do what they want to anyway, and they'll implement cool interfaces/HA plugins/controllers on RPis or ESP32s for free. Someone will get enterprising and package a pre-built/programmed ESP32 unit that makes it plug-and-play for nerdy, but less capable users, and your company can avoid any liability from users using an 'unsupported' add-on.
Also, I'm in the market for a new AC/heater - so have been looking.
Your specs are in kbtu, but at least for cooling I'm used to tons; I have 2x4.5ton units, and I think that's ~120kbtu, so I wouldn't be able to get just two of your biggest units?
That would be 108kbtu, but you are likely oversized. With proper duct configuration including ACCA Manual D calcs and air sealing, you will most likely be more than fine with 96kbtu. Most systems (even in very nice houses) are just sort of thrown in rather than actually calculated, and then they are installed sloppily with a lot of leakage and only roughly resembling the design in at least a few locations. I do these calculations for a living, and would recommend presuming that will be the case until proven otherwise. Obviously get hard numbers before full commitment.
My company took GP’s suggested strategy and got an incredible community response. Really resonates with the high-end residential market, both DIY and DIFM (pros / CEDIA).
My desire would be to have the possibility of thermostat control (entirely) via first party, me. Odds are I would never even touch it, but the fact that I couldn't would be a dealbreaker for something like this.
For me the goal is 100% local control. I found out the other day that I couldn't turn my 8sleep mattress on because a guy down the street struck a fiber line. My bed was basically a $4k brick as soon as the internet went down.
Look at it this way, it saves you money in server costs and performs much better.
For me, it's just peace of mind. I need to know that if cloud servers go down, or even my internet goes down, my house still works. My Nest thermostats are currently cloud-only (the only parts of my house left that are), and I had to write a script to never update them exactly on the hour. That's when their API is very likely to 500; I'm guessing because most people have automations trigger on the hour.
I guess I can sum it up like this: I only want to deal with my own problems in my free time in my own home.
The point is to not have your company as a single point of failure for the thermostat. So yes, integrate into a wider (open) ecosystem, and that problem is addressed.
I consider Matter support to be vital for any product that’s “connected”. You can keep all the specialised features limited to your app but basic controls should be exposed via a standard protocol like Matter so I can use any Matter controller to set the temperatures and such.
The desire is to have any control/knowledge you'd want to have as the creator/developer. I want to be my own mechanic, and if I'm not that mechanic I want to be able to have anyone be that mechanic.
Do you want to know what the active airflow rate is? I want to know what the active airflow rate is. Do you want to know power consumption? I want to know power consumption. Do you have a way to write unique schedules/programs that get executed on the heat pump? I want a way to write unique schedules/programs that get executed on the heat pump.
Context: Full-Stack Software Engineer (worked at a few start ups including Bird Rides). Active Home Assistant user and community-run integration creator (Linked Lovelace)
The incredible part about a company like yours is the ability to do hardware at scale. There's no reality in which I'm safely and cost-effectively building my own Electric Heat Pump, or television, or [cool product here].
Companies that make it easier for me to do my own things stand out.
If you don't want that for the standard customer, fine. Provide some way to open up the device and trigger dev mode, or manually upload firmware, or OTA update firmware.
Side notes:
- a failed kickstarter I joined shipped out their original product with bad firmware and no way to do a physical firmware update without destroying the product, so they tanked instantly despite having a great hardware setup. Despite their failure, I and a few others opened up our products and manually flashed custom firmware onto it to make use of the product we bought
- I don't mind using a voice assistant, steal my ideas Tim Apple. I hate the part where the request goes (phone -> router -> cloud server -> router -> local server -> light bulb) instead of (phone -> router -> local server -> light bulb) or worse (phone -> router -> local server -> router -> cloud server -> router -> local server -> light bulb).
EDIT: my markdown is showing, I should stick to lurking
Speaking of heat pumps and granular control, I recently figured out that some Midea heat pumps (usually sold rebranded to various brands) contain two interfaces to get and set detailed information:
1) Detailed diagnostics i.e. RPMs, feeds, speeds, currents, temps etc can be read from the high voltage signal line between the indoor and outdoor unit - there is an official tool (search "Dr. Smart Midea" on YouTube) that does this. If you look in the right places, there is a PowerPoint with a schematic of the PHY that you need to interface with this using a LV isolated controller
2) The outdoor unit can be driven manually using the same tool using an i2c port that is on the PCB on the outdoor unit
I have the new generation of their Dr. Smart tool, which I haven't had the time to thoroughly test or document. If there is interest I will likely try to reverse engineer and document these protocols properly.
