The AirTouch integrations are local. They connect directly to the AirTouch console installed in your home.
In my experience the AirTouch 5 with ITCs for each zone has been great.
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thanks for that and also is there an aircon brand that works best with it?
They work with a lot of brands these days, the only ones I find a little funny are Mitsubishi electric and Actron.
It will work with them but as those manufacturers donât allow the Airtouch to control them in the same way as other brands do (via wall controller terminals) they have to do it in a different way which is sometimes not ideal with some installations.
Itâs hard to explain, they will work though.
The standard old Daikins, Panasonic, Fujitsu, MHI, Samsung etc are all fine.
I have an Air Touch 5 ducted system and am trying to add it to Home Assist. I am new to Home Assist so donât really know what I am doing!
It asks for the node name or IP address for Air Touch 5 but when I logon to my router, there is no device with a name like Air Touch present. I tried some of the IP addresses without success. The air Touch 5 console says that it is connected to the WiFi and I can use it on my phone.
Note: Home Assist was unable to detect it automatically.
Am I missing something?
Check the IP address on the Airtouch device itself. Itâs just Android, you can find the IP address quite easily. Even googling âhow to find IP address Androidâ will get you there.
Can devices register their name into the DHCP server? Yes. Many do. Does the Airtouch 5 console do that? No, it doesnât.
OK so I deciced to do the process on the Airtouch console, hereâs how to do it.
- Swipe down from the top of the screen so you see the WiFi icon on the top left
- Press and hold the WiFi icon until the screen changes
- When the name of your WiFi network appears, press the gear icon on the right side of the screen
- Scroll down and press on the word âAdvancedâ
- Scroll down to see the IP address
Hopefully the instructions above get you connected. Otherwise, you can also find the IP address in the AirTouch app on your phone by clicking on the cog in the top right and choosing âHelpâ. The IP address on that screen is the one you need to enter into Home Assistant.
The auto discovery feature is only implemented in the custom HACS integration, so if you are using the built-in integration it always needs a manually entered IP address.
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Fabulous, that worked a treat. I was looking in the Air Touch screen to find the IP address, rather than in the Android system. Thankyou
The air Touch5 Integration system is so cool! I have been pouring over graphs and have a much better idea how it works and its short comings. Even implemented a couple of automations!
Of course you always need more, and wondered if there is any way that you can retrieve:
-
% baffle open on each zone
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Fan speed in duct
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Power level of external compressor system
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If in Defrost mode
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Outside temperature
If you use the custom integration, damper open percentage for each zone is available as a sensor. See the README for details.
The defrost status is a very recent feature and not officially part of the API, however I think it would be possible to reverse engineer where the status is published in the interface.
The selected fan speed is available as an attribute on the main AC climate entities, but there is no information for any actual fan speed measurement or per zone information.
Unfortunately the AirTouch doesnât measure or report power consumption (I doubt it is available from the ACs themselves), you will need to add a separate power consumption monitor to get that information.
Similar with the outside temperature.
Thanks for that. I will need time to do it since I am very new to this.
Regarding power consumption and fan speed, I have assumed that the Air Touch control unit decides what level the External unit operates at and what speed the duct fan runs at and sends a signal to the external unit and the fan accordingly. It would be useful if the Air Touch Control displayed these values and made them available to Home Assist.
With the defrost status, I saw it mentioned in the notes for the latest version of the control unit, but canât see it anywhere. Does anyone know where it is visible on the Air Touch control unit, or does it only show up when actually in defrost mode.
The outside temperature is shown on the Air Touch Console on the Main Unit display, so I assume you should be able to be pass it to Home Assist. I presume Air Touch would need to make it available in the API but have not done so yet⌠or I am incorrect in understanding how this all works
My understanding is that the AirTouch doesnât actually set the power level of the AC, it just reports the current temperature and target setpoint. The AC automatically ramps up and down based on the difference between the two.
If you set the fan speed to Auto, then I think that may also not be controlled by the AirTouch. It is the same as setting Auto fan speed on the ACs native controller. There is no information in the API for the currently selected fan speed if you choose Auto. There is an upcoming âIntelligent Autoâ feature where the AirTouch does automatically change the fan speed and that will be possible to show in Home Assistant (although not implemented yet).
As far as I know, the outside temperature is not actually measured it is just the local weather report. It is not included in the API. If you want BOM data in Home Assistant you can use the BOM weather integration.
