4 ms·
If I'm gonna invest in a heat pump for the long term, I don't want it committed to any software technology that may be obsolete in 10 years. I want it to use so
by 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
If I'm gonna invest in a heat pump for the long term, I don't want it committed to any software technology that may be obsolete in 10 years. I want it to use something so dead stupid simple that anything in 50 years can still operate it without a lot of work.
The simplest example I can think of is MIME (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME). It can be embedded in basically any transport type. It can encode anything you want (binary, UTF8, etc). It is very old, stable and well-tested. It is fairly trivial to implement a limited instruction set of.
Transport security, authentication, authorization, etc, are nice, but not nearly as important to me as a future-proof interface to my heat pump. Give me the option to enable an admin port and just run a single unsecured connection with a basic dumb text protocol, and I can hack together a client in 30 minutes in any programming language. It's not fancy but it will work forever.
- dminor 4y agoI agree on the point of not wanting to end up with a brick due to obsolete software. Note though that heat pumps typically last 10-20 years.
- oblio 4y agoWhat happens to them after 20 years?
- blincoln 4y agoThis is extremely disappointing, given their price point. I've seen an oil furnace still running after 50 years with just basic maintenance. Did it cost 2-5 times as much in inflation-adjusted dollars as a heat pump does now? No.
- oblio 4y agohttps://www.evergreenenergy.co.uk/heat-pump-guides/how-long-do-heat-pumps-last/ https://www.evergreenenergy.co.uk/heat-pump-guides/how-long-... I don't see why a heat pump wouldn't run for a long time. I imagine many people want to replace old heat pumps because newer ones are more efficient. But otherwise this is quite old and widely available tech, it should be possible to replace individual components that break down.