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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 17 hours ago* (last edited 16 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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[–] jaharkes@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I have window AC units in my kids bedrooms. They stay off during the day, but turn on several hours before bedtime depending on the outside temperature. It isn't a terribly smart automation, just a "turn on at 4pm if temp over 100F, 5pm for 90F and 6pm for 80F."

Originally I was trying to do it based on delta t between the room and the outside and the target temperature and the estimated cooling efficiency, then I had to start figuring in how humidity and feels like temperature would affect things. And so after over thinking and over engineering it, I ended up at the stupid solution of just switching on at fixed times based on outside temperature being over a threshold and it works pretty well.

[–] mweiss@infosec.exchange 1 points 1 hour ago

@jaharkes @shortwavesurfer yep. You start there and see if it's good enough, and then iterate. That way you're not overengineering it. The more inputs you use to have the automation decide things, the more opportunities there are for the automation to break.

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 0 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

slightly off topic but are they smart ACs or are you automating them with a smart plug and if so how much power do they use? I am using a third reality plug which is capable of 15 amps but for a brief moment right when the thing starts up it can pull 17 amps for like half a second or less before settling down and that's why I'm wondering what you're using. My AC runs at 550 to 600 watts during normal operation.

[–] jaharkes@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

Smart plugs, I have two on sonoff s31 reflashed with esphome and one on a third reality zigbee plug. These are all smaller units, about 8000 BTU.

But... I had to put the big one downstairs on a smart plug for completely different reason. It is a ge smart ac with wifi, but once in a while it gets into a state where when it tries to start up but consistently trips the breaker. So the smart plug simply cuts power for 5 minutes when it notices the ac is pulling more amps than what it is supposed to.

But yeah, I inspect regularly and try to avoid running these things when nobody is around. I had a 30amp smart switch on and outdoor outlet which would trip whenever I plugged in a weedwhacker and it ended up looking scorched, clearly rated for 30amp but not capable of doing even half that because the 16 amp breaker never tripped.