Interesting that it uses a PIC processor. I had an American Standard (Trane) heatpump installed at my current house. I noticed once winter came that the defrost cycles just didn't seem to be working right. They are supposed to be "on demand" but were occurring at every 30 minutes of accumulated runtime once outside temps dropped below 32 degrees. Noticed the defrost controller board had a PIC processor on it... Got the pickit3 rom flasher/reader and was able to read the rom. It didn't have any code protection thankfully. I ran the exported hex through gputils to disassemble it, and then ran it in the mplab simulator. I could tell it was hand written assembly. It used hardcoded values in some areas to set the program counter (vs just using goto and lables) so that made modifying the code harder (since you would need to then find all these hard coded values and offset them).
Long story short, the fireware was indeed full of bugs. It is possible that these controller boards haven't been working right for the last 10+ years. I managed to add a few lines of code to bypass some initial values when the board is first powered up, and that fixed the issues. It is indeed an "on demand" defrost controller now. I'm still slowly writing a blog post about it but probably won't get more time to publish for a few months.
But I guess the point is, after messing with this, there seems to be an entire world of embedded firmwares that are just riddled with bugs and will never be fixed.
gputils did an amazing job on the disassembling! There are labels, gotos and functions all laid out. Hardcoded and calculated values were added to the PC in many places like: "addwf PCL, F" In that case, add W register into PCL, and store value into PCL.
Trane had the original patent for computer controlled defrost: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4573326A/en In the first image you'll see a chart with different temperature "bin" factors. In one place in the code, the temperature offset from 32 degrees (freezing) is added to a hardcoded value and the PC then jumps into a certain spot in a lookup table. The values in that lookup table help determine at what "DT" (delta temp between outdoor coil and outdoor ambient) a defrost should initiate. In another location, a hardcoded value is added to the PC along with a loop counter.... On loop 1 through the code, jump to this location, on loop 2 jump to this location, etc. Kind of a strange way to code, but after buying different revisions on ebay of this board going all the way back to the early 2000's, and on top of the patent being from 1985, perhaps this was the norm in the 80's and mid 90's.
That adding offsets sounds like it could easily be compiler output. Elegant-looking jump table code is actually pretty standard for a compiler to generate.
On the other hand, carefully hand-crafted and super clever machine code written in the '80s and subsequently fucked up by successive generations of maintainers who didn't understand it is an entirely plausible scenario.
I’ll be very interested to read your work on the Trane heat pump firmware. If you finally find the time, please, send me an email so I could add your article to the newsletter embedsys@embedsysweekly.com
Author here. I'm honored to see someone actually posted this on HN. :)
I purchase my Dyson V7 as an official refurb and the battery went in to lockout a few months after the short refurb warranty expired. Thus prompting the project. The vacuum is pretty handy for my small apartment, and when I bought it, I wanted something that had decent reviews and was from a real company, not just some Amazon seller with a bunch of random characters for a name. I still like the vacuum, I just wish Dyson hadn't designed it to fail.
I think there are two issues here:
1) The left out the cell balancing circuitry which is pretty standard for battery packs.
2) They designed their firmware to go in to permanent lockout when the cells go to far out of balance (300mV).
For the sake of discussion, I've heard interesting two arguments on why they might have disabled cell balancing:
1) Cell balancing could be a weak point on the ISL94208 IC they used, so they could have disabled cell balancing to actually increase overall reliability. We'd never know for sure, but I could see this being plausible. This is from someone on the EEVblog thread (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/fu-dyson-bms-an-(unof...)
2) Cell balancing isn't actually useful because a poor battery cell will plummet in voltage under load anyways due to the higher ESR in the poor cell. At least, that was my interpretation of their argument after translating it from Russian to English in a comment on the YouTube video. While I see their point, especially in the vacuum's turbo mode which draws 17A vs the usual 3A, I think there would still be some usable capacity to be gained by balancing the cells even if one did have a much higher ESR.
Meta: I interpreted the "FU-Dyson..." in the project as "F*uck you Dyson", not "Firmware upgrade", did I make the right interpretation? :)
Also, this resembles why I'm very reluctant to buying an e-scooter in Sweden since basically all the ones available here are rebranded OEM Alibaba scooters with poor/fake battery implementations, so when it fails you'll be standing there with no way to get back on the saddle again.
