I don’t have any experience with smart home. It will be my first project. I have IT background (I’m cloud engineer, and employer pays me for Python/Golang code). Because I don’t have relevant experience, I can ask stupid questions, sorry.
We live in a rented apartment, so, we can’t mount air conditioner into a wall. We have a small window (about 54x54cm) and we can put it there. What air conditioner would you suggest to buy in this situation?
If I understand correctly, I need some kind of IR gateway between home assistant which I’m going to install in the docker container in my own server, and this gateway will work with air conditioner, right? I’m not going to connect air conditioner to the home Assistant right now, first of all I want to connect to it smart lamps and webcams, but I want to buy compatibility air conditioner in 1-2 days. Please suggest me one. Also, price is important. I’m in Canada (and we have here US-like power: 110V)
Yes a broadlink mini, as suggested, is perfect, I would add also a smart power socket (there are plenty of models), WiFi (if you don’t plan anything Zigbee) from which you can see power consumption, to be sure A/C is in your desired state (On or Off)
There are also devices like sensibo which are IR/IP/cloud gateways - which means it is a box that blasts IR to the AC, and is controlled by your phone/tablet thru the cloud. HA can control it via a cloud component. Not ideal involving the cloud, but it does work.
Also some mitsubishi models can be controlled directly over serial and therefore with an esp or similar module. No cloud involved - see https://github.com/SwiCago/HeatPump.