I would guess that defrost will show up as an icon in the app and on the main display only while it is happening (e.g
similar to the boost or timer icons). However someone reported earlier in this thread that they didnât see anything while their AC was defrosting even after the update. I havenât really looked into the new defrost feature much.
Auto fan is controlled by the ac system and is based on difference between return air temp and setpoint.
Not really recommended with zoned systems because the unit has no idea itâs connected to ducting or zones and this can result in the fan speeding up higher than required.
Power level of the system again is determined by the ac systems own logic using indoor coil temp sensor readings, outdoor temp sensor readings, return air and setpoints and compressor current draw.
Apparently the defrost icon will appear where the bypass and program icons pop up but I would have thought this will only be displayed if the brand of system you have would show it on its own controller normally so it may not support all systems.
Hi All,
long time reader, first time poster.
I have read through everyoneâs posts and has learned a great deal on how airtouch works and various tweaks to make it run better.
I have airtouch 5 installed in my house controlling a daikin ducted air con.
I also have home assistant installed and I am using the custom integration to control airtouch 5 which is working great.
I tend to block all smart devices on my network from internet access unless its absolutely necessary for it to work. With this in mind, I blocked the airtouch 5 device from the internet and noticed after a week the airtouch 5 app closed on itâs own and no longer opens until I allow the internet access.
Why is this the case? why does it need internet access for a device that is local control only? I donât use the online remote access feature for airtouch 5.
what will happen if one day the airtouch servers no longer around will the app be useless and you can no longer control your aircon?
looking at my firewall logs, the device also seems to be constantly calling home which is the url resource.airtouch.com.au, roughly hundreds of times a day. Why is there a need for it to constantly call home? is it sending data back?
The device needs internet access for the app control to work and to provide updates. I know data can be gathered and recorded from Airtouch themselves incase of support issues, they can see graphs and tables etc, no personal information.
In a while, the systems will be able to be controlled via a web based application, like a building management system. I would recommend just leaving it connected and I canât see why someone wouldnât really.
I wouldnât be worried about servers going down, this is done the same way the Airtouch 4 is and that wonât stop being supported for sometime if it ever does.
We can still connected to the old Airtouch 2 & 3âs which are over 10yrs old.
Also https://resource.airtouch.com.au does not have a valid ssl cert. the cert polyaire configured for this service is issued to airtouch.com.au domain not resource.airtouch.com.au.
I presume they have told their app to trust the connection anyway otherwise the app would not be working.
this alone does not give me confidence to allow the app to be always online.
Why would I want to block it from the internet? because i donât trust anyone on my network. It is one of the reasons why home assistant is so popular. It doesnât need a internet connection to work. It is why everyone has made custom integrations to bypass the vendors cloud only solutions which is generally insecure and leave your network exposed.
To me it is pretty important that the system should continue to work even if the company goes bust and they shut down the servers. There is no reason the local functionality should stop if that was the case.
I know it is unlikely that this will happen, but thatâs what they all say, and inevitably it does happen to some companies.
Iâd love to see them commit to changing it so it works without an active internet connection.
the funny thing is it does work for x amount of time without internet and it must have some timeout configured that if it does not check in for x days close the app and not allow it to re-open.
and I am not sure if itâs the recent update changes that has introduced this behavior as I remember when I had it first installed a year ago I didnât have wifi setup as I was doing renovations and it worked for a few weeks without any issues.
or possibly it works if you turn wifi off and if it detects wifi is connected it expects to call home.
i remember the installer telling me the wifi is only needed if you want to use the app to control it.
I need to do more testing.
I think around a year ago in a update they changed something that if someone connected to the Airtouch via wifi in your home, if that person left the home and tried to connected remotely the password would need to be entered again once off. Previously if you connected via wifi in the home it would save the password details automatically.
Pretty sure this was done for security reasons, it may also be possible that after a number of day/time this needs to be entered again.
Installer is correct, wifi is only needed for the app control or to download new updates etc.
Do you mean the app work without an internet connection? The control itself works fine without one.
the app was working without internet for about a week or maybe just less than a week. I noticed it closed on the weekend with a message saying it couldnât connect to some server and there was a retry button. When i pressed it, it didnât do anything until i unblocked the internet access which then the app re-opened and started working.