Even the Swedish-branded Vessla scooters were rebranded OEMs from Alibaba, with minor cosmetic changes and a hefty premium. After a while the batteries turned out to be of poor quality, and after their v2, they quit that vertical entirely.
Looking forward to Segway launching their e-scooters in Sweden, at least I know it's a reputable brand standing behind it and can honor warranties etc. I want something quite small that I can have in the apartment (theft and vandalism otherwise), and can use to scoot my kid to school with.
Good man, I hate Dyson shit so much. It's all overpriced rubbish. Whenever I see their hand-dryers in a public bathroom I just use paper towels instead because they tend to blow stagnant water and particles in your face.
> Whenever I see their hand-dryers in a public bathroom I just use paper towels
Removing and replacing paper towels with hand dryers in public bathrooms has been an unfortunately shortsighted move that's been copied without much thought. Hands aren't the only thing that get wet in a public bathroom. You may wash your face, you may be removing stuff off your clothing, and countless other uses that a hand dryer alone can't accommodate.
Seriously, if paper napkins and no Dyson Aerosol-Your-Skin-Cells-9000 means I don't have to think about the sanitary habits of my fellow citizens, that would be reason enough to stop installing them.
They also scream like a banshee and don't dry your hands. I happen to also wear a beard, perhaps you can see why having only the Scream And Don't Dry My Hands Machine available would be unsatisfactory.
And even if they did, many (most?) bathrooms have doors that open inwards, so you have to touch the same bare metal that they (and every other previous user) also touched... and I'm yet to be convinced by the usual argument that it's for fire safety.
Those directional nozzle hand dryers that twist upwards so you can dry your face is a big billy bonus. One of my favourite campsites set in the Welsh Mountains has a Dyson blade for drying hands, and sure its very quick to dry your hands, but on a freezing winters day or night coming back from a hike in the mountains and its freezing cold and you are soaked through, the directional nozzle hand dryers give you that warmth you can never get from the Dyson blade, like drying the insides of your hiking boots for the next morning.
The ultimate bachelor's vacuum cleaner was the Dyson DC15 Animal. It just cleaned and cleaned and cleaned, their newer stuff I dont rate.
I grew up with a Miele vacuum cleaner (my parents were all about Miele). Only disadvantage is they last so long that newer hardware is potentially more energy efficient. I don't get the point of wireless vacuum cleaner except autonomic ones and in niches where you don't have electricity (like an area where the electricity is often down). Having recently owned some different brands (Samsung, Beko) which broke down got us back te Miele again.
Have you ever used a wireless vacuum? It may sound stupid, but it saves significant time and effort over a conventional vacuum; taking the clunky vacuum out, plugging it in, unplugging it and putting it back means it takes (much) more than twice as long to do spot vacuuming.
Personally I'm never going back to a corded vacuum if I can avoid it.
Not even mentioning the cord management? You just vacuum where you want to vacuum and don’t have to drag a cord behind you and throw it around to keep it out of the way of being run over.
The friction to use a cordless vacuum is very low compared to a corded one. And consequently, vacuuming change from being a chore that's done once few weeks for a an hour to some short 5-10 minutes burst every few days.
They're talking Miele, which most likely means canister vacuums. The two of you have very different mentality / approaches to vacuuming...and that's totally OK.
> I don't get the point of wireless vacuum cleaner
The point of anything cordless is how it eliminates the hassle of, well, dealing with cords. In case of a vacuum cleaner, one has to:
- pull the cord out
- plug and re-plug it
- ensure it doesn't get stuck around the corners and under furniture legs
- ensure it doesn't pull some other furniture and topple them over
In addition, corded vacuums have practically no power envelope or weight restrictions, so they end up being bulky, heavy and loud, even if the context in which they are used doesn't require the power.
