AC Units with Local Support as of February 2024

Hardware
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Hi. I am about to buy an AC solution for our home, and I am doing research on what’s available. I want to go only with options with local control, and here is my current understanding and compilation. I am putting them into my wrong, messy, incomplete sheet here (I will accept suggestions/comments), based on merging various github Readme notes etc.

A concise summary:

  1. Conditioners from Midea group can be controlled either via
    a) midea_ac_lan. You need an app to add it to your network.
    b) using a dongle with ESPHome flashed on it. You can buy it prebuilt on a few places, costs like 15$. Then you don’t need an app. This thread tries to compile a list of supported units.
  2. Conditioners from Gree group can be controlled locally via this integration. You might not even need the app to add the device to your network via this command.
  3. Panasonic, needs custom dongle that seems to be hard to get assembled now and require quite some technical skills.
  4. Samsung, via:
    a) this
    b) ESPHome thing for about $15. Seems that a lot of devices are supported, specifically those with NASA protocol. This one seems to support the most of the things, including setting everything, reading temperature, power, … on both individual as well as the outdoor units. From what I’ve seen, this one seems to be so far the best option for local control (it supports most of the Samsung units, supports most of the functions, and isn’t that complicated).

I can’t find many other brands that would have reasonable local support, but please, help me out!

3 Likes
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I confirm that probably all modern Samsung ACs (as of June 2024) can be nicely and cheaply and locally (no cloud needed) integrated with HA. [NASA] F1/F2 users · lanwin/esphome_samsung_ac · Discussion #82 · GitHub

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[EUROPE] Best A/C for HA Integration
What companies makes AC with local integration with HA in 2022?
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Did you find something that works through Zigbee / Matter / Z-Wave ?

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Absolutely not (at least on February 2024, but I wasn’t searching for Matter/Zigbee directly). You would need to DIY some adapter based on wifi/wire.

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Some more to the list

Mitsubishi Electric (CN105 port)
Daikin (CN_WIR or S21 port)

If you have any ac model from above from 10-15 years you’re good to go

I wouldn’t recommend Mitsubishi Heavy Industries because it requires 5 port CNS port (mine is 6 port)

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Seems like the newer panasonic model does include matter

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The only products I know about which don’t use wifi are the Airzone units.

I don’t own any myself, and only learnt about them because their Mitsubishi model is supported in Z2MQTT.

From the looks of things, they make dedicated controllers using various protocols (zigbee, zwave, wifi & KNX), however they’re not cheap. Expect to pay around €200 per unit.

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Cool to see that Panasonic is at least trying to come with Matter, that’s good news.

That Airzone/Mitsubishi things seem to me to be basically “bridges”, if I understand it correctly.

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They seem to work exactly like the ESP solutions mentioned above. Only difference is the size & the lack of usb

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Yeah, but with zigbee, right?

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Yes but only in India I think

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Interesting, i thought they’d roll it out internationally by now

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@kotrfa Which one did you go with finally?

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Samsung Windfree, using GitHub - omerfaruk-aran/esphome_samsung_hvac_bus: ESPHome Samsung HVAC Integration is an ESPHome component that connects and controls Samsung HVAC units (air conditioners and heat pumps) via a hardware bus (F1/F2 lines). It supports both NASA and NonNASA protocols, enabling multisplit control, temperature monitoring, energy tracking, and real-time notifications, enhancing your smart home setup. · GitHub . Report here: [NASA] F1/F2 users · omerfaruk-aran/esphome_samsung_hvac_bus · Discussion #82 · GitHub . very happy.

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Thanks @kotrfa and can you control everything? I mean wind direction, fan speed, dry, heater or cool, etc?

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Almost. The only thing that I cannot control that I use is turning on “beep feedback sound” (beep when you e.g. turn it on/off). I have to do that one via the remote controller once every hard AC restart (so e.g. when my fuses go off, happens very rarely). And even with that I can live…

All the other things like horizontal/vertical direction, fan speed, mode (heat, fan, dry, cool…) can all be controlled as expected, and the data are synced back correctly to HA when overriden by remote as well.

1 Like
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Thanks for the feedback dude! I have to buy 5 units and this info is very helpfull

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Happy to help. I have 5 units connected to two outdoor units with this setup.

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I’ll buy 5 1:1 units.

Are you happy with Samsung units? No problems at all?

Do you use it for Cooling or heating?

Thanks

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I am happy with them, no problems, low maintenance. I use a lot of cooling and occassionally heating. I am shocked how effective they are, I still can’t believe it (like, it’s so cheap to cool for the night). They are quiet (just the wind white noise inside, outdoor units cannot be heard from behind a corner and even when you are next to it it’s barely noticeable). We might die from AI soon but, as a humanity, we will die with dignity as we got the AC right.

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