> "I want to be my own mechanic, and if I'm not that mechanic I want to be able to have anyone be that mechanic."
> "Do you want to know what the active airflow rate is? I want to know what the active airflow rate is. Do you want to know power consumption? I want to know power consumption. Do you have a way to write unique schedules/programs that get executed on the heat pump? I want a way to write unique schedules/programs that get executed on the heat pump."
There's one feature of this diagnostic interface that I really really like.
It allows you to "drive" the hardware of the unit manually, like Program Auto mode on a camera. You can manually set the frequency of the compressor and fan, and the control board will continue to enforce safeties.
I haven't tried yet, but something I really want to try to implement myself is "frequency lockout". This is a common feature on commercial variable frequency drives. I noticed that under some operating conditions, the unit vibrations resonate with the building and create unpleasant sounds - I'd like to program it to never dwell on that frequency and skip over it.
> The desire is to have any control/knowledge you'd want to have as the creator/developer.
While I was exploring this, I had this in mind constantly. I definitely had this diag interface in mind when I was selecting a unit.
Can you provide any more details on the I2C interface on Midea units?
I found some sparse documentation on Midea's (and rebadged units) Modbus-esque protocol over RS485 (aka XYE connectors), and I control it via an ESP32 on HA. From the indoor unit, the diagnostic data I could reverse engineer is limited to temp sensors (intake, indoor coil, outdoor ambient) and basic running modes. I believe the outdoor unit also has a modbus/485 that has more info, and obviously the signal wire passes some comms between the two, but Midea doesn't make this stuff public.
If I'm gonna invest in a heat pump for the long term, I don't want it committed to any software technology that may be obsolete in 10 years. I want it to use something so dead stupid simple that anything in 50 years can still operate it without a lot of work.
The simplest example I can think of is MIME (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME). It can be embedded in basically any transport type. It can encode anything you want (binary, UTF8, etc). It is very old, stable and well-tested. It is fairly trivial to implement a limited instruction set of.
Transport security, authentication, authorization, etc, are nice, but not nearly as important to me as a future-proof interface to my heat pump. Give me the option to enable an admin port and just run a single unsecured connection with a basic dumb text protocol, and I can hack together a client in 30 minutes in any programming language. It's not fancy but it will work forever.
This is extremely disappointing, given their price point.
I've seen an oil furnace still running after 50 years with just basic maintenance. Did it cost 2-5 times as much in inflation-adjusted dollars as a heat pump does now? No.
IMO I would prefer a Bluetooth thermostat that once paired, you don't have to login again. One thing that really annoys me about home "smart" devices is arbitrarily being logged out and having to remember passwords etc. and I don't see a reason I need to be "logged in" to control my thermostat. Also I don't want it to stop working when your servers are down... (had this happen the other day with my garage door opener sigh...) If you want internet connectivity, it should connect to some hub to bridge the Bluetooth to the web account.
We need an entire industry of 'appliance based Rpi's to be able to act as modules in a standardly compute plug-in-form factor (just like blades) with a unit preloaded with a config and just swap out inter connects - ich that we have an appliance hub, the solar/whatever input pushes power and the distributor determines where to push or halt the power - with a selector that tells me the input costs, and output draws, such that it can have a system to auto switch to best performance.
Honywell missed the mark on the importance of thermostats on the economy.
Please also be careful about selling to incumbents without a strong guarantee (ie contractual penalties) your product will stay in market for many years.
I know smoke detectors and a couple other crappy home goods have been fixed by scrappy upstarts, sold to the losers for <100M, and then shuttered to avoid pivoting the existing business. Heartbreaking lost progress every time it happens.
1. There's a plugin for WeeWX that will happily fling readings from a weather station to my RainMachine sprinkler timer, so perhaps you could still support weather response as long as the user ran their own weather station.
2. The thermostat should support at least as much local control as the REST-ish API on the Venstar ColorTouch series.
Pressure plates in the streets which are pressed when cars drive over them - pushing fluids through your coils, but connected to multiple units on either side.