Dyson cordless (I can't speak to any other) in contrast:
- weighs lot less and can be carried around with ease
- can be moved around without a second thought of where the cord is or whether it can be maneuvered in a certain way
- is a lot quieter (can be used at night)
- is instantly accessible without any setup so it makes sense to use it for a few seconds to clean something up
- can be used outside of the house where there is no power outlet - e.g. in the car in a rental apartment parking
Since I switched to cordless (which has been 6 years or so), I no longer dread vacuuming. It's actually a pleasant experience and sometimes, when I get a few minutes, I do a clean of areas that get dirty often (entrance).
The battery life and the power available have improved to the point where it's no longer something I worry about (especially for my two bedroom apartment).
I've never used or even looked at Dyson, but the problem with most vacuums is how the vacuum itself slowly falls apart until it is no longer usable (even though the motor still has years of life left). For years I rocked a 1986 rainbow I bought off of ebay in 2003 for $200. But found myself using it less and less since it is big and you have to fill it with water each time.
Bought a Shark upright that I used in between my more thorough weekly rainbow vacuumings. But the shark was slowly falling apart, and you can't buy replacement parts and there are so many models, that finding used parts is not really possible either.
So I did the "buy once, cry once" routine and bought a Sebo E2 canister. Like many other European brands, parts are easily available and you no longer have a disposable product which is a win in my case.
I'll be the contrarian. I have a Roomba and a Dyson cordless. I'm very happy, and my home is much cleaner than with my old industrial-grade vacuum:
- The Roomba goes once a day. It doesn't pick up much in one pass, but my house is much cleaner because it runs all the time. Covering the same spot many times, it does well.
- The Dyson cleans very well, and picks up all the places the Roomba doesn't get to or emergency spills. It's never run out of batteries.
On the whole, it's less effort and cleaner than with my old big'un vacuum.
And if I want to do a deep clean, I'd rather wash in either case.
I currently own a Dyson cordless for vacuuming the mattress when I change the sheets, a Bosch class M industrial vacuum and a Miele from before the dawn of time.
I’ve previously owned a Roomba.
I have the Bosch as a workshop vacuum and if I need to clean up something I don’t want blowing back into the air it’s the one I use. Eg brick dust or MDF dust.
Both my Dyson and my old Roomba were bagless and when you empty them it goes all over place.
I also don’t trust the filtering on them. They say hepa filters but that doesn’t mean it’s not leakng out case somewhere.
You only get one set of lungs so if it maters to you get something better than a Dyson.
My Miele still works well but I don’t trust the filtering on thar either.
When I did the vacuuming myself, I had a sealed, true HEPA system. It made a big difference. For the Roomba, I'm not sure it matters. I'm never around when the Roomba is running. I run it when I'm running errands or picking kids up from school. Or I'll run it in a bedroom when I'm in the office or vice-versa. I don't like the noise. Since COVID, I also have a HEPA filter in each room.
If the Roomba kicks anything up:
- If it lands back on the carpet, it will get it on the next pass.
- If it doesn't land on the carpet, the air filter will get it.
My allergies are a lot better with this setup than what I had before.
However, the Dyson has a HEPA filter, but it's definitely not a sealed HEPA filter or "true" HEPA. Air goes around. The air coming out smells dusty. It's fine because it's only for things which the Roomba can't get to, but I'd be very unhappy with it as my sole vacuum cleaner. For what it does, it's super-convenient.
I should also mention: I have a carpet washing machine too. I rarely use it (much less than I should), but it's a huge step up.
I’ve always been interested in Roombas for this use case, but reviews have always pointed toward “fun for a hobbiest, but utility doesn’t outweigh drawbacks”. Have they gotten better in recent years?
I don't know what older Roombas were like, but mine does a really good job.
It doesn't pick up a lot of trash on one pass, but it makes many passes. Even with many passes, it sometimes misses stuff that my old big vacuum would have picked up, but I run it every day or every other day.
The carpets stay really, really clean.
A side benefit -- to me -- is that I need to keep the floors Roomba-ready. If you leave laundry, cables, etc. on the floor, you've got a problem. YMMV if you have family; with some visitors, I can't use the Roomba at all.
