Freeing a Xiaomi humidifier from the cloud

Last time I checked (brought my sensor to the office to one room with ultrasonic) it showed 101/105 ug/m3 for pm2.5/pm10

In the next room (where there were none) it was 6.

Depends on the water, I guess.

> any notable increase in PM2.5 particles

What's your PM2.5 baseline, and did you measure TDS in the water?

The ones I had for a bit basically fogged out the apartment immediately and left white (i’m guessing salt) deposits all over everything. I know you are supposed to use distilled but it’s cost prohibitive at the rate these blow through water unless you also have a home distillery.

That's a permanent bachelor design aesthetic.

But then I have to buy the towel and the fan, the tray, something to suspend the towel at the right height …

My brother's house in Perth, Australia has an antique air conditioning system in the roof space that works in exactly this principle. 4 blankets that wick up water and have air drawn through them and into the house by a fan. It's in disuse now but I understand they were common and quite effective in the day.

I’m not sure that has a performance of 0.3L per hour (needed when it’s real cold outside).

But any thing beats nothing, I guess. Kudos to you

Water evaporates alomost completely and is changed daily (I rinse both container and disks in the tub with high-pressure mode from showerhead), so I don’t think any contamination is likely.

Been doing this for years.

Hard water often contains hard to dissolve minerals. An evaporative humidifier over the time accumulates limescale and it’s very difficult to remove it, you cannot just dissolve it. With ultrasound humidifier all this limescale will be in the air. Admittedly not in all regions the water is hard but if it is then ultrasound humidifier will be a bad choice.

Depends whether you want that stuff in kidneys and what have you.

Bigger particles are known to irritate the lungs and even cause asthma (google or ask gpt)

I’ve run dyson ultrasonic humidifiers for a few years. The whole appartment was in white dust.

Especially evident on some black leather bags in the wardrobe.

That’s a lot of refilling. You might want to look into a whole house humidifier, I added an aprilaire 700 evaporative to my hvac ducts, it costs a few hundred $. Plumbed in, automatic. So much less screwing around

Chinese I’ve mentioned blew Ventra out of the water. I’ve been using humidifiers for the last 15 years and switched to smartme around 5 or something like that (liked the idea of auto speed and was tired of aged squickness after many years of its predecessor).

Haven’t used the first generation. Had a couple of the second (they notoriously had water level sensor issue that could be fixed just enabling “drying mode” that always ran for 8h after the sensor thought there were no water).

Third gen is the charm.

Cheap, effective (pump, double-bottom for rounded instead of flat tank — uses evry last drop), quiter, 5L tank, less creak after a few years.

tldr; I only wish it lasted whole 24 hours when it is -5C and lower outside, but I guess that requires 7-8L.

Also, having a few helps with the noise (I have total of three in my apartment).

Which venta are you referencing here?

You don’t need to connect it — works completely offline.

Also no consumable parts there: just plastic disks which you clean with couple of spoons of citric acid dissolved in water from time to time.

It's funny in an ironic way because the original purpose of air conditioners was to remove humidity from the air, the mechanism used was to cool the air down thus forcing some of the moisture out. The general public quickly caught on that having cool air was nice in it's own right and that is the main purpose these days. however the dehumidifying function is still sometimes used, people are surprised when their air conditioner turns on at the same time as the heater (why are they fighting each other?) but that is because the system is trying to remove moisture from the air before it is heated. Mainly seen in cars so the windows don't fog up.

Probably something wrong with me but I just find it humorous trying to add moisture to a system designed to remove it. Really a reasonable request however, depending on where you live the air can get quite dry.

You’d need a reverse osmosis system, not just he charcoal filters like that

And the condensate water from an AC evaporator coil is not anything like distilled water, dust/bacteria are also in it.

> I also wonder why mini-split heating systems drip and pool water outdoors instead of pumping that distilled water back indoors for humidification.

Do you want Legionnaire's Disease? Because that's how you get Legionnaire's Disease.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Philadelphia_Legionnaires...

During summer dehumidification is needed in most areas.

And it is really not distilled water. It gathers dust and so on from air. Distilling in more so closed circuit, where as those are very much open.

I'm thoroughly unconvinced.

Doing some basic research... hard water is overwhelmingly various carbonate and bicarbonates of magnesium, calcium, sulfur, iron, maganese, and aluminum. All of which are essential nutrients and readily soluable in water.

The other proposed problem was pathogen aerosols- however I was unable to access anything but an abstract. So, I don't know if they survived being aerosolized, produced more and/or worse pathogen count than evaporative humidifiers, Nor the size of the pathogens.

It seems to me the known risk is mostly mechanical (Asthma, exacerbated COPD, etc) and nonpersistent (particles dissolve and are used or excreted via the same pathways as when consumed). With an unknown risk on the pathogen side.

> If you’re willing to use distilled water, ultrasonic humidifiers have their own advantages over evaporative.

Unless you are anally retentive about cleaning it, ultrasonic humidifiers vaporize microbes into the air. There have been loads of studies about this.

The only real way to avoid this is to use the humidifiers that are boiling the water.

We didn't have access to modern technology... like ultrasonic speakers?

Also we died at a young age. Everyone dying at 40 isn't incompatible with the species surviving but it's what advice like that is usually trying to avoid (and even less extreme outcomes).

Quite poorly in fact

A lot of us didn't

I see. Thanks for that.

I understand what you mean, but I disagree. The technology allows for robot vacuums to exist and I don’t see the cloud connection as a mandatory need for it. Similarly, I want my car to have say lane assist but we don’t expect to have cloud connection with it.

Obviously all these smart appliance are about remote management, but I have to question how much usage it's getting in real life. My parents got a few smart devices for their holiday home, as my dad didn't want to drive 45 minutes both ways to check up on things during the winter. I think he probably ended up spending more time managing the IoT stuff that he ever did driving.

It create to have the option to manage something remote, but when remote become the only option, the usability takes a dive. When I have to go find my phone, unlock it, find the app, possible update the app, find the right setting or menu, stare at "Failure to connect to device", and whatever else might go wrong, it's quicker and easier to just manage the device directly. We got rid of our robot vacuum clear, because it's literally quicker and better to go get our 20 year old regular vacuum, and the floor is done in 3 minutes, not the 20+ the Roomba needs (and I needed to clear the room for it). When we used the Roomba, 99% of the time I pushed the "Start" button on the device, because it's way quicker than using the app.

There's a place for smart devices, but they need to be much better and have local controls.

I still think the value prop is dubious for a device like this.

> turn stuff on or off remotely

Why? Nearly all modern humidifiers have a sensor to measure humidity and will cycle on and off based on the setpoint. Getting to the setpoint also takes time so I don't see any reason someone would want to turn it on and off based on presence.

> (turn on/off based on outside sensors or the current electricity price...)

Not sure why the outside sensors would matter, it's concerned with the inside humidity which again it has a sensor to read. The amount of electricity these take to run isn't worth even mentioning.

> get status alerts ("tank empty, refill")

So you can refill it remotely? You have to be present to fill it anyway - just look at the thing and you'll know its water level

I say all this as someone who also run Home Assistant and automates various things.