Midea branded AC’s with ESPhome (no cloud)

You can see in the image posted by another user here that the ‘usb’ port has notches. The slwf-01pro does not have those notches.

Edit: I figured it out! I soldered a bare wire usb port to the solder points on the subassembly board. I shall do a full write up in the morning. I’ve been up trying to get this to work!

If your Midea offbrand AC (mine being EcoAir) Doesn’t have a WIFI port but has a CN3 port on it this is the tutorial for you.


Things you need:

  1. Basic Soldering Skills: This is much easier if you have an soldering iron as well as a hot air station.
  2. SLWF-01pro: I got mine on AliExpress since that was the best option for me.
  3. Midea Wifi Subassembly: They told me there was a 3 month backorder of this item but I ordered 4 of them anyway. Some how the items arrived just yesterday after only 2 weeks.
  4. Right angle 5 pin JST male? female? connector. I got mine on Amazon
  5. Bare wire female USB connector. Also from Amazon. You need this because the “USB” port on the WIFI subassembly is NOT a real USB port. It looks like one but its not. You need one with 4 wires!

Steps summary: You need to solder the right angle 5 pin JST connector to CN3. If you have a 0 ohm resister at J3 desolder that resistor and move it to J9. The resistor at J9 will connect 5V to the 5V pin of CN3, without a 0 ohm resistor there, your WIFI module will not get power. Next you need to solder the bare wire USB port to the back of the WIFI module PCB (Power to 5V, Data- to TXD, Data+ to RXD, and Ground to GND). Connect the SLWF-01pro to the your new USB port and your good to go.

Full Steps:

  1. Use your soldering iron to punch holes in the pin holes for the JST connector.



    Next Solder the JST connector to CN3

  2. Check the back of your PCB and locate J3 and J9. There is a 0 ohm resistor at J3 for me and none at J9. You will need to desolder the resistor at J3 and resolder it to J9 (this will be difficult without a hot air station in my opinion). I’ve read that since this is a 0 ohm resistor, you actually dont need the resistor as long as you can bridge the pads at J9 together with a solder blob or a wire. Either way, you need to remove J3 for sure.


    Location of J3 and J9

    I made a mess since I’m shitty at soldering.

  3. Solder the bare wire usb port to the back of the wifi subassembly PCB. You can see that there are pins for 5V, TXD, RXD and GND on the PCB. My usb port wires are: Red is Power, White is Data -, Green is Data +, and Black is Ground. So I will connect the Red wire to 5V, White to TXD, Green to RXD, and Black to GND.



    Once again a mess =(. I would highly suggest using some kind of mask to prevent the wires from shorting each other, but I don’t have such a thing and just left it be.

  4. Hook things back up to your AC unit and connect the slwf-01pro to the usb port. Follow instructions to setup SLWF-01Pro and go to home assistant to add it to your ESPhome.

Thats all!

Epikarus, what is for step #3? Why that board is needed? Can you please show both sides of it?

@Ursa This board is from the Midea Display Box Subassembly found here. The board is called CE-26GY-2.4G(WIFI).JD.TY.ZJH.ZJP1 or by part number 17122000046741. You can buy the board separately on AliExpress but its much more expensive here than on the Midea website. You can see more photos of the item on the AliExpress link.

Sorry, I didn’t answer one of your questions in my post above. I don’t know why the board is needed, but it is needed. Although I haven’t personally attached a usb port directly to the display PCB so cant say for sure if it will work or not. The CN3 slot on the display PCB has 5 pins while USB port is only 4 pins so there must be something that the small board does. I’m no expert though.

Hi @psychedelicu !

I have the same issue a lot of months ago …
Did you find any solution maybe?

Many thanks!

Hi from Canada! We got here Direct Air AC/HeatPump (DIR-12HP17-DKI). Quick search tells that these devices are part of Midea production.

Circuit diagram mentions optional WiFi. Main board does not have any visible cues where WiFi module can be connected. But there is a 4 pin connector near electrical wires and some sort of blank space that might be used for placing WiFi module.

I searched DirectAir brochures and documentation for optional WiFi - no success. I’ve got SLWF-01pro on hands, but I’m not even sure where to start.

More photos: https://imgur.com/a/IP9yXRp

Connector (zoom): https://i.imgur.com/IIwiBFw.jpeg

Hey all,

Has anyone been successful with using midea_ac.follow_me with or without an IR transmitter with a wf-60a1 module?

