Thought I would see what suggestions folks may have in regards to upgrading the air purifier I have to one that is able to work locally with home assistant either through wifi, zigbee or bluetooth connection.
I currently have this model that I have tried to use the capacitive touch mod with a switchbot to try have the ability to turn it on and off without success as it does not register the bot pressing its power with that trick even:
The other downside of this model that I have that I bought long before I started getting into home assistant for my needs is that it does not turn on when power is restored like with my dehumidifier so I can’t just use one of the spare smart plugs I have to use it this way.
I assume this is the one that you are referring to that you have, I will have to look into it. The price on that page is not too bad.
edit: other than needing a cloud based connection this one fits my needs with the integration that its tracking the filter replacement time and status. Will grab it next I am paid and hand off my current one to my parents or neighbor to use.
I have the round one from Ikea. It works well as a zigbee device.
A word of caution on “small” air purifiers. Even medium to large size units don’t really do all that much for cleaning your air. Consider how they work. If they are small they will have a small fan, so they’re only moving a small amount of air. The air they move is replaced by “new” air that gets sucked into the filter. This becomes your filtered air.
But if the fan isn’t moving the air all that much, or disturbing the air in the room enough in general, you’re going to end up with a localized effect where just the surrounding area near the purifier is cleaned. I think many people underestimate the size of unit they truly require to make a meaningful difference in their living space.
The Ikea unit is probably larger than what you wanted, but it may be a lot more effective. There are some youtube videos that study the relationship between size and area cleaned.
My place is not that large, just a small FACS housing unit with a kitchen, small loungeroom and bedroom with just a door frame linking each main room. The current one I have that I linked earlier does move the air even being in the corner of the lounge room for its size; just need to replace it with a smart version so I can better track the filter state and automate it based on detected air quality in my home.
I did sign up to the app and have the integration ready to go but I have yet to order the one suggested first, I can’t really spend upwards of aud$400-500 in one allotment for the larger models and I need to account for any shipping costs to me here in Sydney from wherever they will be shipped from.
The Levoit300s uses an ESP32 wifi module that can be re-flashed with ESPhome to eliminate the cloud and vesync app. The 400s model is pretty similar but a real pain to take apart.
Tried to order the 200 via the mainsite and they don’t ship to australia… the cheapest one on amazon is $300 so it will have to wait a bit for me to order it in, will see what prices that 300 are when its time.
Went ahead and ordered that core 200S for my needs for an upgrade.
update: got delivery of the unit and I am pleased with it so far, its more powerful compared to the non smart version I was using which I gave to my neighbor for them to use so, was easy to setup once it was connected to the 2.4ghz wifi network and it showed up in the integration without issue once I rebooted my HA instance.