Any information on if the TP- Link KS240 is supported well?
It’s listed as supported on the TP-Link page, but requiring authentication. Wanted to see folks’ experiences with it, but searching here doesn’t seem to turn much up, and similar googling for it and HA.
Appreciate any feedbck. Thanks.
Did you find this already? TP-Link Smart Home - Home Assistant
Yeah, that’s what I meant by “It’s listed as supported on the TP-Link page” but that may not have been clear in my post… that’s where the footnote on requiring authentication is.
On edit: this github thread indicates that as of a few months ago, there were issues authenticating in HA… so I’m trying to see if this has been remedied.
Thanks for chiming in…
As a follow-up for others who may be interested, got this and installed it yesterday. Once registered in the phone app HA detected it via the TP-Link integration and authenticated no problem. Works great.
It also was detected as Matter and Homelink devices, but I just ignored those.
A few things I’ve only found setting for in the app, like LED indicator brightness settings and scheduling, but not a biggie, as they are set-it and forget-it.
One thing I learned about HA is that, although these are presented in the UI as On/Off switches, clicking on the device icon opens a control where you can set the dimmer via slider as well… didn’t realize that at first.
Well, after going to do some automations with this device, I realize that I don’t see an entity exposed in HA for the ceiling fan speed. The control in the GUI when clicking on the fan icon in the dash has a power button and a slider that allows 4 speed control settings.
However, in choosing it as a device in an automation, for Action there’s just On, Off, and toggle. No option to choose a speed setting. For the Light, I can choose 1 of 4 presets, but nothing for fan. Doing an entity search I see no fan speed available.
Any thoughts?
I have this and for the HA fan entity, I have a slider. You can slide it to any percentage and it will move to the nearest 25% increment.
If you try to build an automation and select entity, then choose the fan, you can choose speed as an option and fill in the details.
I’m on my computer now but can switch to my phone and share screenshots if what I’m saying doesn’t make sense.
Ah OK thanks… I must be doing something wrong.
[fiddles around a bit]
Hmm odd… if I select the generic “Fan” device, it now finds my “Office Fan” entity whereas I swear it did not before. And there is indeed a slider.
Probably user error, but this behavior has manifest itself more than once I think… seems odd that there’s only an Action available for Devices, not the ability to directly specify an entity without going through a generic device control.
On that note, when searching Entities in Settings, there’s not a speed control I can specify for the fan, yet obviously the generic controls are doing it somehow.
I still have more to learn about how HA handles such things…
Appreciate chiming in.
I’m afraid I don’t fully follow what you are getting at. When I search entities I have a “fan” entity for this device which can turn it on/off and change the speed.
While there may be some unique situations, in general HA has a fan type which supports turning the device on and off and changing the speed. I will never say “ALL” but MOST fans, both ceiling and floor models, will show up this way. There are very rarely separate entities for on/off and speed settings.
Sometimes you might see what still sort of looks like a slider but displays high/medium/low/off instead of percentages. Those are admittedly a bit easier to work with but don’t usually offer as much variability. I believe the tp-link switch has 4 speed options and I’ve never seen a fan in HA have anything other than “high/medium/low/off” as options so I don’t think the tp-link would even be able to display this way.
Maybe take a look at the examples here. I think there is some stuff that might help you with automations.
Perhaps I’m not describing well.
If I try to add an action as the resut of an automation trigger, I get the option to add a device:
A see no option to add a specific entity. If I add the ceiling fan device, the included actions include On, Off, or Toggle, but no way to set speed:
if I select the generic Fan device, rather than the specific KS240 device I do get a speed setting, but no way to set other options (like Sleep mode, etc…)
If I instead create scene, then I do also get the fan entity with speed control, but I generally create scenes for multiple devices to act in concert, not just a single device and I’ve had to do it for no others… my blinds for instance expose the Blind Tilt control as a device directly in Automations, which is why I expected the fan would as well:
Ultimately a couple of alternative ways to do it, just odd that I can’t set the speed in an automation targeting the device.
In an automation, I would do add action->fan->set speed
or
add action->switch->turn on switch->find the “switch.FANNAME_fan_sleep_mode” entity
There is no reason why you wouldn’t be able to include setting this fan to a certain speed as part of a scene that includes other devices. Just use the entity section rather than the device section for this particular item.
Or actually the device section would work if you want to control the fan and the light as part of the same scene.
Thanks for the leads… ultimately the functionality is there… just had to determine how best to get at it… appreciate it…
