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Comment by thehappypm | Hacker News Reader

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

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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)?

You can replace the thermostats with dumb versions.

Are you tied to the app?

No, my phone is wireless

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)

If you lost your phone, would you still be able to manage the heat pump through other interfaces?

If the app wasn't updated for ${latest phone OS}, would you be be unable to upgrade the phone OS?

Mitsubishi heat pumps has a local thermostat that operates by remote, no cloud access needed, so if the app's servers go down it will still function.

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.

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.

spaceguillotine I'd love to hear about your experience as a former installer! Any chance for a DM?

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.

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