Harvest the kinetic energy of cars passing through the streets to apply pressure to pumps that feed fluids through the system, capturing that energy in a dynamo way?
Put these plates in every high trafficked area. Piping the pumping action from parking garages to freeway exits and shipping ports which roll off weight from water to street and pump a f-ton of fluid based on vehicle traffick and weight.
Make smaller installations... make an adapter interface to railway. heavy as cars on trains constantly hitting the pump valves. (yes we still need to deal with the bureau assholes in that industry... Im talking engineering)
I like the out of the box thinking! Unfortunately I think this one doesn't quite pass first principles. Any pumping action from the vehicles would be extra work they have to perform, so you just shuffle the energy expenditure from your local heat pumps, to a fleet of vehicles.
No. The cars would be doing a little extra work. Imagine if you did it with half-filled hoses of water going in a loop. The car tires would be pushing the water through the hose, adding drag. The energy cost would come from the gas or electricity of the car.
It's like the usual analogy I used to use for content mills or adtech: it's like setting up wind farms along the interstates. The wind from the trucks creates free energy! Awesome, right? Except that those trucks are no longer drafting off each other quite as much...
(And I say "used to use" because it used to be a small tax, a bit of an extra nuisance here and there, and people largely felt like it didn't really cost anyone anything. Now it's more obviously expensive, like making the entire roadbed out of little rolling wheels that charge generators, so you have to "drive" 80mph in order to progress at 50mph...)
For a similar reason why riding a bike through sand is more difficult than on flat tarmac, this will require additional energy and you will pay for it in locally burned petrol. Moreover, it will be less efficient than if you just burned that fuel in a power station.
I agree with this. I would rather have it automated without cloud functionality. I think people on HN just like hacking lol. But when it comes to appliances and cars I would rather not mess with their code and break them.
I'd be careful catering to everyone asking for everything but the kitchen sink. Creating a non-cloud capable system is dumb.
If you have customers like commenter above maybe put in a clause in the contract that says they will receive a partial refund if/when there is an acquisition event during the warranty period and bump up their price by 20%.
"As someone about to be in the market for something like this, propriety lockout is a complete deal breaker for me." - StrangeATractor
"Would your company be willing to provide an open-source local-first websocket-based integration with https://www.home-assistant.io/ or use the new Matter + Thread standard to provide it for everyone?" - daredoes
"Most of your competition has no sensitivity, and almost no openness, about these aspects. I think this could become a really important part of your go-to market, but also a differentiator vs other products." - simonebrunozzi
"I would like to be able to add it to HomeKit without it ever phoning home once. Matter + Thread help make that a possibility." - X-Istence
Yes this is HN what do you expect, of course everyone and their grandma here is gonna want a fully unlocked, open source and free as in freedom fries product.
I mean, aside from the fact that you misunderstood the whole point, nobody ever paid 20% extra for a heating system which didn't have cloud connectivity. In fact, the whole idea that there's something wrong with a heating system which doesn't require an internet connection is so incredibly bizarre that I can only wonder if you're someone who came out of a time machine.
Lastly, a partial refund does fuck all to compensate for the fact that you have a multi-tonne brick in your house that has perfectly functioning hardware but broken software (because the server it used to talk to is gone). It also doesn't compensate for the wasted resources.
My thoughts too. Local heating/cooling should not be tied to the cloud period. If it doesn't use the normal wiring people already have it's a hard pass from me.
Exactly. I will not even buy a $100 remote-internet-controlled thermostat that relies on a cloud service [0], and I've looked for both my home and my shop.
I would not even consider buying the hardware that keeps my pipes from freezing if it depends on an internet connection.
I'm happy if there are non-critical OPTIONS available that use the internet (e.g., as another poster mentioned, available optimizations based on real-time elec rates, etc.), but if there is any key function that'll fail without an internet connection, that's immediate disqualification, hard nope, not looking anymore. Period, full stop, even if it is "free" as in beer.
OTOH, if OP can deliver a true stand-alone system and guarantees that it will never require a connection for any core function (as above, optional ok), then he'll have a large market.
[0] any remote-via-internet control function should be able to directly access my IP, static or transient. Not only are non-static home IPs actually quite durable in my experience, there are a variety of easy solutions to keep track of the home IP. Yes, some of those are cloud services, but they are not tied to any hardware.
