I’m struggling to find the optimal configuration for my ducted reverse cycle aircon.
It seems most of Home Assistant’s climate controls are ideal for North American or Europeans where heating and cooling are handled separately, but in Australia it’s more common to have reverse cycle aircon for everything.
I’ve got my Daikin ducted air conditioner integrated nicely already, so Home Assistant has full control over it including binary switches for the 6 ducted zones. I’ve also got zigbee temperature sensors in the rooms.
I’d love to have generic_thermostat entities in each room, attached to that rooms thermometer and controlling the ducted switch. It almost looks completely perfect, except it can only do heating or cooling. It can’t do both.
I did see someone make a modification which could do heating and cooling but only with two binary switches, not one.
Is there something I’ve missed before I try digging in to the code myself? I’m not sure if it can be hacked around with automations or not.
It would be a tiny bit more complicated since it should read the mode of the aircon and change behaviour based on that.
Even better if the aircons set temperature could be the MIN() of all the thermostats when cooling and the MAX() when heating but that’s less needed.
You could convert one switch into two easily enough with a template.
if SW1 on → SW2 off
if SW1 off → SW2 on
This means your system would always be heating or cooling though, never idle. Which would be an issue as it would cause your heat pump to cycle between heating and cooling continuously, and it is not going to like that.
That’s why there are two switches.
SW1 on → heating
SW2 on → cooling
SW1&2 off → idle
SW1&2 on → invalid
BTW, which controller are you using for individual room control?
@NickS I have made some good progress with this if you are interested. Have used a combination of python and Node Red. It’s a bit involved but I’m sure it could be streamlined by someone with more knowledge than myself.
@NickS,
Hi Mate I have a Dakin Ducted and the Myair 3 or 4 control system. How did you do the integration? Or did you use other hardware. My myair controllers are extremely slow to respond, so I am considering going back to a basic controller and using A HA switch to turn on and off the AC but would love to know what you have worked out may give me a new point of view.
@tyoffgridwa I’m using the standard Daikin Airbase wifi controller which has a local API and the out of the box Daikin integration works really well. Daikin AC - Home Assistant
As for a really nice system for managing ducted reverse cycle aircon with per-room control, I don’t yet have a solution but it’s probably time I try revisiting it.
I’ve managed to individually control my zones, but my set up isn’t perfect.
I’ve set up the integration generic_thermostat for each zone and each zone has two generic_thermostats for cooling or heating. I then have automation to disable the cooling generic_thermostat when it is cold and vice versa when its hot.
The issue I have found is if you don’t disable a thermostat, it will automatically turn a zone switch off when the thermostat is turned off.
I’ve tried other methods through node red but found it to be buggy.