For example when the heat pump reaches the target temperature it shuts off, then after 3 minutes switches on again. To prevent short cycling, I'd like to decrease the time between runs (so increase the 3 minutes) but that can't be changed. Somebody decided that 3 minutes is the correct value for everybody and that's it.
I bought a €400 interface box (basically just a serial to IP interface, I guess $20 of hardware tops) to try and improve it. The €8000 heat pump doesn't come with WiFi or ethernet out of the box, you need to buy an accessory for that. It's not made by Hitachi, but it's an officially recommended accessory. One of what feature I wanted it for - which is advertised in their marketing materials - doesn't work.
I emailed them, and they said it's probably because the display I have is a newer revision and doesn't allow access to the setting I need to turn on. And without turning that setting on I can't use the feature as advertised. They said I should email Hitachi and talk to them instead as it's not their part that's the issue.
I look forward to the world where all software is either open source, or at least reverse engineerable to the point where you no longer have nonsense like this.
It's pretty bad inside the bubble too.
.0001% of that software had formal verification, bitwise memory management, 100% test coverage, clean documentation and specifications, a clear roadmap, long term sustainability plan and sustainable economics
Technology is like a good meal: only possible for a moment and only a moment.
too early and it’s inedible too late and it’s spoiled.
Neither do governments, incidentally. They're okay-ish at skyscrapers and bridges, but software is just beyond them.
They may treat changing a timeout value like changing a capacitor with one of a different value on a PCB. Doing it is slow and expensive, involving suppliers, delays, testing campaigns, etc... So that's the kind of thing that is specified up front, to avoid having to touch anything in production. If a change is needed, it will go in V2, months later at best.
It has some advantages, such as not breaking things that work, but they are also not fixing things that don't.
Even if its closed on their end, having standards is the key.
Good standards are often (all of the time?) ignored by bad developers.
Despite the fact that fundamentally vibe coding is enabled by good interface specification and design specs by engineers
I'm guessing they made "happy path" decisions thinking most people aren't going to modify cycle timing, or know how to do that or what it entails. That 3 minutes was probably decided on by a group of engineers who thoroughly know the product. Especially if they provide a warranty.
You may know / understand a heat pump system but if I modified values with no safeguards on mine I'd probably break it within the hour.
Now we just have to get them to expose interfaces so that we can write the software for the interfaces that we want.