Re:Hacking Portable Air Conditioners
by jetrink on Saturday August 01, 2020 @10:50PM
(#24025919)
I had a similar experience with a SunSaver solar charge controller. I was out in the field trying to fix a problem with a solar power supply and I called into their support line to ask about the error lights we were seeing. Within a few minutes, I was talking to an engineer and he spent 15-20 minutes helping us diagnose the problem. It turned out to be something dumb we had done triggering a fault mode in the controller. The controller itself cost less than $100, so we were definitely not worth his time.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
> The controller itself cost less than $100, so we were definitely not worth his time.
That's not really true from a design perspective. You really want to know what sort of problems your customers are having in the field. And you don't know really unless you talk to them.
Or connect your product to the internet
Unless you have VC's breathing down your neck to spy on your users so you can sell their data. Or you have VC's trying to force your users into a reoccurring revenue model. You don't want to deal with that for hardware.
You want people to install the stuff and have it just work. 'connected to the internet' is something that fails all the time.
You need to check your tinfoil hat, because no one cares about your air conditioner use data or fault codes.
Connect to the internet is another point of fail that's likely to increase your support calls.
One you leave software as an exploitative service or the customer is the product, which most of the stuff people here work on. And enter the world of hardware that solves peoples real problems you want the customer to install the stuff, have it do what they expected and thus NEVER CALL YOU.