Edit: That said, I'm ok with requiring wiring beyond the normal thermostat-HVAC wiring.
Disagree. There are a lot of advantages in being able to coordinate heating/cooling and general home electricity use based on stuff like weather forecasts, your electric company's rate tiers (including working around peak hours), when you are home or about to come home etc. Of course there should be a fallback mode where the system can work 100% offline, but being connected is definitely worth it.
You lose about 30% efficiency using "standardized wiring" with an inverter heat pump instead of a communicating thermostat, because running a heat pump at 33% power continuously instead of 100% power 20 minutes of every hour results in a COP about 30% higher.
They don't need it, they just don't get all their rated efficiency, which is much higher than single-speed systems. Single-speed systems commonly have cooling efficiencies around 10-14 SEER, the Gree Sapphire is 38 SEER. If you ran it at only full power, it'd probably only be 30 SEER.
Counterpoint — I have an app for my Mitsubishi heat pump and use it all the time. It’s way more convenient and lets me hyper optimize my house. I actually don’t even use the physical ones at all anymore
What is your plan if Mitsubishi cuts off access in 20 years or updates in a way that you're not comfortable with (like add advertisements to the panels)?
Yes s/he is. Mitsubishi force you to use their Kumo Cloud controls, which are 1) expensive (a few kk) and 2) require cloud. Supposedly Mitsubishi is replacing Kumo with something else, but that just makes the problem worse.
Wat. First of all, I have Kumo Cloud and it did not cost thousands of dollars. It was a few hundred for the adapter, and then I paid an HVAC tech to install it. That's it.
Second of all, you aren't forced to use Kumo Cloud. Even though I have it, I still have a remote that operates the Split. No network or cloud required.
you can get a converter to get Mitsu to work with any 24v AC controls
PAC-US444CN-1, ive installed a few of them so the customer could use their existing Nest and Ecobee thermostats.
I'm a former diamond certified Mitsubishi installer
I've used the PAC-US444CN-1 (at our house) and fully native Mitsubishi thermostat/controls (at our in-laws). The converter is better than a simple 2-stage set up but is still not as good, in my experience, as the fully native one.
It has to translate a 2-stage signal into a fully modulating output, and it still seems to do a lot more on & off with high fan speeds than I would like or would be most efficient (as an aside, yes I have verified that the dip switches are in the correct position on the converters).
On the other hand, the unit at my in-laws tends to blow gently but consistently which is both more comfortable and more efficient.
Pretty sure they were asking if you could still access all the functionality currently provided by the app if it were to go away for some reason (who can see the future? It's not impossible Mitsubishi goes out of business or the app gets cancelled/pulled after some number of years)
Normal wiring is terrible, though, since it only supports turning the equipment on & off. If you have a variable-speed fan and variable-speed pumps, it would be nice for the thermostat to throttle those based on the load, but it can't.
If this company has a solution for variable-speed equipment, the best thing they can do is publish an open standard. Suppose the thermostat talks to the equipment over CAN bus, for instance, using a well-documented protocol. If they go out of business, anybody can hack together a compatible aftermarket thermostat.
A lot of solar equipment is already going this way, with batteries talking to inverters over open CAN bus protocols. As one of the biggest energy loads, the HVAC equipment should get in the game too.
What do you mean? There are variable speed furnaces that can be controlled via a normal thermostat and a 4-wire thermostat setup. Like you said, though, there's no open standard so that can be an issue, but it's standard wiring.
Well, that just makes it worse! OP strongly implies that there is no good variable-speed solution, but if the industry already has an assortment of products, what exactly are they even selling?!
I think you're misreading the OP slightly. There's no cross-compatible system for variable equipment, which is why the OP says you can't use variable speed equipment with Nest. Nest is basically a really fancy switch only. To use variable speed equipment, you have to use your manufacturer's proprietary system. I'm not positive this is right, but I'm pretty sure it's backed up by https://www.pickhvac.com/central-air-conditioner/extras/comm...
So basically, the premise of this product is that the proprietary system they design will be nicer than the proprietary systems HVAC manufacturer's design. That's probably true, but as an owner of a Carrier proprietary system, it's totally fine.
