Native Home Assistant integration (no Ruby or MQTT) – looking for feedback

[mel9320107]

Hi all,

Firstly, thanks to @jshank and everyone who has contributed to bwalink. The documentation and discussion here were invaluable in understanding the Balboa protocol and getting an Elfin RS-485 bridge talking to the spa controller.

Over the past few days I've written a native Home Assistant custom integration that communicates directly with the spa controller over a transparent TCP-to-RS485 bridge (such as the Elfin EW11). It takes a different approach to bwalink by integrating the protocol directly into Home Assistant rather than using a Ruby service or MQTT, which were both tricky for me to get to run on my vanilla setup.

Current features include:

• Native Config Flow
• Climate entity
• Pump, blower and light control
• Fault and reminder decoding
• Diagnostics
• Local push updates
• No cloud dependency
• No official Balboa Wi-Fi module required
• No Ruby or MQTT broker required

I've tested it on my own Balboa system, but Balboa controllers vary considerably, so I'm looking for people willing to try it on different hardware and report what works (or doesn't!).

The repository is here:

https://github.com/mel9320107/spa-pool

Any feedback, protocol captures, bug reports or feature suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

If you're already happily using bwalink, there is be no reason to switch. My goal isn't to replace existing projects, but to provide another option for users who prefer a native Home Assistant integration with minimal external components.

Thanks!