I have one of these HW heaters, vacation mode is great. I’ve been watching/waiting for this kit to come out. Anyone have this yet? Plans for a device type?
I am looking at getting one too. Here is a link to the developer documentation:
Hoping this information helps any others going down this road, or myself when I get back to this project:
First I got this:Green Bean
This this, but it doesn’t control my model (A rev of motherboard, versus B): ConnectPlus
And I’ve whined to GE about it here: GE ACM
I may develop a device for this, but I need both the time, and hardware that actually talks to my HW heater. I bought it too early as usual in the hopes it would work. GE left me behind it seems. My hope is back on the Greenbean device.
I know this is an old thread, so I’m not sure if you already got your solution, but I bought the GE Geospring about a year ago to replace my old one and eventually bought the WiFi controller when it came out. The app has gotten much better from when I first bought it and it would routinely struggle to connect. Now it connects all the time with no issue.
Also, I recently found out that IFTTT got a Geospring channel, so I made virtual switches in ST to control the different water heater modes so that, through ST, I can change the mode, I also set a recipe to automatically put it on Hybrid mode on the weekends for when my wife and I take showers closer to the same time.
I’ve also used the IFTTT to link the water heater with my Amazon Echo, so rather than open an I app I can just say “Alexa, turn on Heat Pump” or “Hybrid” or “High Demand.”
It’s pretty great.
How did you get it to work with your egos print heater
Rheems’ version is already working with ST
My MB on the heater died. I now have a new one, and can get to work. When I have time…
1 Like
Brian have you or anyone else seen any work done on this integration? I was going to look at working on something myself but it seems the GreenBean interface is not available which makes it just that much more difficult now. [Update I found a link to the product but don’t know if they are actually shipping it.]
I know the GeoSpring line is essentially dead now. I’m in an weird position because my 1st gen Geospring is being replaced under warranty with the latest model they made from last year. While it’s ‘capable’ of being remotely controlled via the control module it sounds like its limited in its ability and wholly reliant upon GE keeping it’s IFTTT channel alive. Since they sold the entire GeoSprings line to Bradford White earlier this year I don’t imagine it’ll stay active must past the end of the year. So there goes any remote ability.
So I’m deciding if it would be better to take a modest credit for the GeoSpring unit and apply it towards a new unit like the A.O. Smith ones which use the Iris EnergySmart unit. That unit while not perfect sounds like it is at least more integrated with ST.
Just so you know, Rheem now has a hybrid heat exchanger one as well now and it can also have WiFi…
I got my mainboard replaced and now use the IFTTT connection with the network connector (cannot remember the name of it, but it’s not the green bean).
Works awesome, please don’t tell me it will die. I bought it from GE, they better keep supporting IFTTT.
I don’t know if it will or not I’m speculating because they sold the whole Geospring line to Bradford White earlier this year. I hope it stays open too because I just ordered my ConnectPlus today 
I’m hoping that because this adapter works in other things like washers and such that they’ll just keep supporting it. To hedge my worries though I ordered the Green Bean too. This way I’ll have the Connect Plus as a plug n play unit for as long as it works and I’ll work on the Green Bean getting setup with a RPi3 connection where I can try and set it up to integrate with ST. Even it crudely since I have never used a RPi unit nor do I know how to program in Java. That’s what the internet is for though 
I like the idea of the additional information available via the Green Bean route such as real time tank temps, being able to energy usage and ultimately setting up demand schedules based on occupancy.
I would hope there must be some way to communicate directly to the Connect Plus somehow though. That’ll be another pet project to tinker with.
Well my hopes to go the easy route and order a Green Bean maker module from FirstBuild has not panned out. It was on their site available for sale and I ordered one but after a week they emailed me to say we be out of stock, forever. So cancelled my order and I was on a hunt across the web today looking for any signs of one.
If anyone reading in has and extra one or one they are no longer using please shoot me a message I’ll be more than willing to pay for it. Or trade if that’s your thing.
I’m in a similar position, with a GeoSpring water heater and nothing to control it. I’d like to tie it into the local utility which has a program where residents can reduce power consumption when demand is high in exchange for small rebates (and the knowledge that heavily-polluting peaker-plants aren’t having to come online).
I’ve had no luck finding either a GreenBean or a ConnectPlus. I’m not sure if the ConnectPlus cloud service even still exists and if so for how long.
I’d imagine the pin-outs from the water heater could be hooked up to something that could translate the signals, but I recall a warning in the manual not to hook it directly into a serial port, so I’m not sure what generic hardware could interface with it.
Does anyone have suggestions for how to get a GeoSpring connected these days? Thanks in advance.
I spent weeks pounding the pavement trying to find a GreenBean module and finally did followed by a week of trying to get it to work since there is basically no documentation available. At the end of the day I was able to get some basic functionality building off the backs of others work but never really used it since it would require tinkering with settings on my 1250 water heater. I ended up buying the Connectplus unit and used that and it’s still working OK through today. I got mine from ABT but they seem to be out of stock currently but searches on the part number PBX10W00Y0 turned up some results that may be in stock.