The issue isn't that an open standard for fully variable speed isn't possible, the issue is that nearly all of the manufacturers to date have considered this proprietary (as they want to own the entire ecosystem from controls > equipment) and a purposefully boxing Nest, Ecobee, etc, out of being able to control it in order to sell more thermostats and trying to capture more value.
Only problem, their thermostats and apps really suck.
Heat pumps are basically ACs with inverters allowing them to work at partial load (i.e. 10% pr 20% or 70%). Otherwise, they are as efficient as ACs at full load.
There are few off the shelf AC thermostats that work with most heatpumps: they are usually the on/off variety.
Remotes coming with heatpumps would do the right thing, though, and there are IR blasters that can replicate those signals and integrate into your home automation system.
Mitsubishi heat pumps, and most others I assume, have local thermostats that communicate by remote (I assume radio waves), but do not require the cloud. This is a fine solution, as stable as wires but not tied to the cloud.
Unfortunately, they (or at least mine) communicate by IR, which is not as stable as wires – two of my rooms have very intermittent response to my IR pucks.
>If it doesn't use the normal wiring people already have it's a hard pass from me.
Why? a real smart thermostat can just use the existing wiring for power and then use IP over Wifi or Matter/Thread to communicate. Way better than the crappy wiring in most people's houses for thermostat control.
Because HVAC in theory should outlive most other standards that have come and gone. Its totally fine to built on top of it, but using basic hard wiring to turn on/off is essential - even if just as a fallback. in 20 years the hvac should still be working, but will the wifi spec it shipped with? What about matter/thread?
Theres certainly a middleground between "must use existing old ass 2 wire setups" and "requires fancy always on cloud subscription"
Surely we could come up with a device that might require an electrician to run a few extra wires (or maybe even larger wires or something) and still run perfectly fine offline, for as long as the hardware functions, with some type of integrated manual controller. And of course this device could also have an internet option and an app and wifi for all of the fancy stuff.
Considering how unstable the residential electrical and internet grid is in the US (instead of being dug in, into the ground all the cables are hanging between the trees and there are constant failures), relying on that AND on the cloud for an essential service is a no-go.
I live in a rural part of New England with an electricity company that everyone dislikes because it's super expensive and sometimes things go bad. Since 2010 we've had the following major outages:
* October 2011 Snow Storm - Lost power for 4 days, didn't end up being that cold
* October 2019 Thunderstorms - Lost power for 3 days, thankfully generator kept the house going
* August 2020 Tropical Storm Isaias - Caused widespread grid damage, but only lost power for 18 hours. Internet was out for 36 hours.
* August 2021 Hurricane Henri - Widespread grid damage, lost power for about 6 hours. By this point I had powerwalls. I didn't even turn down the air conditioner.
That's it - every other outage has been a few hours. And that's living in a rural area that is heavily wooded with most of the power lines above ground and often long runs close to trees. If I lived in a suburb or city those times would be even less.
The grid in the United States, despite some widespread and documented regional failures (2021 Texas, 2003 NE Blackout), is remarkably resilient.
I would say it depends on where you live. The grid in CA has (in some parts) not been reliable for 5+ years. To Chris' point below though, it's not really relevant because gas furnaces need electricity to operate, too.
A common misconception is that you can use your forced air furnace when the power is out - you can't because the blower relies on electricity to move air around. Your point on the cloud service is a good one, which is why cloud services are value-add but unnecessary for core system functionality, ie your system works if there's no internet.
In California power outages are very frequent (PG&E is now cutting off the residential power upfront, to avoid fires and associated liability).
I’ve experienced 4-5 outages last year, a couple were local, a couple were widespread. One lasted 2 days.
Fortunately I do have a small 3.2kWh battery backup power, so I can keep the refrigerator from defrosting. I do think that this is sufficient to power the air furnace as well, but I haven’t tried.
The residential internet outages also are pretty frequent, but we don’t notice these as much as power outages.
the US power grid is not in any way unreliable. US residents enjoy some of the highest grid availability figures for anywhere in the world. Sure, sometimes things go horribly wrong but their system is not unreliable by design as this comment insinuates.
I will not buy this without a fully unlocked everything.
This company is going to wait a few years and then charge you a shit ton for subscription to keep using your device.
No thanks, and honestly whoever goes with this is going to regret it if they don't make changes to their software.
Pick one:
- Sell the device
- Sell the software
If you do both, you're going to alienate your customers and get regulatory wrath on you. Don't emulate Apple. They're going to get their ass handed to them in the near future.
