Hi All,
I’ve been working on a new Home Assistant APP for ActronAir QUE systems called Actron QUE Local.
The aim is pretty simple: control the QUE system directly over the local network, without relying on the ActronAir cloud service.
It communicates directly with the QUE wall controller using its native WallLink TCP protocol, with Home Assistant control exposed through MQTT Discovery.
I managed to reverse engineer the firmware and create an app/addon that impersonates a wall controller. I also managed to circumvent the secondary controller limit of 1 so you can have a secondary controller and a tertiary virtual controller that home assistant can use.
Features
Current functionality includes:
- Fully local HVAC control – no Actron cloud required
- Main climate control with Heat, Cool, Auto and Fan modes
- Fan-speed control
- Individual zone climate entities
- Per-zone heating and cooling setpoints
- Zone enable/disable
- Away Mode
- Control All Zones
- Constant Fan
- Quiet Mode
- Indoor and outdoor temperature
- Humidity
- Compressor mode, capacity and power
- Coil inlet temperature
- Fan PWM/RPM
- Filter diagnostics
- Wireless zone-sensor battery and RSSI where available
- Automatic reconnect
- MQTT Discovery
The add-on also deliberately uses the same Home Assistant entity naming convention as the cloud based add-on that I had forked from (MikeJMcGuire (Mike J McGuire) · GitHub) older hass-actronque cloud add-on. This means that, in most cases, existing dashboards, scripts and automations can continue using their existing entity IDs when migrating if you were using my cloud fork.
For example:
climate.actronque_
climate.actronque__zone_4_bedroom
How the local connection works
The add-on connects directly to the QUE master wall controller and presents itself to the system as an additional wall controller.
There is a guided one-time secondary-controller setup built into the add-on. It supports both:
- systems with only a master controller; and
- systems that already have a physical secondary wall controller.
Once this initial setup is complete, the pairing information is retained and normal restarts don’t require the process to be repeated.
There is also a setup-status entity and Redo Secondary Controller Setup button in Home Assistant if it ever needs to be run again.
Why?
The existing Home Assistant ActronAir solutions work well, but the current integrations are cloud dependent. The latest outage put me over the edge to wanting a local alternative that does not rely on Actron maintaining cloud access.
I wanted the air conditioner to remain controllable from Home Assistant if the internet or Actron cloud is unavailable, and to remove the unnecessary round trip through the internet for something sitting on the same LAN.
So this project talks directly to the QUE hardware instead.
Installation / GitHub
The add-on is available in my Home Assistant add-on repository:
Direct link to Actron QUE Local:
Add the repository to the Home Assistant App Store, then install Actron QUE Local.
MQTT is required, and the Home Assistant host needs network access to the QUE master controller. I recommend giving the QUE master a DHCP reservation so its IP address remains stable.
Testing / feedback
This is still relatively new, so I’d be particularly interested in hearing from people with different QUE installations and controller configurations.
If you have an ActronAir QUE system and are willing to test it, please give it a try and report any issues or unusual configurations on GitHub.
Hopefully this is useful to some other QUE owners who would prefer to keep their air-conditioning control completely local.
P.S. When I get some time I’ll have a play with the Neo controller as we have those at work now.