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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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Automating a window AC (lemmy.zip)

submitted 14 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) by shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip to c/homeassistant@lemmy.world

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So I have my AC connected to a smart plug and I'm trying to figure out what would be the best way to go about automating it.

Currently, I have it set to run every hour on the hour for 20 minutes if the time is between noon and 8 p.m. Which covers the hottest part of the day.

However, what I could do is have it run every other hour instead and have a couple of night runs along with the daytime runs.

Doing it that way would eliminate most of the 16-hour period currently that exists between the ending of one day and the beginning of the next.

Edit: Also, is there an easy way to automate every other hour using the time pattern or would I manually have to set up triggers for 2am, 4am, 6am, 8am, 10am, etc. using the fixed values?

Edit 2: looks like i can use "/2" to accomplish that

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[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 3 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

Unfortunately, it's got no kind of remote at all. It's a physical dial to turn it on to high low or fan high low and a physical dial to turn up or down the temperature setting.

That's why I got a smart plug for it to begin with because there were times when I would fall asleep at like 10 p.m. and wake up at 3 a.m. with the damn thing still running.

It is only a 550 watt unit, but I was not aware that hard power cycling it like that would eventually hurt it. So at least thanks for that information.

[–] anotherandrew@lemmy.mixdown.ca 2 points 2 hours ago

Monitor the current with the smart plug. When you want to turn it off, wait for the current to drop for a few minutes (this means the compressor is off/unloaded) then power off the outlet.

Might be an idea.

[–] dgriffith@aussie.zone 3 points 7 hours ago

It'll be fine as long as you don't try and start it up again within a few minutes of turning it off.

Pressure just needs to slowly bleed from the high pressure side to the low pressure side of the compressor before it starts again, so that it isn't initially stalled against high pressure.

[–] couch1potato@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 hours ago

Idk how complicated the internal wiring is but maybe a solution here is a pair of shelly relays. One for the ac and one for the compressor fan. Then you could turn them on/off separately over wifi based on whatever logic you come up with.