Comment by adanto6840 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adanto6840 | Hacker News Reader

Wish you had been around a few years ago, before I took the plunge on two 5-ton Bosch "BOVA 2.0" heat pump units -- I'd have seriously considered your product.

The Bosch units are inverter driven and contain some interesting tech; we've had some issues with them, unfortunately I'm not sure that the HVAC industry is ready for such tech, but I do generally think it's the future.

I continually wish (and search Github bi-annually for) there was a way to see what frequency ("capacity") my BOVA units are running at -- aside from just being able to see the "staging" (purely controlled by temperature delta via Ecobee). There's a USB port on the board, but I can't find any info/data on it & obviously I don't want to take chances on >$15k -worth of HVAC units. But it'd sure be nice to see, at the very least, what the capacity/frequency is -- without having to physically take screws out to remove the panel covering the board.

Alas, maybe some day -- perhaps once my units are out of warranty I'll be daring enough to try and get something from that (very tantalizing) USB port.

I'm sure there's some contractor unit that lets you see the live readout of compressor speed. As for Electric Air - we want to give visibility into system operation, what's the input electrical power, what's the output thermal power, how much have you spent on heating so far, and what's your average COP for a given time period (ratio of heating out/electrical in).

If you remove the service panel there's a screen that displays what capacity they're running at. My installer had some issues initially, and Bosch actually had 2 regional reps (corporate) visit the site themselves. I'm sure the protocol exists somewhere, but the guys they sent wouldn't have known and I don't believe they connected anything to the board -- the Bosch reps couldn't even correctly explain to me how/what logic controls the speed of the interior blower fan (two speed).

I actually never really did get an answer to that question -- what/when will the interior fan go to it's "second speed" (when only sending 1 cooling signal & letting the Bosch board have 100% control over capacity), so we ended up wiring my units to be "remote" controlled, like a 2-stage system - though it's then critical to enable an extra setting ("Reverse Staging" on Ecobee), otherwise you'll just end up with short-cycling when stage2 cooling calls are made. If you search the topic you'll probably stumble on my Reddit thread which has quite a bit of detail on the topic. =D

I wish you luck; I do think it's the future. FWIW I think your product's ideal audience/target market is probably not here/us, but I think a relatively large addressable market does exist. How you can best reach & tap into that market, at a price point that make sense & while providing a (sales) UX that actually converts -- I think those are the main challenges you'll have to solve.

Wow, sorry you had to go through that setup hassle. I would also say you are probably in the 1% of motivated homeowners trying to get those details right. A lot of this difficulty seems like it stemmed from trying to get the Ecobee to play nice with the Bosch. With Electric Air I hope to avoid setup issues like this, the thermostat is specifically designed to work well with the other equipment.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com