Computers are hot. No, I mean, they're hot. They heat our house in the winter here in primarily sunny Southern California (not as much as my wife would like, but that's another story for another day).
I had to look at the date on the article to see if this was written 20 years ago, since most modern computers aren't that hot and use very little power when not in use, unless you've got a big gaming (or crypto mining) rig.
Then I read further:
Normies don't have a room with an IBM POWER6, Sawtooth G4 (and its FireWire RAID), Mac mini G4, Macintosh IIci, Alpha Micro Eagle 300, Cobalt RaQ and associated IoT devices and network backbone infrastructure running non-stop (to say nothing of the Apple Network Server 500 and HP 9000/350 that also occasionally come out to play).
So the article wasn't written 20 years ago, but his computers at at least that old.
The only computer that I run 24x7 is a fileserver + home automation controller, and it uses around 35W of power (including the network switch), which is still more than I'd like, I want to build one that's more power efficient.
35W is actually pretty good already. My network rack currently reports 95W. Of which 25-30W are the PoE switch (Aruba JL683A) including a 4 APs, one 5 port switch and a VoIP-Dect gateway on PoE. SFP+ ports have a DAC and a fiber module. The remainder is the home server ("does everything": firewall/router, huge NAS, home assistant, vaultwarden, foundry vtt, private cloud,...). For some reason it's 10W over normal, probably disks busy due to active downloads. That's a i3-8100 with 2 DDR4 ECC modules and a 10GbE NIC (8W).
I've got two portable air conditioners, an LG in a living space, and a "Comfee" (which is made by Midea) for my home office/server room.
The Comfee was very easy to automate. I just grabbed an ESP32 board that I had handy, some parts out of my bins, and soldered up a working IR blaster. ESPHome provided all of the hard parts, Home Assistant provided the UI. It works brilliantly. I have the air conditioner on a smart outlet which gives me real-time power consumption information, from here it's easy to determine what the machine is doing. I also have a Xiaomi temperature/humidity/pressure sensor, which I can use to feed into automations to control the unit if I want to.
So far I've been unsuccessful at using an IR blaster to control the LG - ESPHome, out of the box, can't seem to control this unit. I haven't gone down the rabbit hole of capturing IR codes, but that's the next step once I get the appropriate parts.
My LG TV actually had support for control by serial communication, provided I plugged in a USB to serial converter. It allowed me to move volume control to my HTPC and largely dump the remote.
I kind of doubt an air conditioner has the same feature though.
I too have an LG. I tried to control it with a Flipper Zero but it didn't respond well. I figure the codes are more of a state machine rather than simply replaying them. I didn't pursue it further though.
Based on the behaviour of the remote and the AC unit, it works just like the Comfee unit where the remote sends the whole state (mode, temperature setpoint, fan speed) to the AC unit. The remote has a display on it showing the mode, fan speed, temperature, etc.
That doesn't tell me anything about how the actual protocol works though. I still need to buy an IR receiver and start decoding the protocol.
For those who don't want to, or have the time, to build something like this, there is also an off the shelf solution: the Aqara M2 Hub[1]. I currently use this to control both my portable AC, and an electric fireplace.
And for those who are concerned about security, you can easily restrict this device from accessing the internet using your firewall, and it will continue to function just fine.
There are also devices that do RF. I have a Broadlink RM4 Pro [0] - and whilst the vendor software sucks, there is a Home Assistant integration [1], or several libraries - I've used a Go one [2] though I did modify it a bit as I wasn't totally happy with how it was written.
Most minisplit units work over IR blaster. HomeAssistant or ESPHome can be used to drive units capable of acting as IR blasters.
Personally I use Broadlink RM4 Pro units. The connect to WiFi anywhere in the house and I can use HomeAssistant to drive them. They work for both IR and 315/433MHz devices.
Broadlink isn't the only vendor, but I find the price reasonable and it's nice to not have to solder anything.
Not too long ago I got a new AC in my office, and attempted to do some automation (turn the temp up during the weekend, etc.) via an IR Blaster. At some point I ran out of patience and gave up trying.
After reading this article I am encouraged to see that I was _not even close_ to getting it working, ha!
Maybe I'll try again in the future, but gosh I just with these stupid units had another way to be controlled.
I looked into the blaster approach and decided "just no"; I ended up getting a Sensibo which is just an IR blaster that someone else has done all the hard work for, which seems well work paying for.
I have a rack with 6 1u servers in it (and some other A/V hardware and lots of disks). We have an AC unit for each floor of the house, the bottom floor is sized larger than the top floor. I keep the bottom floor set to 74 and the servers see an ambient temp of 76. I find this to be acceptable, but there are times when I don't need to maintain 74 for the entire floor of the house.. like when we are on vacation. One time we came back and our cleaning service raised the temp to 86(!!!) lets just say my servers were loud that day. So I'm looking into a mini-split unit to put in the server room.
A minisplit is better than a window unit or a standing unit because I don't have to cut a very large hole nor do i have to figure out drainage. The power consumption is the same as what the article is pulling (900W) and all of the noise is exported to the exterior of the house. If you do not have a high cooling requirement then a heatpump may be sufficient for your needs
That g4 has a green power light, so it's probably a 'yikes' or 'sawtooth' model. Those G4 processors use like 7W of power!
It wasn't until the Quicksilver dual processor models that they started hitting the limits with that case design. They introduced the "Mirrored Drive Doors" model to help lol. At that point we were talking about 40w or so.
Not sure if that's technologically possible or even an option for you access pattern, but for my more modern SATA disks I see about 1W (from the wall) per disk when spun down, lots of W for spin up and 5 to 8W spinning. I guess numbers for old disks are a bit different, but the principle should hold.
Drawback is that you'll likely be doing staggered spin up, which can introduce some latency. But for non-interactive stuff like daily backups that's just irrelevant.
You could just re-sell it to someone else. Replacing something that works fine doesn't mean you have to throw it in the trash. Plus, a newer A/C probably has better efficiency anyway.
I had to look at the date on the article to see if this was written 20 years ago, since most modern computers aren't that hot and use very little power when not in use, unless you've got a big gaming (or crypto mining) rig.
Then I read further:
Normies don't have a room with an IBM POWER6, Sawtooth G4 (and its FireWire RAID), Mac mini G4, Macintosh IIci, Alpha Micro Eagle 300, Cobalt RaQ and associated IoT devices and network backbone infrastructure running non-stop (to say nothing of the Apple Network Server 500 and HP 9000/350 that also occasionally come out to play).
So the article wasn't written 20 years ago, but his computers at at least that old.
The only computer that I run 24x7 is a fileserver + home automation controller, and it uses around 35W of power (including the network switch), which is still more than I'd like, I want to build one that's more power efficient.