I am using a wf-60a1 with my ducted air handler (bryant/midea) and wired controller (using the CN40 port). I plugged a SLWF-01pro into it and it is working well (see photo below).

The last thing that I am trying to do now is to send the temperature from my aqara sensor with the follow me function. Is there a way to make it work over UART since my wired controller is wired into the wf-60a1? if not, does anyone know if the wf-60a1 has an IR receiver that I can leverage? I can’t find any information online.

This is what I would like to do but no luck:

    name: Living Room Temperature Sensor
    entity_id: sensor.living_room_sensor_temperature 
    internal: true
    on_value:
      midea_ac.follow_me:
        temperature: !lambda "return x;"

Thank you for your help!

1 Like

You want to be looking as the display board. For me its mounted to the front cover.
Post a picture of your display board. If you look a couple posts up to a guide I posted you can see what it looks like.

The 60A1 has one, would that not work? Looks similar to this one: tssp77p38.pdf

Imgur

Created a guide for the Midea Follow me (midea.follow_me) feature for my unit: andy2002a/MideaESPHome_Follow_Me

I’m using the WF-60A1, but it should work on all other units too.

Thank you! I will give it a shot. What I have done for my 4 other minisplits (which don’t require the wf60a1) is that I soldered a IR transmitter to the dongle, I don’t want to mess up with the main board since it is a brand new system still under warranty. So I will try to do the same thing for the ducted unit that requires the wf60a1 and will report back on how it goes! thanks again for taking the time to put the detailed readme together!

Anyone knows if can I use CN3 connector to plug the ESP in the board of the wire controller?

This is CN3 pins inside wire controller

Judging by the diagram, you need a W950 connector. Look for him.

Did you try connecting the 485 adapter directly to the XYE screw terminals (CN9) on the board instead of the CN40? I have mine connected directly to the screws, and it works great.

It’s never been clear to me if the 4-wire (CN40) used by better thermo models is the same protocol as the ‘CCM’ bus (XYE). I always assumed CN40/4-wire was modbus, and the XYE is that Midea-specific protocol with multiple datapoints returned in a larger message packet. The fact that your thermostat came with a XYE adapter implies that it can talk both protocols, and I assume there’s lots of overlap.

I’ve been too cheap to buy one of the nicer 4-wire thermos, and my Pioneer unit (ducted) only came with the old/crappy 5-wire thermo, which only supports one-way communication thermostat → unit using the IR protocol. Technically, there’s one wire used by the unit to send its on/off status to the thermostat, which the thermo displays with a red led.

It would be cool if you could sniff the 4-wire thermo communication to see what those look like. I’m curious if there are more values that can be ‘queried’ or set over the XYE link. Maybe not, because the unit Midea sells to manually control these units with a standard thermostat taps into the actual control line that connects to the outdoor unit. I think the indoor unit is fairly ‘dumb’, and most of the interesting logic/controls are done by the outdoor side.

Hello,

due to the lack of documentation, i just started a bit for looking after the midea XYE protocol and which solution besides using the “usb” port inside the AC system could work together with a wired wall-mount remote.

I just saw that the wall control systems from bosch, junkers, remko look nearly the same and use nearly identical looking additional control boards.

Is there somewhere a documentation what systems are the same and which boards can be mixed?

They seem all to use XYE-Bus with just sometimes different supply voltage levels (12V/5V) [there is a commercial HVAC to KNX module with variants for Bosch, Midea … and all connect to the same port which in the generic manual of the module is described for rs485-like systems]

The KJR-120X*/TFBG-E looks like a “RC100 AC” or “KSACN0601AAA”

And the control board “MFB-X” like the “MC R”

What i think that my KJR120X1 may be nearly like a KJR-120X2 but is just missing a voltage regulator (for 12V to 5V), there seems to be an option for that on the pcb just bridged by a 0Ohm resistor.

Has anyone an inseide picture of the KJR-120X/TFBG-E? or KJR120G*? The documentation on that remotes is really confusing because in the catalog a different integration board is described as needed .
The catalog states “MFB-X” for KJR120X for my AC but that would convert to XYE.
In the manual of the KJR120X the HAHB Terminals are documented, just the KJR120X1 has a XYE-Cable. → very confusing!

When i am allowed to post pictures here, i could post the pcb of my KJR120X1.

Do you have a picture of the display board of your AC and the frontside of this controller?

Maybe the ACs board matches somehow another type. I currently dig into the topic of which Brands all Brandlabel the Midea ACs so type matching would be interesting.

Do you connect your display via HAHB-Connection?