Fantastic project for DUCO/Orcon/Reno mechanical ventilators
For Open AIR Mini
For a few years I bypassed my Orcon controller board with a Z-wave 0-10v dimmer, directly connected to the motor. Although this worked well, I did not have tacho feedback, no sensor information and worst: the distance between attic and basement where my Home Assistant box is was too big, so I had to plug in a Z-wave plug. And yet occasionally the link was too weak. Since I did not fancy investing more in Z-Wave equipment (I'm into Zigbee, Thread and WiFi) I decided to look for other solutions.
Happy I found this project. It's a well designed solution based on ESP32 and for my Orcon it's literally a drop in replacement: remove the old controller board, connect the new board with 3 connectors and start integration with ESPHome/Home Assistant. I bought the pre-assembled but unprogrammed kit together with the programmer (it's soooooooo small, at first I thought they forgot to ship it) and build a basic firmware and quickly got it up and running. I also bought the combined T/H/CO2/NOx/VOC sensor (I love graphs and numbers, the more the better) and it's all purring now like a little kitten.
Note: with this Open Air Mini you can NOT use the Orcon RF remotes nor the humidity sensor of Orcon but who needs legacy remotes when you have this fancy setup.
I really need to give the developers kudos for their elegant and neat design. One word of advice: consider shipping the board in a little bit of bubble wrap and not just an ESD bag, but in my case the equipment was not abused by the mailman.
In short: I highly recommend this kit if it fits your MV and you want to have a great nerd-tool!
