Gateway puck question
I have a 4 story home and recently had 8 minisplit heads installed for AC. After the job was done, I was horrified to learn that there was no way to control the AC with wifi or anything. The guy handed me 8 remotes that looked like they were from the 90s. I didn't even think to ask about that aspect! Live and learn.
Luckily I stumbled upon Flair (and its competitors!) I am leaning towards going with Flair pucks, since they seem way cleaner, and most importantly, they can be battery operated which will make mounting them under the minisplits super easy. I bought one as a test, and I was a bit surprised that it needs micro USB.
Upon further research, it sounds like only one of them, the "gateway", needs USB power. Is there any more information on what this means exactly? Do the pucks connect to each other with some sort of mesh network?
Can I have one puck in a closet with USB, and then 8 pucks cleanly mounted underneath the minisplits? Do the pucks all need to be in close proximity to the gateway puck or do they use wifi to connect my house network (probably not, or what is the point of the gateway)? Would I need one gateway per floor? Any guidance on how to mount the Flairs with battery power would be greatly appreciated.
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Hi Jeffrey,
The Pucks use a long range low power radio to talk between one another, allowing for Pucks to operate wirelessly. Many of our installers put the Pucks in the living space in with batteries as to avoid unsightly wires and then put an additional Puck in a utility room or closet thats plugged in via the included usb adapter and cable. The "Flair Radio" usually has better range than WiFi but as a worst case, you could use additional Pucks connected to USB if you needed to extend or expand your Puck network (that's how our larger hospitality installations get deployed for instance). You normally wouldn't need 1 gateway per floor but if for some reason your building is hard on radio signals, you can always add additional Pucks configured as gateways.
If you find yourself in a position where the Flair radio range is greater than WiFi, it's worth noting that the Pucks operating on batteries only hop on WiFi briefly during initial setup and during FW upgrades (not very frequent and entirely optional). That means that if you needed to, you could just walk the Puck you are setting up into WiFi range briefly during setup and then walk it back to the installation location. Odds are, you won't have to do that and certainly you won't need to do that for most of them.
One minor note - the Pucks mounted under the minisplits might work fine (you'll just want to double check that signal reception is good before permanent attachment - all a part of the regular setup process), but you might also consider putting the Puck on the other side of the room or an adjacent wall.
In terms of mounting the battery powered Pucks, you can use the included screws or adhesive.
I hope that is helpful and please do reach out to hello@flair.co if you have additional or specific questions before or during your installation! -
Awesome! I now own 8 pucks, so I will try it out! Is there a particular strategy on which one should be the wired one? I am guessing the one closest to the middle.
Also, is there more information on how they interface with ecobee? I also have floor heating, which is controlled by a combination of Emerson Sensi devices and Lennox Comfortsense 7500. It would be great to unify the systems, but before I also buy 8 ecobees, I want to be sure it's a good idea!
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