alt Hacker NewsMy furnace went out during the 2025 holiday and I couldn't get an appointment with a repair person for 2 days. It was getting very cold in my house so I went into my attic and made several videos of the furnace attempting to start and gave it to gemini. It diagnosed the issue immediately and had me spin one of the components (a small exhaust fan) while the furnace tried to fire. It came on immediately. I had to do that several times, but it worked until the HVAC service showed up.
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Had something similar this week. Gas dryer started, but wouldn't heat. Gemini suggested it's often a thermal fuse. Took off the back panel and uploaded a photo to Gemini. It pointed me to the fuse (e.g. "the white rectangle above the blue and red cords") and walked me through testing it. Not only that, but it also linked me to the part I needed after I provided the model number of the dryer. Finally, it recommended cleaning out the vent as the fuse likely blew because heat wasn't venting properly. After a thorough cleaning of the exhaust and a $5 fuse the dryer is working fine.
Also similar - our Tesla Solar stopped producing (again). 3 week wait for service tech. In the meantime I had Claude probe the inverter, find endpoints for retrieving status, re-setting AFCI and Modbus TCP (for HA monitoring), etc. Claude was able to obtain installer mode access through a review the javascript bundle. I had Claude turn all this into an iOS app, which I used to gather data to diagnose the issue over the next week. Had Claude summarize the findings into a PDF that I provided to the Tesla Solar service rep, which in the words of said rep was very helpful.
I've been fitting a kitchen and chatGPT has been useful to bounce ideas off and resolve issues. Of course if IKEA's documentation wasn't so sparse I wouldn't need it but that's another story.
I guess I'm seeing similar benefits to a novice programmer. Professionals would scoff at my work but they are expensive and difficult to work with. Meanwhile I'm getting the job done.
On the other hand I'm not touching AI for any development work. I'm too worried about my skills atrophying or not properly learning anything new.
Similar - had an HVAC tech out to diagnose mine (some intermittent electrical problem was killing thermostats randomly) and since it was intermittent they couldn't figure it out. I ended up using Gemini to narrow down a list of potential problem components and just replacing them all which fixed the issue.
Kind of a superpower to turn anyone with a bit of tech inclination and problem solving skills into an HVAC tech - not a very good one, but one with enough motivation to get the results you need
That's pretty great.
(Though that's also the kind of hands-on troubleshooting step/fix that a person could just google for and find pretty easily back before the internet got all fucked up.)
Do you mind explain more. Did you just prompt to Gemini what was happening, did you give Gemini photos of Furnance, etc?
Oh yeah. I can't remember which LLM, but one helped me repair my dryer.
Gemini almost killed you.
The exhaust blower not working triggered a safety that prevented the furnace from firing.
Spinning it bypassed the safety.
You likely inhaled a lot more carbon monoxide than you know.
Very similar thing this week, and an interesting story to go along with it!
I called my normal HVAC company for my rental home because the tenant reported the AC wasn't cooling the house. When I called, I got one of the latest AI voice assistants to help me, and it was an awful experience and I ended up not hearing back after the assistant told me the office would call me back.
So, I went over to the house and used ChatGPT to help me diagnose the issue by taking some photos of the compressor panel outside. It walked me through what to check, I provided some diagnostic codes I witnessed... and it walked me through the very simple repair of replacing the $25 capacitor. It was going to cost me almost 4x that just for the service call to diagnose what was wrong in the first place.
So, the weird experience was: Gen AI made me lose trust in my normal HVAC company, and more Gen AI basically allowed me to replace my HVAC company and do the repair myself all in one day.