https://github.com/kokx/duco-analysis
My newly built house came with a promising feature: a DucoBox Energy Comfort D325 ventilation system with heat recovery. While the system efficiently preheats incoming air using outgoing air's heat, its control options were limited to four basic modes through a simple button interface. I wanted more - specifically, integration with Home Assistant. The official solution? A Duco Connectivity Board. But when I noticed it was just an ESP32 in disguise, I knew there had to be a better way.
The system operates in four general modes: one AUTO mode, which selects the mode automatically, and three manual modes that set airflow levels. By default, these modes are active for 15 minutes, but holding the button longer keeps the mode active until stopped.
(Score: 4, Funny) by ledow on Friday January 03 2025, @02:38PM (2 children)
I wonder how many thousands upon thousands of man-hours are wasted over the decades trying to figure out what someone could write (and probably already has somewhere) in an API document.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aafcac on Friday January 03 2025, @02:52PM (1 child)
To be fair, there's often little point in RTFM when the manual itself is absolute garbage word salad put together by somebody with access to a dictionary, but no functioning understanding of grammar.
(Score: 4, Funny) by driverless on Saturday January 04 2025, @10:20AM
I've got a locally-rebranded Chinese-made HVAC system where the original manufacturers web pages, mostly in Chinese, mention RS485 somewhere. Wrote to the Chinese company and got back a pretty bad, but no worse than many native-English-language docs, manual on the modbus interface for it. OK, it's more accurately modbus-like but it's close enough that it can be run via a modbus gateway and from there to HA.
So they sent some random dude on the Internet an engineering document explaining warranty-voiding operations on their hardware. I can't imagine getting that with any made-in-US/Europe HVAC system, it'd just be "use our crappy app and if you even think about looking inside the device we'll prosecute you".
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 03 2025, @03:33PM (1 child)
Say... what? You need to hold the button for as long as you need the mode active past the default 15 min? Or what?
I know totally it's the wrong season and OT with A/C, but this popped into my mind
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by KritonK on Saturday January 04 2025, @07:10AM
My understanding of this is: short press: activate for 15 minutes, long press: activate until stopped, presumably with a short press.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rich on Saturday January 04 2025, @03:20PM (1 child)
The protocol analysis stuff was nice to see, and home automation nerds will rejoice that someone did the job of reverse engineering it.
But what caught my eye most were the nifty hands-free probes he used to capture the signals in the first place. Haven't seen those before. Up until now, I rarely have to deal with sub-mm pitch layouts, but once I have, I will remember such stuff exists.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by kokx on Thursday January 09 2025, @09:26PM
Yup, those probes (PCBite) are absolutely amazing. They are weighted exactly right so they just stay still on any place you put them. With any hardware hacking stuff it means that I barely have to solder anything anymore, usually you can find a tiny point on the PCB to just put the probes on. And for small IC packages it definitely beats trying to solder onto the super tiny pads.