What you’re missing is the ability to automate. If you put it all on one automation system then you can now have things happen automatically based on state changes. So if for some reason you want to turn off your AC and go ahead and switch to fan based on some rule like “if ambient outside temp is below 78F and battery capacity is below 40%” or whatever.
These are things that can happen while you’re sleeping or while you’re not even at the van.
I can see uses for this, but you’re not wrong that it’s also a potential failure point. Obviously folks engineering these systems have some level of trust that they can fix it in the field if necessary, especially if it’s a system you wrote from the ground up. I personally love the idea enough to follow it, but not quite enough to bother in my own van.
I would be willing to donate to a project to reverse engineer the Espar, though not because I want to automate it, just because I want to replace the incredibly annoying control unit it ships with. I pretty much hate how it works.
—Donnie
