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Anyone talking to the Carrier Infinity system?

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    Anyone talking to the Carrier Infinity system?

    Apparently it uses RS-485, 4 wire to talk between the components.

    HomeLogic (http://www.homelogic.com/support_climate.html) seems to have some solution, but they didn't give many details...

    We are looking at a new HVAC system as our is old, inefficient (10 SEER) and getting cantankerous and leaks.

    We asked for a HA friendly thermostat and we are getting some marketing about how wonderful the carrier WWW access module is, but everything I have seen says it is meant for outside access to stuff, not necessarily to what we would want...

    Just like to know what is out there before we are sold a bill of goods...

    #2
    I have my HomeSeer system communicating with my Carrier Infinity system using the HAI RC80B (single stage) thermostat. This option allowed me to either use the HomeSeer thermostat plug-in or my Elk M1 Home Automation controller. I ended up using the Elk M1 to connect to the thermostat, but still controlling it using Homeseer.

    Regards,
    Ultrajones
    Plug-ins: UltraMon, UltraM1G, UltraCID, Ultra1Wire, UltraLog, UltraWeatherBug, UltraPioneerAVR, UltraGCIR

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      #3
      Wow... Can you see all the fancy stuff carrier talks about...temperatures, humidity, outside temp, and all that, or do you just have access to the basic stuff...

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        #4
        I will be replacing by 15yo furnace soon too. Current looking at Bryant Evolution (90i), Lennox G71, & Trane XV90. Bryant Evo is the same as Carrier Infinity. Although it is possible to use single stage stat with these systems they would benefit from using a modulating thermostat. None of which are HA friendly. The modulating stat allows most efficient use of the modulating (variable between 40% - 100% ) gas burners. The single & 2 stage stats allow the burners to run at 40%, 65% and 100% of total capacity.
        I do not want to loose my HA control, but would like to utilize all the tech advances in modern heat/cooling systems. Needless to say, either stat choice & a new efficient HVAC system will be a much better and efficient than my current single stage system. Single stage furnace is either on 100% or Off.
        Larry

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          #5
          Originally posted by rsisson View Post
          Wow... Can you see all the fancy stuff carrier talks about...temperatures, humidity, outside temp, and all that, or do you just have access to the basic stuff...
          Well, it looks like I have a Comfort 92 Gas Furnace ( I thought it was an infinity ). I decided to go with a single stage due to noise. I didn't want the fan on all the time ...
          Plug-ins: UltraMon, UltraM1G, UltraCID, Ultra1Wire, UltraLog, UltraWeatherBug, UltraPioneerAVR, UltraGCIR

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            #6
            Ultra, I am a bit worried about the noise as well. I met with a couple HVAC guys. Each one claimed that the new blower motors would be much quieter than my single stage blower. The new blowers have a soft start feature & variable RPMs, which is supposed to address the noise issue.

            I have a bearing going bad on my blowers now, so I know what noisy it is. This is what prompted me to start looking for a new system.
            Hoping not to loose heat this week.. going to be cold here is SE Michigan the latter part oft he week.
            Larry

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              #7
              I have a Carrier Infinity heat pump system (installed in 2005) and it does indeed run for long periods of time (by design) but MOST of the time the fan is running at a really low speed and you really can't hear it at all. In fact, my HomeSeer server and my Infinity air handler are about 6 feet apart in my basment and the computer is louder than the air handler (when it's running on low speed)!!

              So, if you are concerned about noise, then single stage is NOT the way to go.

              BTW, I would love to be able to control my Infinity with HomeSeer but in the almost 4 years that I've had the system I've yet to find any way to do this (not that I've been actively searching that whole time, however).

              Comment


                #8
                I purchased (not yet installed) the Bryant Evolution (90i). I am planning on using my current tstat (RCS TX15b) along with a Bryant automatic humidistat that will have additional control of the blower to regulate humidity. I can not get enough moisture in the air in the winter months. Hopefully this will help. If not then I will go to a fan assisted humidifier. If that does not to the trick then a stream generator style.
                Larry

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                  #9
                  Yup - I have a 485 interface wired into the furnace now. Am getting a lot of junk info but I know that it's real data. I'm not using the SAM, just hard wired to ABCD (actually just the data lines). So anyways, I tried to issues some of the ASCII commands, like S1OAT? to ask what the outside air temp was, nada.. So I'm wondering if anyone has any experience decoding the communication protocol directly off the 485 bus vs via the RS232 connection in the SAM.

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                    #10
                    Dudes - there are over 1500 view of this thread and only 8 replys. Has anyone anything to add? I'm real close to issuing commands to the furnace via the 485 bus. Sure would like to hear from anyone else who has some reference to share.

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                      #11
                      Still here, still no luck. Haven't done much other than to capture the stream of info coming out. Weird, it's coming out at 38400 8 n 1. I would have figured the rate would be more around 9600. Did some protocol sniffing using an old version of Bryant Home automation software, Seems as though the two protocols are not the same. Ie: Bryant HM sends out 0104 000C when it trys to establish communication yet I don't see anything like that starting a message from the furnace now. Its more like 5001 0001 0300. Any suggestions on how to proceed next?

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                        #12
                        I had started down this path several years ago when we installed these systems at my office. I wanted to allow employees to change the temps in the offices via a web interface, but the only solution Bryant offered was their two-way pager service. The SAM was an option, but after investigating its capabilities I found that it provided very minimal access and reporting and was definitely not worth the US$1000 price tag.

                        As you have done, I hooked up an RS485 interface to one of the systems and found the 38.4K-8-N-1 comm parameters, and after looking at logs of data I decided the best way to go about decyphering the protocol was to write a logger/parser that would allow me to determine which types of data were in which fields. From there I would analyze the each of the fields and try to correlate those to events, commands, etc.

                        Unfortunately (or fortunately depending how you look at it), real work "got in the way" of this project and I did not pursue it any further.

                        I hope you're able to make some headway as I do think it is a great system and really needs an interface to HomeSeer.
                        Best regards,
                        -Mark-

                        If you're not out on the edge, you're taking up too much room!
                        Interested in 3D maps? Check out my company site: Solid Terrain Modeling

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                          #13
                          The protocol doesn't appear friendly, and likely requires a man in the middle approach to decode the sender/receiver patterns. This is a bit of a stumbling block for me because it would require another RS485 to RS232 board, and I'm too cheap to buy one at the moment. How were you going to determine the sender and receiver? I tried to base the exchange on a time offset but had little success.

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                            #14
                            My rough plan was if I couldn't get anywhere just analyzing the serial data, I'd crack one of the 'stats open and log both the Data and Tx/Rx signals (using a logic analyzer) from within the 'stat. Issuing a bunch of different commands from the 'stat while logging these signals would give me good indication of the command format. I'd then try issuing these back on the line using a '458 board on the bus to see if they worked correctly. Not an exact science, but this approach has worked for me in the past.
                            Best regards,
                            -Mark-

                            If you're not out on the edge, you're taking up too much room!
                            Interested in 3D maps? Check out my company site: Solid Terrain Modeling

                            Comment


                              #15
                              It's amazing that in this day and age, we can't find a good thermostat that supports HA. I just talked to RCS and confirmed that my TR40 won't control a dual fuel system. I am looking at the Lennox gas furnace and a heat pump. The guy at RCS suggested using HS to switch a relay that would change between the heat pump and the gas furnace.

                              Has anybody tried this? I hate to lose my TR40 and the ability to set temperatures from HS.

                              The HVAC guy recommended a Honeywell Vision IAQ thermostat but I haven't found anything that said it can communicate.

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