🚀 Exciting News: Announcing Daikin Europe Developer Portal! 🚀

[Daikin-Europe]

Dear Developers and Tech Enthusiasts,

We are thrilled to announce the new Daikin Europe Developer Portal. This platform is dedicated to empowering developers like you to unlock the full potential of Daikin air2air and air2water heat pumps, fostering innovation in the world of climate control.

🌐 What is the Developer Portal?

Our Developer Portal is your gateway to a world of endless possibilities with Daikin products.
Whether you're an experienced developer, a company exploring opportunities or just starting your coding journey, this platform is your ultimate resource for building and integrating with our technologies.
It's a one-stop destination for all things development-related, offering documentation and resources to supercharge your projects.

🛠️ Key Features?

📚 Comprehensive Documentation: Access documentation that provide a deep dive into our APIs, ensuring you have everything you need to get started and excel with your integration.

🚀 Interactive API Explorer: Experiment with our APIs in real time using our interactive API explorer, making the integration process smooth and intuitive.

🔌 Easy integration: Integrate directly onto the Onecta ecosystem with your own units to develop or test your integration. No special hardware required!

🔑 Rate Limitation: To continue offering the Onecta API for free to all our customers a default rate limitation will be implemented.

💼 B2B Business Case Validation: Explore hassle free if your companies business case works together with the Daikin APIs. Get in contact with us when you want to become a partner.

🚧 What's Next?

This is just the beginning! We're committing to expand and enhance our Developer Portal, with new features and resources in the future.
Your feedback and suggestions will be invaluable as we evolve the portal to meet the needs of our customers.

🔧 What changes can already be prepared from your application?
Make your current application compatible with the upcoming rate-limitation of 150 calls/day. This will allow everyone to query at least every 15 minutes for temperature changes in their home of all their devices. Temperature variation in the home is often not so fast that a faster update rate is required.

🌟 Ready to Get Started?

We're targeting beginning 2024 for the first access to the Daikin Europe Developer Portal. With later in Q1-2024 the release of self service within the developer portal.
Get ready to innovate, build, and make a lasting impact with our Developer Portal. We can't wait to see the incredible solutions you'll create!

Stay tuned for more !

Daikin Europe

[jwillemsen]

Great news @Daikin-Europe ! Hopefully there will be much more information available from the Daikin devices, especially from the Altherma 3 device I would like to see much more details!

[rospogrigio]

Thank you @Daikin-Europe . I have created a new PR #183 that reduces the polling time to every 15 minutes, as you suggested, for everybody to try.
A couple of questions: is there (or will be in the future) the possibility to send commands locally in the LAN instead of passing through the cloud? Many users (including myself) have been asking for this. Thank you for letting us know.

[jwillemsen]

A rate limit of 150 calls is enough for an AC unit, but not for an Altherma, those change much faster, would love to see a higher rate there

[VolkerH]

As @rospogrigio said, implement local network access!
Rate limiting is a no-go if you don't provide it.
I bought and my airconditioning systems specifically because they can be controlled via Wifi. This was listed as a feature of the device when i bought it (not as an optional service), you can't take it away after I paid for it.
I use Home Assitant together with Zigbee sensors to implement my own thermostats. This is for 5 devices. If querying and setting a state is one API access each, that already requires 10 calls for 5 devices.
I don't see why there should be any limit at all.

P.S. I will send some feedback to my installer. Until this is fixed I will not recommend this product to anyone. Good hardware, but if you decide to cripple it ...
P.P.S: I also don't see why you should have access to our data

[jwillemsen]

For the Altherma there is a separate HA integration, at some point I want to extend that integration also with support for the AC devices, see https://github.com/jwillemsen/daikin_residential_altherma

[Apollon77]

@Daikin-Europe Cool, good news, keep us updated. But basically I agree to the discussed topics above about rate limits vs local access.

[barryvdh]

1 update per 15 minutes seems a bit low ..? My AC goes from 18 to 23 degrees in 15 minutes (small room)..

I can understand limiting to 1 call a minute (instead of 15 seconds) or 150 change operations/day (setting temp/hvac mode), but it's also about showing the actual state in Home Assistant (current/target temperate, hvac mode, on/off), so 15 minutes seems a long time to reflect the current state on your dashboards, which means the dashboard is not really useful.

Thanks for the Developer API though, just hope it doesn't cripple the HA integration, instead of making it better..