Take it even a step further and make the code AGPL. That way you know you're protected if a company decides to steal from you.
I understand the concern around lock in. There is a technical hurdle to optimized thermostat <--> variable speed heat pump interop. You have to turn the temperature error between setpoint and actual temperature into a compressor speed command and also factor in behavior such as defrost, compressor cycling limits, etc. So you have to have a communicating thermostat to fully utilize the efficiency of these variable speed heat pump systems, not just a collection of analog on/off wires.
Mr. Cool has a 2-Ton heat pump (Designed to work with existing ducting) that can operate off of a normal non-communicating thermostat. It still hits 19 SEER and does a lot of that optimization on the controller side. And when it comes to mini splits there are lots of them that will work with a normal thermostat.
I know this, well, because I’ve spent many countless hours trying to find something that will work with Z-Wave and not a proprietary communicating system. Granted it might be less efficient but efficiency is way less important than having the ability to do that. The only exception I would consider is if the communicating thermostat was fully open and had a decent API that worked without Internet access.
This doesn't seem at all worthy of anything proprietary, though -- a simple RS-485 or 10BASE-T1L protocol and a page of docs would do the trick.
And if you build this, you can also sell the same hardware plus a BacNET or MODBUS gateway for a bunch of money to the commercial building management types :)
Or you could support existing commercial 0-10V thermostats.
FWIW, if this were my startup, I would probably use 10BASE-T1L. The programming model is simple, and cloud or other “smart” integration is natural if the system already uses IP. For that matter, one ought to be able to support wired 10BASE-T1L and wireless Matter/Thread thermostats without much duplicate effort.
BACnet allows multiple PHY implementations, including 802.3
I suspect that 802.3.cg is also kosher, but haven't looked in detail. It's been 5 years since I looked seriously at whether BACnet was the correct solution for a product family.
Wonderful option to have: "Subscribe, and we'll improve your efficiency by 10%++"
OPTION
Another option would be "we'll send you a download with the latest weightings for our optimizing AI firmware for $14.95, or every month for a subscription of $49/year" whatever.
I, and most other sharp people will happily ignore you and buy a system that is 50% less efficient and twice the cost to avoid your lock-in.
I'll also happily buy and subscribe to your reasonably-priced optimization service as long as it is OPTIONAL.
Just look at the nearly violent reaction that BMW got when they suggested that their heated seats would be a subscription option.
If you want your company to die before it even gets started, keep making excuses for why you need to lock us in.
If you want a growth giant, architect it from scratch so someone can happily use it where Starlink doesn't even service, and offer extra-efficiency OPTIONS that OPTIONALLY use internet service.
And yes, open-sourcing the code would be a huge step in giving people confidence that you are serious, and that their investment has a future that is not a brick.
Yeah I wish these companies would “get it” but they never do.
Provide an open API with the option to use a cloud service. Some cloud services are great, and have way better UIs than the self hosted stuff which I would gladly pay for. But take away the option to go self hosted and I lose all interest. If a device can’t be controlled locally you don’t really “own” it, you’re just renting it from someone else.
That's totally fair and reasonable. I still will demand that it be able to function in a bang-bang mode using dry contacts, especially from a new entrant to the market, because there's a fair risk that the unit will be in my house longer than your company is in business.
This behavior is how current variable speed heat pumps operate with Ecobee and Nest. You leave efficiency on the table, but I get it provides some future proofing assurance for homeowners. Definitely something we can integrate into the board.
> I get it provides some future proofing assurance
I don't think you're getting it, and a lot of us around here want you to. If I were actively researching heat pumps (a thing most homeowners do before dropping 4-5 figures on ANY hardware), if you are locking me into your ecosystem -- or even have the appearance of locking me into your ecosystem -- your product is not getting onto any short list from me or likely anyone else around here.
All of us -- every tech person who has ever gotten into home automation in a real way -- has thrown out some hardware rendered useless by a company. We've already seen this play out. You're an unknown and so are the riskiest kind of company to buy into.
You need to get this -- deeply -- if you want to sell to this market. The pull quote above makes me want to run for the hills.
