Hi, live in an apartment/condo with a 1004F Rionai gas furnace – only has a panel thermostat, no wires or remote according to manufacturer, so this is setup on a smart outlet for me to program it in HASS.
For air conditioning, there is no central air, so it’s Window A/C. I am planning on getting a window A/C with a Wi-Fi controller and integrating it with HASS. I have tried the Flair Puck, and it’s a joke of a cheap piece of plastic (even creaks when you push it), and I don’t like the idea of an IR remote, when a Wi-Fi controller can be onboard or connected.
At this point, I should have control of heating and cooling in HASS to program things. Now what I want is a wall climate remote or “thermostat dashboard” so that I have a display and physical switch where this all converge. I want it to be only for climate, and with a purpose-driven physical design, so stock HADashboard it out of the equation – Ideally, I want something inspired by the classic round thermostat design
I couldn’t find anything that could fit my needs, so I have 3 approaches in mind:
- Hacking a Nest thermostat so that it connects to HASS instead of wires, basically translating network to thermostat wire protocol, so that it thinks it’s controlling a HVAC unit when it’s in fact controlling HASS.
- Pros: can work with any thermostats out there, some with great industrial design.
- Cons: it’s a weird setup, might require thin plate behind + constant power.
- Developing, or repurposing from a general purpose controller. This would basically be setting up a Arduino/RPi with Display, physical controller etc.
- Pros: ultimate flexibility:
- Cons: lots of work, potentially lots of moving parts to maintain to keep it relevant over time
- Integrating a climate specific remote with HASS – only thing I found that could be that is the Rumy
- Pros: least amount of work
- Cons: there is barely any such device I could find, as far as I could find, all general purpose thermostats require control wires
Would appreciate any input on my ideas, especially if there are some products or solutions out there that I missed!