Funnily enough, the cord was the thing that eventually wore out due to normal use and needed to be replaced several times on all of our vacuums growing up. It's trivial to fix, but most don't know how and didn't want to lug a big heavy vacuum to a repair shop and just end up getting a new vacuum. I enjoy not tripping all over a cord or constantly having to tug it out of the way of where I want to vacuum. I enjoy not having to constantly plug/unplug it while moving from room to room when I run out of cord. I enjoy not having to wind the cord up after every use. It's so easy to clean the car and not have to weave the cord everywhere. I enjoy not having wear marks from the cord in the paint of the floor trim, which happens a lot in doorways as they protrude inward from the wall, or any time you go around a corner and pull the cord.
I switched from a Dyson corded vacuum to a Samsung battery powered one and it’s amazing. I’ll never go back to wired vacuums. My parents have a Dyson battery powered one and it is garbage.
Dyson constantly improved their cordless vacuums in the past 6 years. I have a V10 which is leaps and bounds better than V7. The battery runs forever, the bin is larger and empties cleanly without meddling, has a great weight distribution and it's more powerful.
Even with newer models available, the V10 still seems to hit the sweet spot of high performance without extra weight.
The newer models offer larger batteries and debris capacity, and higher power (suction), but as you mentioned the V10 has been plenty for my household, so they don’t seem worth the extra weight let alone expense.
I previously had a V7 that worked well enough in a smaller home for a few years. After the battery started deteriorating I replaced it with an aftermarket one, but that was slightly larger so it no longer fit in the charging dock. Now the V7 lives in a campervan where it’s still plenty useful.
Bought a house with a 30 year old Siematic kitchen... it all works, but maybe after 30 years you dont need it to work anymore. It's loud and not very energy efficient, and 30 years will leave some grime in places where toothbrushes don't go.
I have one of each and the cordless is the go-to for spot cleaning spills and vacuuming the stairs. My Miele canister vacuum is amazing, but a relative hassle.
Are they that bad? I’ve been interested in buying a cordless vacuum, and the Dyson ones seem to top all the review lists (e.g. Wirecutter). What are some good alternatives?
Not really relevant to cordless ones but I know Dyson removed their pre-motor filter on their latest corded vacuums. If the dust chamber is too full excess dust is blown through the motor and then stopped from coming out into the air by a post motor filter. This will lead to premature motor failure over time.
The Dyson 'bagless' idea is a bit of a sham. Yes they work, but they don't work that well. They don't make as much suction as their bagged competitors so they cheat and use smaller orifices to increase suction instead of by having a larger motor or alternative design. Then in order to have 'like new' performance all the time you have to continually wash (which doesn't really clean well enough) or replace filters.
Some people love them but they don't make sense to me. If I'm emptying my vacuum I'm going to empty it into a bag anyway so I may as well use a bagged vacuum that works more consistently and doesn't throw dust everywhere.
I love bagless, it is perfect for my use case. I have Huskies and fill up the canister multiple times per vacuuming of the house. The majority of my vacuuming is just picking up hair, not dirt. I'd fill bags up so quickly, and I've yet to find one that is replaceable as quick as a bagless canister can be emptied.
It's not a sham, different use cases call for different things.
They are good in certain circumstances, but they use a few tricks, eg. there is no battery meter on the V6 to avoid range anxiety, so it will just die without warning and flash a LED vs having a battery gauge.
The suction is also pretty poor, however it makes up for it by having a roller in the vacuum head which picks up the dirt.
If you have anyone in the house with long hair its almost unusable as the roller will be clogged up after a single vacuum. A traditional vacuum with better suction and no roller wont have this issue.
On the plus side they are light and manoeuvrable, and the wall mount means you always keep it charged.
I agree with all of this. I've had mine 5 years now, the battery life was never greatand unsurprisingly it's not getting any better... Would I'd buy another? Probably not. I heard Shark is supposed to be pretty good.
Shark's cordless vacs are pretty mediocre. Especially poor battery life. Tossed mine in favor for a Roborock that is only marginally more expensive, but far better in basically every way (run time, suction power, accessories, ease of cleaning).
I've never heard of Roborock and cant find much availability in Europe which might explain the one price I did find. Shame, the Dyson won't cut it once I move to a bigger place.
