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.
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 exclusively buy LG Televisions now due to their usage of Web OS (has a local-first [HA Integration](https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/webostv/)) which used to be hackable with https://rootmy.tv. With that, my TV runs custom Linux software that controls lights just like [Phillips Hue Sync](https://www.philips-hue.com/en-us/explore-hue/propositions/e...) but free/open-source and no additional hardware. Compare that to Samsung which is like 40% ads now?
- 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