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.
If that's available, this would be my top choice as I'm actively shopping for all-electric heat pumps
Honywell missed the mark on the importance of thermostats on the economy.
edit - The current plan has been Matter/thread Homekit + Google Home integration. We can expose at least temperature control via this to everyone.
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.
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.
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:
https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2016/02/12/classifying-th...
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.
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?
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.
/2¢
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.
You would still be able to do more with your own app as matter will probably mainly support the lowest common denominator across your category.
Look at it this way, it saves you money in server costs and performs much better.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
On track to replace my gas furnace in the next few years, this sounds awesome, but HA integration would be very highly desired.
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.
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.
I don't see why a heat pump wouldn't run for a long time. I imagine many people want to replace old heat pumps because newer ones are more efficient.
But otherwise this is quite old and widely available tech, it should be possible to replace individual components that break down.
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%.
No, you haven't understood. It will be cloud-capable. They're asking that it's not cloud-only.
And there is no they, the commenter is a single individual.
"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
They.
For a system that absolutely doesn’t need a “cloud” to operate?
But this is my second concern.
First is availability of replacement parts after the get bought out and they shut off the servers.
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.
I'd also be concerned about dealing with "cannot find server" alerts popping up every time I use it.
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.
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)
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...)
I'd go starting with it and let a community build by itself around it, tho.
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.
* 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’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.
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.
https://www.pickhvac.com/thermostat/ (halfway down - "Communicating HVAC System")
https://www.pickhvac.com/central-air-conditioner/extras/comm... (deeper dive into Communicating vs Non-Communicating HVAC systems)
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.
Only problem, their thermostats and apps really suck.
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.
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.
If the app wasn't updated for ${latest phone OS}, would you be be unable to upgrade the phone OS?
I'm a former diamond certified Mitsubishi installer
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.
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.
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.
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.
If i want HomeAssistant integration, ill buy an HA-compatible thermostat.
I dont want an expensive HVAC system to be in a walled garden of its own.
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 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.
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).
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.
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.
My first guess would be more like 99.98% don't know about APIs
But yes, that 2% or whatever is an important set of leaders
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.
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.
BACnet already exists as an ISO standard: https://www.iso.org/standard/37298.html https://bacnetinternational.org/
The example application in the Ethernet Alliance one-pager on single pair Ethernet is HVAC: https://ethernetalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/EA_T...
This could be prototyped on a BeaglePlay :)
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.
Single pair Ethernet is indeed cool tech.
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 the code handed over to a third party to guarantee this (so the company can't walk back on their promise).
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.
My hesitancy is in the ongoing service. I’ve looked into geo-coupled heat pumps but the lack of qualified contractors locally deterred me.
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.