Upgrading 356 AC Units to WiFi Control

[Adaptel]

Just wanted to post an update to this topic. At the end of the season, I did bite the bullet and purchased the MicroAir FX2 control boards and Wifi touch screen thermostats to upgrade my Cabin Mate units. Well, I am pretty happy with them, with a few caveats. Mounting the new control board is the first hurdle. Micro-Air offers a new metal enclosure for the FX-2 board, but although the baord fits well into the enclosure....the enclosure does not mount to the CabinMate unit very nicely. I opted to modify my existing enclosures by knocking out all the mounting posts, and drilling holes and installing computer motherboard stand-offs in the correct places.

The best part of this upgrade, is that I opted into buying the FX-2 board with the optional Easystart daughterboard which greatly lowers the startup current of the compressor. The generator hardly falters when the units start now. Touchscreen works well, Wi-Fi control is awesome, but one thing about these is SOOOO annoying. You must use some sort of screensaver on the thermostats, and can choose a blank screen, or the Micro Air Logo bouncing around the screen. You can use a custom logo if you plunk down another $200 for a programming cable, but the most obvious thing for the screen to display when idle cannot be done. You CANNOT display the current temperature on the display when idle at all!!!! You have to touch the screen to wake it up in order to see the set temp or current room temp, or fire up the app on your phone.

Overall, I would recommend these, although it is quite a pricey route to go. They do look really nice as compared to the Passport controls, but would be a home run if you could display the room temperature on the screen like the old t-stats.