I have one of the cordless vacs. It works well at being a cordless, the size is great and it's easy to handle but...
It's made of really cheap plastic and has cracked in a few places.
Being bagless is good in that I can see what it's collected but bad in that when come to empty it the dust I'm allergic to goes everywhere. (If only someone would invent a bag to keep the dust in eh?).
I had a Dyson. I lost it in a breakup. I got a Shark. I figured any cordless stick vacuum is gonna get me what I want. The Shark is nowhere near as good. I found a Dyson on the street. It runs circles around the Shark. It's no contest. It makes it so easy to vacuum without all the ceremony of vacuuming from the past.
I guess people just like complaining, it works great, especially used together with a robotic vacuum cleaner for the easy locations. I just got some food on the floor an hour ago, I would have been lazy to get a wired vacuum cleaner there, but with Dyson wireless it was really easy.
I love their cordless vacuums. Mine's approaching 6 years with no issues whatsoever. My previous (corded) Dyson vacuum also works perfectly to this day, bought in 2006 and used at least every other day (because dogs) for 10 years. It fell down the stairs a couple of times, too. Really robust in my experience.
The cordless one does not quite match the suction, but it's so much more convenient and sufficient nonetheless.
I got a Black & Decker cordless vacuum and it works great. Great battery (~60-90m runtime on full charge) which is also easily swappable (same batteries as their drills) with decent suction, build quality feels good too. It's almost 3x cheaper than the Dyson so really great value
I have the Dyson V10. And I got it much cheaper by buying refurb and coupon stacking for <$200. I think they were the first to get the cordless vacuum formfactor right. There are many alternatives now that are significantly cheaper. And if I wasn't able to purchase mine at the price I did I probably would have considered them.
I have a V8, my wife loves it and I appreciate it as well. We have a large apartment, so we prefer cordless solutions. Dyson has a decent battery and enough of sucking force to be useful. Personally can recommend. It also cleans super easily, with one lever.
I have a corded dyson that doesn't use those dust bags, but it sucks (but not in the way a vacuum is supposed to). It's squeaky plastic and feels rough/wrong on the ground.
Don't know how good it is, but I'm considering a Bosch universalvac 18 since it uses the same batteries as a bunch of their cordless tools and garden products (18V) which I already have a couple of
I have a tineco cordless vacuum which I think is incredibly well built, I bought it because it topped the Consumer Reports leaderboard at the time I was looking for one
I tend to use paper towels too. Electric hand-dryers promote the build-up of bacteria given how microbial life prefers warm places and how often people will walk away before their hands are properly dry.
No idea about battery balancing in them though, maybe I need to open it and try to find out. My gut feeling is that they wouldn't save out on a few resistors.
Thank you for this. I'm shopping for a vac right now and this looks better than all the competition (Dyson, Samsung etc). What I wanted more than anything was a vacuum with easily available spares because vacs are one thing that tends to wear out and break more than any other appliance. I just hope Lupe does well and doesn't go out of business, otherwise there won't be any more spares.
It's not cost cutting. It's planned obsolencense! No Battery Engineer in their right mind would save a few cents on a balancing circuit. It's such a standard, it's like saving buying a car and the tank is sealed shut with gasoline inside.
Dyson is only a premium brand if you think so. Their products are, and have always been, garbage. It is a marketing company, not a premium household products company.
As another commenter here said, this is an obvious case of planned obsolescence.
I bought a Dyson V7, and the battery life even from new is atrocious. On a full charge, unable to cover my very modest London flat, and of course, it cannot be used while charging.
I even fitted a larger aftermarket battery. Still awkward to use. Eventually I gave up, and bought a corded Henry from Numatic.
I cannot recommend a cordless Dyson for anything except light dust busting.
Corded vacum for residential is such a thing of a past, can't believe genuine people fallback to cords over dysons... I use V8 and V11, wonderfull machines. I like V8 more because it light and nimble.
These little vacuums really suck! Seriously though, I didn't realize how impactful having a good vacuum would be. There are probably other-brand equivalents that cost less, but refurbished the Dyson handhelds aren't bad on price. The accessories are intuitive and "just work". I'm glad I didn't bawk at it when my fiancee wanted to buy it. And really cool to see more hardware mods getting attention on HN!
