smarter-ac-unit

Making my AC unit a little smarter with MQTT and Home Assistant

Summary

Uses Home Assistant, MQTT, and an infrared transmitter to control parts of my AC unit that I care about. This is only meant to work with my AC unit model, LG LP1017WSR.

Features:

• Set temperature between 60°F-86°F, defaulting to 70°F
• Toggle power - off, on (cool mode)
• Change fan speed - low, high

I also added a manual sync button to my circuit to allow resyncing both Home Assistant and the AC unit back to the state stored on the ESP8266. This solves any rare problems where states get out of sync and start behaving strangely.

Hardware

Parts List

• 1x ESP8266
• 1x 2N3904 NPN transistor
• 1x IR LED
• 1x Red LED
• 1x 10KΩ resistor
• 1x 47Ω resistor
• 1x 470Ω resistor
• 1x pushbutton
• 4x 2.5x8mm hex button screws

Infrastructure

MQTT Broker

Used Eclipse Mosquitto for my MQTT broker, I used Docker to run it.

# docker-compose.yml

mosquitto:
  container_name: mosquitto
  image: eclipse-mosquitto:2
  ports:
    - '1883:1883' # MQTT
    - '9011:9011' # MQTT over websocket
  volumes:
  - /etc/timezone:/etc/timezone:ro
  - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
  - ./mosquitto/mosquitto.conf:/mosquitto/config/mosquitto.conf
  - /home/docker/data/mosquitto/data:/mosquitto/data
  - /home/docker/data/mosquitto/logs:/mosquitto/log
  network_mode: host
  restart: unless-stopped

# mosquitto.conf

listener 1883

listener 9011
protocol websockets

persistence true
persistence_location /mosquitto/data/

log_dest stdout

Home Assistant

I also self-host Home Assistant in Docker

home-assistant:
    container_name: home-assistant
    image: homeassistant/home-assistant:2023.3
    ports:
      - '8123:8123'
    volumes:
      - /etc/timezone:/etc/timezone:ro
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
      - './home-assistant:/config'
    restart: unless-stopped

If MQTT discovery is disabled in config.h, then this can be manually configured in the configuration.yml

# configuration.yml

mqtt:
  climate:
    - name: Bedroom AC (LG LP1017WSR)
      unique_id: smarter_ac_unit
      qos: 0
      optimistic: true
      modes:
        - "off"
        - "cool"
      fan_modes:
        - "high"
        - "low"
      min_temp: 60
      max_temp: 86
      initial: 70
      temperature_unit: F
      temp_step: 1
      mode_command_topic: "smarter_ac_unit/mode/set"
      mode_command_template: "{{ value if value == 'off' else 'on' }}"
      mode_state_topic: "smarter_ac_unit/mode/state"
      fan_mode_command_topic: "smarter_ac_unit/fan/set"
      fan_mode_state_topic: "smarter_ac_unit/fan/state"
      temperature_command_topic: "smarter_ac_unit/temperature/set"
      temperature_state_topic: "smarter_ac_unit/temperature/state"

IR Codes

Example IR Code (via ir-sniffer):

Protocol  : WHIRLPOOL_AC
Code      : 0x830601A20000C000000000000063001100803800A9 (168 Bits)
Mesg Desc.: Model: 2 (DG11J191), Power Toggle: Off, Mode: 2 (Cool), 
            Temp: 26C, Fan: 1 (High), Swing: Off, Light: On, 
            Clock: 00:00, On Timer: Off, Off Timer: Off, 
            Sleep: Off, Super: Off, Command: 17 (Fan)

Used ir-sniffer to manually gather all relevant IR codes of button presses and states for my AC unit. IR codes can be found in docs/ir-codes.txt, these codes were used to create the table below.

Note: I'm only looking at cool mode...other modes may effect the values below. Also, not figuring out sleep and timer...I don't use these at all. Some of the mystery constants are probably part of this.

Indices	Values	Notes
0:3	8306	model...I guess?
4:5	01,03	Fan: 1=High, 3=Low
6	0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F	Temperature: 60F-75F
	0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A	Temperature: 76F-86F
7	2	Mode: 2=Cool
8:15	0000C000	?
16	0,4	Swing: 0=off, 4=high
17:25	000000000	?
26	C,D,E,F,8,9,A,B,4,5,6,7,0,1,2,3	Temperature: 60F-75F
	C,D,E,F,8,9,A,B,4,5,6	Temperature: 76F-86F
27	3,1	Fan: 3=High, 1=Low
28:29	00	?
30:31	02,25	command (temperature change, power toggle)
32:33	00	?
34:36	003	cool mode, high/low fan, Temperature: 60F-75F, [temp change or power on]
	803	cool mode, high/low fan, Temperature: 76F-86F, [temp change or power on]
	002	cool mode, high/low fan, Temperature: 60F-75F, power off
	802	cool mode, high/low fan, Temperature: 76F-86F, power off
37:39	800	?
40:41	3A	cool mode, high/low fan, Temperature: 60F-75F, temp change
	BA	cool mode, high/low fan, Temperature: 76F-86F, temp change
	0D	cool mode, high/low fan, Temperature: 60F-75F, power off
	8D	cool mode, high/low fan, Temperature: 76F-86F, power off
	1D	cool mode, high/low fan, Temperature: 60F-75F, power on
	9D	cool mode, high/low fan, Temperature: 76F-86F, power on
	29	cool mode, high/low fan, Temperature: 60F-75F, fan toggle
	A9	cool mode, high/low fan, Temperature: 76F-86F, fan toggle

References

• https://github.com/Arduino-IRremote/Arduino-IRremote
• https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/climate.mqtt/