We’ve had a WiFi thermostat for some time now, so when we decided to get a Mitsubishi heat pump installed I wanted to maintain the ability to remotely control the temperature and chose to have the Mitsubishi kumo cloud included with our install. As we weren’t around when our heat pump was installed the crew doing the install didn’t get this fully connected for us. While I knew they’d come out to finish this up, I’m impatient and assumed I could figure this out myself.
As I wasn’t familiar with any of this equipment, it took some time to orient myself via various manuals and YouTube videos. There are two units attached to the side of our air handler with velcro:
Some searching indicated that the triangular unit in the back is a wireless bridge for the wall mounted thermostat while the rectangular unit in in the front is the kumo cloud device. When I popped off the panel in the front of the air handler labeled “Electrical” I noticed the thermostat gateway was connected to the control board while the kumo cloud unit was disconnected.
I found this confusing as the YouTube video I watched that described how to install the kumo cloud unit indicated in should be plugged directly into the control board, in a plug the thermostat gateway was occupying. I turned back to the internet for clarity and searched for the model number on the back of the kumo cloud unit, finding these installation instructions . They indicated the units should be daisy-chained: the kumo cloud unit plugs into the control board, with the thermostat gateway plugging into the secondary port on the kumo cloud unit.
With the lights on the kumo cloud unit blinking, I fired up the app on my phone and dove into the installer settings. For some reason, Mitsubishi has this part of the app pin protected:
Thankfully it’s easy to find working pins on the internet, 9999 did the trick for me. I really don’t get why they did this. As a customer, this just feels patronizing. Anyways, with this I was just a few taps away from having this setup. However, the app did asked two specific questions related to the install I was initially uncertain about:
- The orientation the air handler was in. This was easy to decipher with the installation manual handy.
- An adjustment for the blower to fine tune the static pressure. Options were 0.3 in WC, 0.5 in WC, and 0.8 in WC with 0.5 the default. I left this at the default and made a note to call my installer to get the right value.
While this may explain why this section of the app was pin protected, this still strikes me as a bad design choice. These settings are very specific to the air handler, duct work, and the way everything was installed. They should be set once at installation time and likely never touched again. If I were designing this, I’d have these settings configured via dip switches on the control board or via a different configuration path. Doesn’t make sense to include them on the setup path for a wireless bridge device.
Anyways, my design critique aside, I was now in business with the app working:
While I like the visual design of this app better than the Honeywell app we used with our previous thermostat, I like the functionality of the Honeywell app better. Here are a few things I’ve noticed:
- When opening the app, it can take a long time to connect.
- When a schedule has been set on the actual thermostat, the one in the app is silently ignored. Another bad design choice.
- When the temperature is adjusted in the app, it doesn’t indicate how long this adjustment will last.
- I read in an Amazon review, and it seems to hold true, that once the kumo cloud unit has been installed the thermostat temperature is no longer used to control everything. Rather, a sensor tracking the temp of the cold air return is. This is actually a positive for us as the thermostat is in a room that often receives a lot of solar heating.
All up, this is far from the best consumer software I’ve used but should be sufficient. It’s also possible that I got something wrong in my adhoc installation. If so, I’ll know soon when the installation crew returns to wrap up a few punch list items.
Seattle remodel adventures 