Jason Gardner

Oklahoma HVAC tech automating my all-electric house. Home Assistant, local AI, robotics.

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

@liaiyuheping Love that, a QC sheet for bots is exactly how a trades guy should think about it. Checking the work before it ships beats fixing it after.

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

I run a team of AI bots to help with my side projects, and I’m setting up a local LLM with Ollama and Open WebUI on a Mac mini M4 so the house stuff stays private. Some days they’re brilliant, some days they’re apprentices. Posting the wins and the fails.

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

Same boat here running a team of AI bots for my house and side projects. Giving each one its own lane, one for Home Assistant, one for Docker, one for the network, has helped more than trying to wire them all together. Are you keeping it all local or is some of it hitting the cloud?

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

@Mr_Vivekji Facilities HVAC tech here. A lot of the trades don’t get paid by a white collar guy’s paycheck at all, we get paid by buildings. Schools, hospitals, plants and warehouses need their equipment running either way, so the money cycle is real but it’s not that simple.

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

@goswiftpro High head pressure in heat mode is an airflow problem until proven otherwise. Filter, blower wheel, coil, then gauges. Adding charge to a system that’s choking on airflow just makes it trip faster.

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

@PartsTown Amp draw on the compressor and blower next to the nameplate, plus supply and return temps. When a unit starts slipping you can watch it creep in the numbers long before it quits.

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

@DEMedus Clean build. Using ESPHome to power cycle them from Home Assistant is the best part, that’s a remote reset button for when one hangs at work. Are you switching each board separately or the whole rack at once?

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

Cold mornings are coming, so here’s a heat pump tip from an HVAC guy. If your aux heat kicks on every morning, look at your setback. A big overnight drop makes the backup strips do the recovery, and strips cost way more to run than the heat pump. A small setback or none at all usually saves more.

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

@UtaAoya Nice breakdown. One more thing for a home lab box that runs 24/7 is idle power draw, an external GPU sitting there all day adds up on the electric bill. Worth putting a plug meter on it before picking a card.

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

@balakhonoff Giving it a camera to watch its own moves is basically closed loop feedback, same idea we use in HVAC controls. As a trades guy just starting with an ESP32 and one servo, how cheap of an arm could someone get away with to try this?

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

@JesseTayRiver Leaving it under a nitrogen standing test overnight before you pull vacuum is the right way to do it, way too many guys skip that. Curious how you handled returns in a house that old, historic framing never leaves room for a decent return.

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

@RandomHvacGuy Congrats man, from one HVAC guy to another. Opinionated and funny beats polished every time. See you at 10k.

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

@blagden_david HVAC tech here. The part people miss is a lot of trade work isn’t optional. When the heat quits in January people find the money, it’s the remodels and upgrades that dry up first. Service holds, new install work is what gets hit.

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

@LoganARobison HVAC tech here. Anybody can buy the tools, the part that takes years is the intermittent no-heat call where nothing looks wrong. The guys who can actually troubleshoot will be fine, the ones who only know how to swap parts are who should worry.

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

@Re11oy Appreciate that Kir. One servo reacting to one sensor is a solid first goal, and I’ll post it the day it moves. Funny that we’re coming at it from opposite ends.

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

Day 1 of learning robotics as an HVAC tech. I know motors, sensors, relays and troubleshooting. I don’t know code-heavy robotics yet. Starting with ESP32 and a cheap servo. Robotics people, what should a trades guy learn first?

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

@wingland Sounds good, I’ll keep an eye out. If you get it reading equipment manuals or wiring diagrams I’d love to see that part especially.

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

@shrwnsan Ha, an offline scavenger hunt is a great idea. My kids would love quizzing it, and it’s a good way to find the holes before I’d ever actually need it.

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

@getironside Exactly. The cycle rate setting gets overlooked all the time. I’ve seen a brand new system get blamed when the thermostat was just set to cycle way too fast for a heat pump.

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

HVAC tech tip for the smart home crowd. If your automations change the thermostat every few minutes, you might be short cycling your heat pump. Give the compressor at least 5 to 10 minutes on and off, and keep setbacks small. Your equipment will last a lot longer.

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

@WallStreetB0Ts Trades guy just starting robotics here with an ESP32 and a cheap servo. This looks like a fun next step once I get past making one motor move. Anyone who’s built one, how much of it is the build versus the code?

[Jason Gardner @HVACAutomates]

@Natesemipro Nice build. For the battery temp control, if those are lithium, have the ESP32 block charging below freezing too, not just run a heater, since charging LiFePO4 under 32F can damage the cells. A little hysteresis on the heater relay keeps it from chattering.