Hey all, hoping someone can point me in the right direction, or has experience with this sort of integration.
My house has 2 heat-pumps, one for upstairs and one for downstairs, i've recently installed a soft-start for each so that they can run off backup generator when the power goes out.
They are reachable via bluetooth and provide stats on number of startups etc.. that I was hoping to be able to capture via some sort of hub \ bridge and use on a dashboard.
I am not shy about setting up a Pi\Arduino, or creating \ modifying code etc... to make this happen, I have experience with those, but thought I'd ask here to see if someone else has done something comparable that I could leverage and not re-invent the wheel. My searches here and on Bing havent really turned up much.
The units certainly provide a lot of useful data. I haven't attempted this, but you should be able to read data using a Pi (or equivalent) and SimpleBLE. Having said that, there are two issues:
As you know, the devices are only powered when the compressor is running ....
In my experience with three of these units, their transmission distance is very limited, depending on how they are installed.
I have more to say about installation and BLE transmission distance. At my old house, I had the EasyStart mounted outside the condenser, because there wasn't sufficient room underneath the condenser panel cover. In this mounting position, I could use the mobile app when I was inside the house.
The EasyStart died about 18 months after installation, and I found all this condensed water on the EasyStart cover (see below).
Micro-Air support told me there was nothing that could be done to rescue that unit and it was out of warranty, so I purchased another one, and then fabricated metal shielding all around it. Doing so killed the transmission distance to about 5 ft from the unit - I certainly couldn't use the app from inside the house. My experience with this unit indicated that the boxes the EasyStart are installed in cannot handle the elements as well as one would like. I never used a pressure washer on it - the only water it was exposed to was rain, which admittedly can be heavy in New Orleans. Yet, it died in just under 18 months.
Given the expense of these units, at my new place, I installed the EasyStart under the condenser panel cover. And here also, the BLE transmission distance is very limited - about 5 feet.
This looks like something I never knew I needed though. My truck has an onboard generator that can keep the house going except the AC because of the current in-rush. I just opted to deal without it if need be, but this might be worth while.
By decreasing the LRA inrush (~50% in my experience), I think these units also are better for compressor longevity. In addition to making it possible to run central A/C on a portable generator.
They are a HUGE help, i installed them so that I could use a backup generator, but just for fun I also swung one over to my solar dedicated panel and the inrush was low enough not to cause problems for the inverter, so I can use them with solar as well...
Your feedback about moisture makes sense, I actually installed mine inside another box for that very reason based on some other videos\posts I'd seen and read about the boxes not being protective enough. The additional box is plastic, so it shouldn't impact transmission.
Thanks - this gets me going in the right direction! I was assuming it was going to be PI or Arduino based, it was the SimpleBLE part I wasn't familiar with. So now I go research....
@FriedCheese2006 and anyone else interested in the engineering of soft starters - there's a really informative video from a Micro-Air engineer being interviewed by the HVAC School channel on Youtube:
Another alternative would be the SockitBox, available on Amazon in various sizes and colors. I’ve got my ZEN16 in one and an outdoor fireplace light controller in another, both outside under a planter above the outdoor fireplace. Works fine in a rainy environment.
Well, I started watching, realized how long it is, and quickly decided I'll do some Googling on it. Funny part is I'd rather spend an hour reading about it than watching an hour long video.
You're not alone there. I'll always comb through 5-6 websites reading text before I watch a long youtube video. My kids are the opposite. Probably some kind of active vs passive learning, or audio vs visual or something. Dunno.
Wait until you get old and memory decreases. With documents, you can copy and paste salient points into your own summary document. Hard or impossible to do that with YouTube videos.