Well damn, I literally replaced my battery after the 32 red blinks of death a couple weeks ago. I don’t have the old one anymore either. Grr. This would’ve been a fun alternative.
Unpopular opinion, but it looks like Dyson is trying to be as safe as possible (mitigating any chances of fire) by disabling the pack. Unbalanced packs can result in overcharging.
Maybe it would have cost too much to provide a better BMS or charger, or just wanted to eliminate a risk factor.
1.Series battery cells in a battery pack inevitably become imbalanced. This is extremely common and why cell balancing was invented.
2.Dyson uses a very nice ISL94208 battery management IC that includes cell balancing. It only requires 6 resistors that cost $0.00371 each, or 2.2 cents in total for six.
3.Dyson did not install these resistors. (They even designed the V6 board, PCB 61462, to support them. They just left them out.)
4.Rather than letting an unbalanced pack naturally result in lower usable capacity, when the cells go moderately (300mV) out of balance (by design, see step 3) Dyson programmed the battery to stop working...permanently. It will give you the 32 red blinks of death and will not charge or discharge again. It could not be fixed. Until now.
Unfortunately I haven't implemented cell balancing in the firmware. This is for a few reasons:
On the V6 batteries, you could theoretically install the missing resistors and handle the rest in software, but the balancing would be very slow since it would also have to go through a 1K resistor Dyson included on the other side of the internal balancing MOSFETs. On the V7 and up models, they actually shorted the internal balancing MOSFETs of the ISL94208 on the PCB so you'd have to cut the very fine traces here and then solder on balancing resistors. I think you could actually just place a short in place of the balancing resistors because of the 1K resistor already in circuit.
All said, I figured that of the limited number of people willing to take apart their battery, buy a programming tool, and install my firmware, there would be even few willing to make those very delicate modifications. And anyone willing to do all that probably already owns a bench power supply they could use to rebalance their battery pack manually.
I'd initially planned on adding cell balancing until I saw that the ISL94208 balancing connections where shorted together on the PCB. That's something that just can't be fixed in software. Maybe one day I'll add balancing to one battery, just to show it can be done.
This is cool but I haven’t had a problem w blinking red lights on the v6 animal.
I’ve replaced the original w some random one from Amazon, because it wouldn’t last as long. (Choosing from the many generics was not easy reviews are seem very uneven)
Maybe BMS could make it last longer in charge behavior similar to iPhone?
I’m more interested in a guide on how to replace the red bristles in the long vac head.
Also +1 on the dyson v6, it changed how I clean. Have not tried the cheap knock offs but anything w o a cord is the way to go.
Has anyone had success with aftermarket battery packs for these vacuums? eBay is full of questionable quality options and my vacuum lasts all of 3 minutes.
I have obtained a couple of dead-battery Dyson vacuums in recent years. Aftermarket replacement batteries are available and so far, so good. The ones I installed offer somewhat increased capacity over the originals and performance is as good as I would expect. Of course aftermarket lithium ion battery packs are a crapshoot at best, so I stuck with ones that published at least plausible capacities and had a reasonable number of good/non-fake reviews. Given the price and lack of availability of OEM packs I'd say go for it.
I bought one for my girlfriend's Dyson (v6, I think) - which had terrible battery life from day one, and got worse over time. She was very dubious about it, but it worked a lot better than even when the Dyson was new. Still not great, but better than before.
Eventually I persuaded her that a Henry was the way forward. She bought it and now knows what I mean - I have one as a "garage/DIY" one and another as the house vacuum. There's a reason why professional cleaners in the UK use them!
Yes, I bought a brand called Vanttech [1] for my Dyson V6. Not only has it worked perfectly, but the new battery pack also lasts longer than the official Dyson one. Much cheaper, too, of course.
Yes, Dyson was out of stock, when the battery in my V8 died so I felt forced to buy an aftermarket just to use it. More amp hours than the OEM (or so they claim), and so far working great. The filters that came with it don't fit as well as the OEM ones though, they are falling off when I hold the vacuum wrong.
