Maybe you’re a busy professional. Maybe you are building an HA server for your parents. Maybe your wife doesn’t share your interest in HA …yet!
There are a number of reasons why integration with a Instant Pot cooker could benefit the community. Instant Pots are not necessarily “set it an forget it” because they don’t always “come to pressure” and begin cooking at a consistent duration. So, even if you set a timer to initiate the cooking process at a specific time, and then leave the house, you might not arrive at home with your food ready as you had intended. What if there is a malfunction and your food is burning? It has happened to people I know. A notification would be nice.
I don’t know whether Instant Pot uses an API that would allow for an integration but I do know that the products with wifi capability do work with an iOS/Android app. I’ve only used non-wifi versions so I don’t know exactly what features the wifi version would allow for. But if HA were to have an integration, or if someone would make one for HACS, I’d get the wifi version.
Does anyone have a wifi Instant Pot? If so, maybe chime in and tell me if I’m onto something here.
I just got one and excitedly checking the forums but seems no support for this. Unclear if they expose public APIs and how easy it would be to reverse engineer, etc.
Speaking as someone who owns an Instantpot Pro Plus (wifi-enabled) an integration would be helpful in more ways than one. Firstly, the company nearly declared bankruptcy filing, so there’s a case to be made for concerns about losing access to the cnnnected capability should the server go down. Second, anyone who’s a VoiceOver user is now no longer able to use the app, because they just broke screen reader accessibility, and regaining it is a matter of every impacted user having to email them and hope that it raises enough of a ruckus for them to actually take notice and make it a high-priority item.
The big issue with the Instantpot is that it’s not p2p. The app’s commands get sent to their server which then sends packets to the Instantpot itself. So the HomeAssistant device may need to have a separate server application (dockerized, maybe?) that mimics the functionality of the Instantpot server if we can intercept any of the (likely encoded json) packets being sent to the Instantpot via a Wireshark. It’s at that point that app functionality can begin to be built. BEcause the server is hardcoded into the device, a user would have to configure dns spoofing at the router level in order to convince the pot that it’s still talking to the InstantBrands connect server.
Damn that sounds complicated. I am in the same boat (just got the WiFi one). I was hoping I could get it to work at least cloud base via their Google Home integration but that seems to no longer work.
Funnel enough I have a similar issue with an expensive IQAir smart air purifier. They have zero plans for add support for HA or even Google Home so I’m thinking I should try snooping on my local network to see if I can reverse engineer what’s going on. I’ve never done anything like that but you are giving me really solid ideas. Can I DM you in here about that?