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Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io

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Looking for a portable AC with local control (self.homeassistant)

submitted 7 months ago by corroded to c/homeassistant

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I'm looking for a portable air conditioner (the kind with 1 or 2 hoses that go to outside air). The problem I'm running into is that every single one I find has some kind of "smart" controller built in. The ones with no WiFi connectivity still have buttons to start/stop the AC, meaning that a simple Zigbee outlet switch won't work. I could switch the AC off, but it would require a button-press to switch it back on. The ones with WiFi connectivity all require "cloud" access; my IoT devices all connect to a VLAN with no internet access, and I plan to keep it that way.

I suppose I could hack a relay in place of the "start" button, but I'd really rather just have something I can plug in and use.

I can't use a window AC; the room has no windows. I'll need to route intake/exhaust through the wall. So far, I can't find any "portable" AC that will work for me.

What I'm looking for is a portable AC that either:

Connects to WiFi and integrates with HA locally.
Has no connectivity but uses "dumb" controls so I can switch it with a Zigbee outlet switch.

Any ideas?

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[–] TCB13 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Has no connectivity but uses “dumb” controls so I can switch it with a Zigbee outlet switch.

Any dumb unit can be converted into a smart one with an ESP32. If you're up to it, it just required you to wire a transistor to the connections of each physical button of the unit and then write those to the GPIOs of the ESP32. This way you can use the GPIOs to close the circuit like the physical button does and "smartify" the thing that way.

[–] corroded 1 points 7 months ago

This is looking more and more like my best option. I guess I can just buy an AC and run it with thr on-board temperature control until I have time to build and integrate an ESP board.