I’m looking into replacing my 26 year old window shaker with a GE smart wifi model. I’ve read that these used to work with homekit but info is light with the newer ones. It looks like it needs to be setup with the ge app and connected to the cloud now? I was hoping to avoid that.
Anybody’s experience would be appreciated.
Would be interested in any other brands if they can integrate into HA. It needs to be large though to cool the room it is going in with two southwest facing walls of mostly windows and no insulation Currently have a 13500btu unit that has struggled the past couple years on the hottest days.
I recently got one of these - (GE AEC08LY) and I’m finding the homekit integration pretty disappointing. The only options that appear to be exposed via homekit are COOL, POWER OFF, and temperature setting. It does report the value of its temperature sensor, and the current setting. There is no way to control fan speed or eco mode.
GE’s Google Home integration appears to be even worse, believe it or not. The only option I find there is power on/off. The official GE “SmartHQ” app is the only way to control fan speed and eco mode, and that app is terrible.
I would not recommend buying a GE smart air conditioner. Hopefully you have better luck with it.
Same result here. Disappointed that it doesn’t report more in the homekit controller integration. But normally I just leave the fan on auto. And yea the ge home app is garbage. Very slow, and they advertise shit at every turn. I also experienced a few times where it seemed like it disconnected from homekit and needed to be reawaken by the ge app.
I’m in a similar situation, I’m trying to use a BroadLink RM4 Mini to send the IR codes to the “smart” GE air conditioner.
So far got the BroadLink connected to a Raspberry Pi 4 via wireless AP and was added to Home Assistant via BroadLink integration. Can see the additional temp/humidity sensor (connected via a USB cable to RM4) data in the HA overview page, so it seems to be working.
Now need to figure out how to learn the GE remote codes and send them to the air conditioner via a timer function.
The idea is to simulate the function of the Delay button present in other models and without the need for Internet access (Cloud). This is during the night when the router/modem is off.
I need the air conditioner to turn off automatically after one hour, but not before shutting off the compressor, or next time the unit is turned on both compressor and fan turn on at the same time.
This can be done manually by setting the desired room temp higher than current room temp (meaning, holding remote’s Temp button), then pressing the remote’s Power button.