Yes. I bought an aftermarket v6 battery with increased maH over the original, but with no 3 stage blue led charge level indicator (just one led) but it definitely lasts longer.
I own an older gen (v5?) and I absolutely love it. I haven’t had the battery issue other have. I grew up with vacuuming being part of my chores. We used to have this super heavy bagged Hoover built in the 90s, and I remember how extremely difficult it was to lug it around and keeping track of the wires. Changing to a Refurb Dyson for like $200 was mindblowing and worth the 5 year+ investment.
Bought a refurb Dyson cordless V7 on a whim - Didn't want to spend full price because this is the first cordless bagless vac I've owned and I wanted to test the waters. It's been going strong 2+ years, total game changer - will not go back to bagged/corded. Once this thing dies I'm buying the newest one.
I haven't used the slightly older models, but it may be worth sticking with them because it's possible to adapt them to use a standard 20v tool battery (I've specifically seen this done for the V8).
Meanwhile on the V10 I have, batteries cost $130, can't be hot-swapped easily, and use a higher voltage that makes the 20v tool battery modification impractical. I planned to replace (and upgrade) the cells on the refurbished model I bought because the battery has been subpar since I received it, but so far I haven't managed to get past the abnormally-tricky plastic clips.
I've been using a V12 for a year or so and it's incredibly easy and pleasurable to use. Huge battery, rarely I use it for more than 40% of its full charge, on full speed. Plus all the quick swap accessories make it a no brainer.
I wouldn't touch a Dyson again with a bargepole. It constantly breaks and needs lots of maintenance, they have programmed obsolescence and James Dyson himself is an absolute scoundrel (Brexit, Singapore move, Tax, Ventilators etc.)
What is the point of the firmware? It does not implement cell balancing, and no instructions are there to solder resistors to actually allow cell rebalancing.
> 4. Rather than letting an unbalanced pack naturally result in lower usable capacity, when the cells go moderately (300mV) out of balance (by design, see step 3) Dyson programmed the battery to stop working...permanently. It will give you the 32 red blinks of death and will not charge or discharge again. It could not be fixed. Until now.
> By using this firmware, your battery pack will not become unusable if the cells become imbalanced, you will just have reduced battery capacity as usual.
Misleading project description. Very much further down the page:
> Cell balancing is not implemented. I know this is ironic, but because the cell balancing resistors aren't installed and Dyson used 1K resistors for the VCELL# connections, even if you shorted out the connections where the cell balancing resistors would go, which most people aren't going to do (and you'd have to cut some very fine traces on the V7 BMS PCBs), the cell balancing would be extremely slow through the 1K resistors.
So I guess the only use of this currently is reviving a dead battery pack.
I really wanted to add cell balancing but the PCBs are designed in way that it would require hardware modifications that I thought very few people would actually do, especially on the V7 models and up. I was also pretty burned out on this project by the end.
I did add a way for you to at least monitor the cell balance level via LED blink codes so you know when the cells need to be manually rebalanced.
You are correct that in the end, this project doesn't provide a ton of extra utility. Especially since another user from the EEVblog forum thread, dvd4me, found the EEPROM values you can reset to clear the permanent lockout on the original firmware.
I have got both a corded and cordless Dyson vacuum. For my high pile carpeted floors, I find that the battery powered one just does not have sufficient power even though the brush design is better than the corded one.
In general, I have come to hate battery powered stuff including laptops, power tools and cars because they just dont pack enough raw power for my needs.
Was able to get a Model S my friend bought in 2021 into limp mode when I took it to track after 3 laps. I believe the battery overheated after the 3rd lap. In the mean time, my STi was driving in circles for the next 20 or so laps.
Long story short, the fireware was indeed full of bugs. It is possible that these controller boards haven't been working right for the last 10+ years. I managed to add a few lines of code to bypass some initial values when the board is first powered up, and that fixed the issues. It is indeed an "on demand" defrost controller now. I'm still slowly writing a blog post about it but probably won't get more time to publish for a few months.
But I guess the point is, after messing with this, there seems to be an entire world of embedded firmwares that are just riddled with bugs and will never be fixed.