Greetings,
i’m posed with a issue on automating my Mitsubishi roof panel of the series “PLFY-P20VFM-E1R1.TH”
As of right now the control is done thru a remote in each office - would it be possible to somehow transfer this control to our phones & thru Home Assistant.
This would be very useful as i’d like to regulate radiator heating with AC - if there’s a lot of solar energy it would be mostly AC rather than radiator heating and so on.
Is IR or RF
Just an IR remote - one of these remotes
Your PLFY-P20VFM-E1R1.TH has a CN105 IT connector.
It is possible to connect a 3rd party wifi controller to it so you can control your AC over MQTT/HTTP-REST in Home Assistant.
I noticed a few builds sorrounding ESP control - but since it’s an office building with 14~ offices/rooms and over 20+ casette’s what would be the most viable solution for each room control?
I looked at Sensibo and others but Costs would be around 2,000EUR~ for that kind of setup if i’m not wrong.
THIS is worth checking. If it works material cost would be minimal comparing any official solutions. And it works perfectly for over a year now on my 5 climates (way better than official wifi-over-cloud solution).
If you are “a soldering guy” make one and try…worse it can happen is you loose a couple of euros for material and a few hours hours of work (but then again if it fails you can use esp-01 for any other project).
These units have been installed in office buildings and hotels already, perhaps it’s an option for you too:
No tinkering, just works out of the box.
This seems like a fairly cheap plug & play option - since the casettes are in the roof panels is the installation of these fairly simple - few screws on the casette to open the case & plug the module into the CN105 port or is it bit more complicated. I’ve never worked with these units so not sure how they’re built.
Agreed, no tinkering, but of course you pay for it… the price of this module is close to official mitsubishi wifi module, unless perhaps it works better than official one…? (i’ve had problems with official wifi - Mitsubishi’s server was often not accessible for HA).
While making it with esp-01 by yourself you get 1/10th of that price. Of course, (again) if you are in the self-making, soldering and programming.
I have no issues with self tinkering haha - but since there are 2+ AC units per office room would there be any interference.
I just pulled the accurate amount of AC’s for the building:
PLFY = 18 Units
Maybe tinkering 18 of ESP’s might be too time consuming, although it’s a fun challenge but is it one that’s pretty long term
Yes, you can see the position of the CN105 in the service manual, it’s not too complicated.
That’s true. These things don’t use cloud connections, so everything is local.
And besides, if you are doing this for 20+ cassette units, I don’t think this is a residential application and therefore I would personally not want to DIY a solution with all the risks involved(insurance, safety). Then it’s a relative small price, especially for a company. But that up to OP to figure out.
Thank you both for the quick and helpful comments much appriceated!
If the installation is fairly easy i think i’d rather go for the ClimateControl way since it’s also only 55EUR right now on sale it seems. Would need 18 of these.
They connect over Wi-Fi directly to HA & can be grouped together right?
Since i’m planning to adjust the usage of the AC depending on the total Solar production & radiator usage compared to the outside temperature for the most savings
Well, i’m looking to things from individual/hobby view, while OP is looking from company’s view, that’s for sure. Although 18 units isn’t small, it could be done, after all modules are all same (except IP and name) - you draw pcb, send it to china to make them, solder, program, done…
I agree, 1000€ for 18 units isn’t much for a company, since you must take into account all the work if doing by yourself. It is a lot for hobby use, though, where all could be done for around 100€, i’d say… (but, then again, i don’t know any hobbyist with 18 climates 
)
Regarding interference: doesn’t matter if you buy modules or make them by yourself, in any way they will connect to wifi. If your router is not “el-cheapo” one (20-50€ model) it will cope fine.I have close to 100 wifi devices in my home… If you have more complex wifi in your company you can make a VLAN just for these models.
if i’m right they connect to wifi and communicate with HA via MQTT, so i guess you’ll need to set up a mqtt server (you can do that on HA). And, sure, they can be grouped.
That’s a interesting take with the sending to China hahah, but it’s a fair way of doing it. I think overall the simplicity might make the premade module way much better option for the company as u mentioned.
I see, we have a server room setup & might just need a beefy PC setup for HA but since it’s a large scale HA system i’m just preplanning stuff.
I see, i have not touched HA yet so not sure how simple the MQTT part is 
But i think there’s enough tutorials, integrations online etc. for it to be a simple operation compared to KNX programming i did.
With this module you think that it would be possible to also control the AC’s via the “MelCloud” official Mitsubishi app?
Actually, it’s hugely cheap. You draw a Pcb, export gerbers and send them. They will make pcb’s dirt cheap, actually many timespostage is more expensive than pcb, especially so small one like for this purpose.
Hm…perhaps… BUT (of course there’s “but”) only if you additionally buy mitsubishi wifi unit and connect it to this module. I know that there are moduls which also allow connection of original wifi, but can’t say if this is the one.
But only with the pre-made module above (or esp): nope. Me…i can’t see any reason why… since dropping original wifi modules and installed esp’s i didn’t look back. I didn’t see the need for original app once after that.
Not really, all you need is wemos d1 mini and the cables for it. Took me less than 10 minutes to setup each one and soldering the cable adapter.
If you’re gonna have to open each ac to access the pcb for cn105 you might as well try it out
Since i’m only interning in the company for month and 2 weeks more - i am definetly gonna pose this as an solution and for myself personally i wouldn’t mind it.
Would save about 900EUR~ or so with this method. Only thing i noticed is the module from Mitsubishi is a 12.7V input from the AC itself - would i need an adjustment to the D1 like a regulator or resistors…
I see thank you very much - i thought the pin output on CN105 was 12V so there’d be risk to fry the D1 Mini.
So technically this method is just copy paste of code / setup with an integration and the only part that needs lots of work is the wiring part / DIY part of soldering which isn’t an issue.
It’s worth checking with a multimeter, though. One of my 5 climates had only 12V available (others had 5V, as described). It was pure luck that i noticed that when - after successful installation and tryout - i was trying to put my module inside and close my unit. When i touched my circuit, it was darn hot (because LM was struggling). I then changed that LM with switch-mode option on that one.