Regarding the pinouts from the water heater I would not recommend connecting anything to that except one of those 2 modules. I remember reading somewhere that someone tried hooking up a laptop and caused damage to one or the other items since the pinouts were not traditional.
How good are you at programming and working with Raspberry Pi’s? I can hobble through some projects but this proved quite a bit beyond my capability. I’d still love to see this go somewhere. I’ve got 2 GreenBean modules and always held the 2nd one as a backup in case I fried the first one doing something stupid. I’ve always intended on picking this project back up someday when my other 471 projects finish.
1 Like
Thanks for the reply. Since the PBX10W00Y0 is still working for you, I’ll see if I can track one down. I wonder if the set up app still works and is downloadable…
I’m ok at programming (mainly Ruby, Python, but can muddle through others), but like you have enough other projects and time commitments that I’d like to hack together something initially before I set aside time to do something more involved.
I may try to record the communication between the Connectplus and GE (assuming it’s not encrypted) to see what the protocol is, since I assume if the service is discontinued I’ll be back in dumb-water heater land. If it’s a simple protocol, it might be straight forward to imitate the service in that event.
Let me know if you make any progress on this, it may be enough to have me move this back up the priority list of projects 
Anyone still working on their GE HPWH? I have a gen 1 GE, and it’s still running just fine.
Does anyone have a green bean that they are not using? I read that the gen 1 is not supported? But might be fun to try, it would be great if the data logging status message would work.
I have the water heater able to use waste heat from a gas furnace, and from the electric clothes dryer. I have added some simple control:
I have installed a conventional mechanical mercury thermostat near it, put an extra resistor in series with the tank temperature sensor, and the thermostat shorts the extra resistance when it ‘calls for heat’. ie, low temperature the thermostat closes and makes the temperature sensor work like normal, high temperature, the thermostat contacts open and the water heater sensor reads the extra resistance (a 1k 10turn pot). The gen 1 version has the nice feature of the control panel able to show some component status data on the screen, for example the temperature sensor readings and resistance. That let me figure out the calibration for the tank temperature sensor: about 9dF per 1kOhm.
When the room air temperature is above a setpoint level, say 65 dF, when the furnace or the dryer comes on, it makes the water heater think the water temp is 5 or 10 deg colder depending on the pot, so it turns on the water heater. I was trying to use a humidity sensor relay board to do the same, but that didn’t work well for a couple reasons.
Thanks, Dale
Nice electrical hacking, Daklein. In reply to LCSteve, I wound up buying a PBX10W00Y0 and it’s been working well with the GE app and IFTTT (I raise and lower the target temperature depending on the time-of-day electric rates).
I recently received an email that many of the GE apps are being deprecated in favor of a SmartHQ app, which revived my concerns that GE may eventually decide to drop support for this water heater. This was the push to get off my duff and finally try to dissect the communication between the device and GE’s servers.
Unfortunately (for me), they’ve properly secured the communication channel using SSL with an internal GE certificate authority that the PBX10W00Y0 actually validates. The device communicates with “secure.brillion.geappliances.com” and “xmpp14.wca.geappliances.com”, but I wasn’t able to intercept the traffic and read out the contents to find out what the protocol is or inject my own commands.
Unless the GE certificate gets leaked, or there some way to boot the PBX10W00Y0 into a less-secure test mode, I may have to fall back to hardware hacking as Daklein has successfully done.
Like you I got that email as well and was disappointed when I read it. It sounds like you made some progress at least with the communication (knowing it’s secure and where it’s communicating is a good start). How are your Linux / Raspberry Pi skills? I may or may not have one extra Greenbean unit I’d be willing to part with in exchange for what ever you might learn in development.
It’s interesting timing you sent this post as I’ve been thinking about dusting off the ol Greenbean and trying my hand at it again. My first leap into it years ago I was able to get a Pi 3b to communicate with my water heater and do basic things but my skills while not steller now are better than they were back then.
I also considered when the GE service goes dead I’d try cracking the wifi module open and see what makes it tick. I wondered if there would be anything useful in it.
Steve
I’m pretty comfortable with Linux and have a RPi running some home automation (HomeAssistant is great if you’re into that sort of thing). I’d love to play around with a Greenbean, but given my current workload and family obligations (thanks, covid-19) I doubt I can devote any significant time to tinkering for the rest of the year. Of course if the GE service keels over, coming up with replacement automation would become a higher priority. 
It would be interesting to see if the PBX10W00Y0 has JTAG pins and if the firmware could be read out. If so it would probably be possible (though non-trivial) to see what api calls are being made and disable SSL verification so that the device would talk to a non-GE server. I haven’t done much hardware hacking myself but it would be interesting to try, provided that bricking the PBX10W00Y0 wasn’t a concern.