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Comment by billfor | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone found a good way to control all the features of a heat pump with home automation? I’ve been lookin at Daikin and Mitsubishi but Daikin no longer has an open api and I don’t see much on Mitubishi. It seems like every heat pump comes with its own proprietary remote, and the thermostats and Wi-Fi modules (if available) don’t integrate well.

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I have a suite of LG Minisplits installed in my apartment. While there isn't a distinctly open API, there's an integration that you can add to Home Assistant for access to the platform.

From there, I've got a few automations including:

  - Automatically turning off "conflicting" units (Heat vs Cool)
  - Schedules (set bedroom to cool at night) and "Away" modes
  - Temperature overrides using custom built temperature sensors (BME280 to the rescue)
  - Access and control via voice (via Google Assistants)

Unfortunately, the integration is reliant on the cloud, but you can connect a "traditional" relay based thermostat to them as well (with the loss of variable load control for the outside unit).

I have a Trane/Mitsubishi mini-split for a garage and it works via a Nest thermostat, so that's how I monitor/automate that. Google have APIs for Nest ... YMMV.

I’m in the same boat as you. As far as I can tell the only option is something like Sensibo, which uses IR.

I would love to know if there is a better way to do this.

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