[VolkerH]

To elaborate on my earlier comment. Maybe I am jumping the gun here, but this announcement seems like a crass form of corporate language to me. DAIKIN describing a serious deterioration in thier product as a great new feature for developers. Maybe my concern is unfounded, but there are recent examples of other companies ... this is called enshittification https://doctorow.medium.com/the-enshittification-of-garage-door-openers-reveals-a-vast-and-deadly-rot-eed85da5b0ba

As for the corporate speak: you are not making sure you are able to continue this free service. This is not a free service. As customers, we already paid for this feature, so it is not free. I paid for a device, I didn't subscribe to a service. In my case, I paid a 5 digit EUR sum for DAIKIN devices.

There is no technical reason for denying local access. This is proven by my Comfora unit with the older WIFI modules (if I had known I would only have installed the cheaper Comfora units and not the more expensive, newer units). Local access works well, no cloud needed (so no cost for DAIKIN to run servers for a "free" cloud service most customers don't want). The only reason to make cloud mandatory is to grab data and lock us into using their apps. The B2B stuff in combination with the rate limiting suggests to me that any access with more than 15 min interval access will either be through Onecta or some subscription based model. So, we're being dis-owned of our devices for which we paid! I would hope DAIKINs business model is about selling good hardware, not about dealing/collecting in data and selling subscriptions to their API. I would love it if @Daikin-Europe proves my suspicions wrong and enables local access.

Since my last comment, I found this https://github.com/revk/ESP32-Faikin and ordered several of the pre-assembled PCBs. I fear this will be the only way to truely own the DAIKIN devices that I paid for. But again, please prove me wrong @Daikin-Europe .

To all the others who left ❤️ emojis, please re-read the announcement carefully, with the garage door enshittification in mind and your translator for corporate speak turned to "on". There needs to be massive push-back against @Daikin-Europe disowning its customers.

[rospogrigio]

Yes @VolkerH , I see a common trend with several other IOT vendors about this, that set up everything to be cloud-oriented, and then they realize how high is the cost for them to maintain the cloud connection, and consequently start cutting off the service. My Xiaomi vacuum cleaner, for example, now no longer shows the real time map if you make too many requests, and so we users needed so setup a hack within HA in order to reduce the calls and stay within the rate limitation. I really don't understand this approach, as you say local access is faster and more secure. Cloud connection is nice to have as an add-on, but shouldn't be the only way to interact with the device on the network. Just my 2 cents, let's wait and check wheter @Daikin-Europe want to reply something.

[rgerhards]

I guess @Daikin-Europe will never reply here. Just dropped the "bad news PR".

BTW: the same also happened to the VW API for their electric cars. And there even is an annual subscription fee for "connected services".

I am/was thinking about purchasing an Altherma. I am now reconsidering. Albeit is is becoming really hard to own any hardware I paid for. General trend.

[andreas-bulling]

Yes @VolkerH , I see a common trend with several other IOT vendors about this, that set up everything to be cloud-oriented, and then they realize how high is the cost for them to maintain the cloud connection, and consequently start cutting off the service. My Xiaomi vacuum cleaner, for example, now no longer shows the real time map if you make too many requests, and so we users needed so setup a hack within HA in order to reduce the calls and stay within the rate limitation. I really don't understand this approach, as you say local access is faster and more secure. Cloud connection is nice to have as an add-on, but shouldn't be the only way to interact with the device on the network. Just my 2 cents, let's wait and check wheter @Daikin-Europe want to reply something.

The only solution to all of these issues is to go with an alternative (open source) firmware, e.g. Faikin for Daikin ACs and valetudo for vacuum cleaners. Leave their cloud and never look back. Maybe this will make them sane again once enough customers stop using/buying their products.

[pjgoodall]

No Faikin for FTXM71WVMA with wifi controller BRP084C44. Restricting API call frequency to 15m shows that the whole ‘cloud only’ drive was marketing not engineering or customer based at Daikin. Marketing people should only be in meetings at a ratio of 1 in 5. There should never be rooms with only marketing people in them.
So how does the cloud-centric control go when Optus falls flat during a 40c heatwave?

[Apollon77]

The more interesting question from my perspective is how that should work withthe Onecta App? All the non tech users will use the app whenever they want and expect current data ... So the App-API will then maybe not have such rate limits (because honestly else normal users will make big noise) , but an "open API" will have? This also makes not that much sense ...