This all especially true given the expected time frame a heat pump is supposed to have. No one wants to spend $14,000 for a paper weight. Whether that’s because the software disappears, spare parts can’t be found, or it’s impossible to service. Any of the above are real risks that need to be considered seriously and addressed. HVAC can also become an issue when trying to sell a house, so it’s not like trying to sell to traditional early adopters. The majority of this market is going to be very conservative.
I’d honestly just try to market to heat pump believers first who actively are looking for what they are selling. First, it’s an easier sales pitch. Second, they will be more forgiving of growing pains. Go through the 1-3 years trying to get the manufacturing, maintenance, and installation locked in before trying to sell in bulk to a larger market.
As it is, it’s just too risky for many to buy. (And for my house, it would be impossible to install).
Agreed. As someone in the market for a good heat pump, I'm already turned off by this offering. I don't want more features (air quality module) that are more points of failure and complexity. I just want an efficient heat pump that'll work reliably for a long time, integrate well with HA, and won't cost a kidney to install.
1. 99.99999% will never care about code, open sourcing it etc. All consumers need is to have a guarantee it will work in case company is out of business or there is no internet. It doesn't matter how that guarantee will look like.
2. Sell device OR software is the exact reason most tech is so bad. Doing one of two is 10x easier than doing both, and results are 10x worse. If you do both you actually have a chance to do something nice.
I'd want to see a guarantee of "We will either keep running the servers forever, maintaining all current features, or we will opensource all the server side code, so you or someone else can keep running it".
I'd want the code handed over to a third party to guarantee this (so the company can't walk back on their promise).
If the server code is too complex, at least give me an OpenAPI spec (or equivalent) that the server must adhere to, so I can spin something simple up on a Raspberry PI to solve the problem myself.
The software is certainly a concern, but I would also heavily emphasize the ability to get spare parts and service quickly. If your heat goes out in the middle of winter you don't want to wait weeks for spare parts, or be unable to get them at all if the company goes out of business.
Yes, making spare parts and service work is super important. We'll likely set up regional distribution points for spare parts so anything critical can be easily sent next day.
What about labor? I'm pretty handy but there are definitely parts of my HVAC system where I'd be unable/unwilling to DIY it. I currently have a local HVAC contractor on-retainer for same-day emergency appointments - and honestly I don't think I'd be willing to consider anything less since my current heat pump is my exclusive source of heating in this house.
I'm in a temperate climate so there's little actual danger, but the idea of freezing/roasting my butt off for multiple days to wait for parts/labor is deeply unattractive.
Yeah, good question. The system is not meant to be DIY. The same contractor that does install also offers service. Logistics for replacement parts is important we will have quick, easy access for contractors.
Have you worked on creating a network of qualified contractors? In my region, there are lots of contractors who are little more than unreliable DIYers, especially in the mechanical space.
My hesitancy is in the ongoing service. I’ve looked into geo-coupled heat pumps but the lack of qualified contractors locally deterred me.
How would you ensure that spares are available in the event a model is discontinued or the company shuts down? It’s likely there will be few parts or trained techs in that case.
Wait, is this not going to have the usual "pair of wires you short to turn it on" feature of every furnace made so far? That's the ultimate control for when all the cloud features disappear and would be a deal-breaker for me.
FWIW: the "cloud based" part is the flexible bit, it's the fixed equipment that you're stuck with for two decades. I see the problem as exactly the opposite: I could in principle switch from a Carrier to a Lennox to a Nest to an EcoBee in probably 10 minutes, but I can't, because all the equipment manufacturers are shipping their own garbage with closed protocols.
So I had to fight with a contractor to get them to install our fancy new heat pump in "traditional dumb thermostat" mode, and then handed them the Nest box (which doesn't speak Carrier-ese) and put it in the contract that it had to work. It took them several hours extra to do things the "portable" way. They were absolutely not prepared even though the manufacturer claims this works just fine.
So... I think there's absolutely a spot in the market for an Electric Air that can make this work cleanly. The existing HVAC players are really, really bad at this.
It'd be super helpful to mention the total cost will be close to $14k on the $100 pre-order page or at least somewhere near the top of the homepage. Also probably one of the implicit reasons this comment got upvoted.
What if I want to keep using the cloud-based thermostat when your servers get shut off or moved to another system, or if something like Google Nest closing down their API happens after you've exited?
This is an expensive system with an expected long life, and I'd want some guarantees that I can control it entirely myself.