Tricking an Ecobee Thermostat to Wirelessly Control Mini Split Unit Without Any Wiring

Goals

Leading up to figuring this all out I had the following goals in mind.

• Use physical ecobee thermostat to control mini split units
• Locally controlled (no cloud services) via Home Assistant
• Pass the wife test

Step 1: Install Home Assistant Integrations

As mentioned above I’m using the Mitsubishi Kumo Cloud HACS integration to locally control the mini split system and I’ve added the ecobee thermostat via the HomeKit Controller integration which also provides local control.

I’m also going to be using Node-RED to tie everything together but I suppose you could use HA’s native automations for this as well. Both the ecobee and the mini split unit are exposed as climate integrations in Home Assistant.

Step 2: Lie to ecobee

ecobee thermostats will do a good job of detecting which wires are connected but it also allows you to manually override via the settings menu. This is the key piece of information I got from the LTT video.

For my install I had, and still only have, three wires connected for my heating system.

However I was able to trick the thermostat into thinking there is an AC unit connected by completing the following steps.

1. From the main screen tap the 3 bars at the bottom left to enter the menu screen

2. Scroll down and tap Settings

3. Tap “Installation Settings”

4. Tap “Equipment”

5. Tap “Reconfigure Equipment”

6. Select “I’m a homeowner” and tap “Next”

7. Select “No, Rc and Rh are connected” and tap “Next”

8. A diagram showing which wiring terminals are configured should be visible with the question “Is this correct?”. Tap “No”.

9. A similar diagram will display telling you to remove your ecobee and check the wiring or press Modify should be visible. Tap “Modify”

10. You should now see a screen that allows you to select which terminals you want to activate. In my case, I selected G, Y1, Y2, and W1. Tap “Next”.

11. On the next screen select “No accessory installed” and tap “Next”.

12. Select your temperature scale “F” or “C” and tap “Next”.

Your ecobee should now support cooling mode without actually being wired for it.

Step 3: Make the connection in Home Assistant

I started with the following on my whiteboard to get my head around what I needed Node-RED to do.

If the mode is cool and the set temperature is less than the current temperature then turn the mini split on and set the temperature.

If the mode is cool and the set temperature is greater or equal to the current temperature then turn the mini split off.

If the mode is not cool then turn the mini split off.

I then turned that into the following flow in Node-RED.

I’ll walk through each node in the flow.

The first node in the flow is the events: state node that listens for changes to the ecobee thermostat.

I’ve modified the output to provide the set temp and the current temp as values on the msg object.

msg.temp_set = msg.data.new_state.attributes.temperature
msg.temp_cur = msg.data.new_state.attributes.current_temperature

The second node is a switch that creates two outputs depending on if the state of the thermostat is “cool” or not. If the state is “cool” we move on to the next “Different Temps” . If the state is not cool we move to the “Turn Off AC” node which makes a service call to climate.turn_off to the mini split.

Another switch node which determines if the set temperature is different from the current temperature. If the temperatures are different we move to the “Cool or Off” node. If they are the same we move to the “Turn Off AC” node.

Yet another switch node that determines if the set temperature is less than the current temp or greater than or equal to the current temp. If less than, we move to the “Turn On AC” node. If greater than or equal to, we move to the “Turn Off AC” node.

Makes a call to the climate.turn_on service for the mini split unit which, as it says, turns the mini split on.

Makes a call to the climate.set_temperature service for the mini split and passes in the value from temp_set for the temperature param.

As mentioned above this node makes a call to climate.turn_off for the mini split unit and turns it off.

Here is a full export of the Node-RED flow if you want to import it and test yourself.

[{"id":"6cbf3993008e44e0","type":"tab","label":"Thermostat","disabled":false,"info":"","env":[]},{"id":"5ff805fd3a4bb696","type":"server-state-changed","z":"6cbf3993008e44e0","name":"Downstairs Thermostat","server":"2d459d37.8c31f2","version":4,"exposeToHomeAssistant":false,"haConfig":[{"property":"name","value":""},{"property":"icon","value":""}],"entityidfilter":"climate.downstairs","entityidfiltertype":"exact","outputinitially":false,"state_type":"str","haltifstate":"","halt_if_type":"str","halt_if_compare":"is","outputs":1,"output_only_on_state_change":false,"for":"0","forType":"num","forUnits":"minutes","ignorePrevStateNull":false,"ignorePrevStateUnknown":false,"ignorePrevStateUnavailable":false,"ignoreCurrentStateUnknown":false,"ignoreCurrentStateUnavailable":false,"outputProperties":[{"property":"payload","propertyType":"msg","value":"","valueType":"entityState"},{"property":"data","propertyType":"msg","value":"","valueType":"eventData"},{"property":"temp_set","propertyType":"msg","value":"msg.data.new_state.attributes.temperature","valueType":"jsonata"},{"property":"temp_cur","propertyType":"msg","value":"msg.data.new_state.attributes.current_temperature","valueType":"jsonata"}],"x":120,"y":160,"wires":[["bc8694e89b213679"]]},{"id":"6da944783d464c89","type":"api-call-service","z":"6cbf3993008e44e0","name":"Turn On AC","server":"2d459d37.8c31f2","version":5,"debugenabled":false,"domain":"climate","service":"turn_on","areaId":[],"deviceId":[],"entityId":["climate.downstairs_ac"],"data":"","dataType":"jsonata","mergeContext":"","mustacheAltTags":false,"outputProperties":[],"queue":"none","x":790,"y":80,"wires":[["14a982a258044f6d"]]},{"id":"20a7f99c6ea0efc2","type":"api-call-service","z":"6cbf3993008e44e0","name":"Turn Off AC","server":"2d459d37.8c31f2","version":5,"debugenabled":false,"domain":"climate","service":"turn_off","areaId":[],"deviceId":[],"entityId":["climate.downstairs_ac"],"data":"","dataType":"jsonata","mergeContext":"","mustacheAltTags":false,"outputProperties":[],"queue":"none","x":790,"y":180,"wires":[[]]},{"id":"14a982a258044f6d","type":"api-call-service","z":"6cbf3993008e44e0","name":"Set Temp","server":"2d459d37.8c31f2","version":5,"debugenabled":false,"domain":"climate","service":"set_temperature","areaId":[],"deviceId":[],"entityId":["climate.front_room","climate.living_room"],"data":"{\t   \"temperature\": msg.data.new_state.attributes.temperature,\t   \"hvac_mode\": msg.payload\t}","dataType":"jsonata","mergeContext":"","mustacheAltTags":false,"outputProperties":[],"queue":"none","x":960,"y":60,"wires":[[]]},{"id":"bc8694e89b213679","type":"switch","z":"6cbf3993008e44e0","name":"Cooling?","property":"payload","propertyType":"msg","rules":[{"t":"eq","v":"cool","vt":"str"},{"t":"neq","v":"cool","vt":"str"}],"checkall":"true","repair":false,"outputs":2,"x":300,"y":160,"wires":[["1b6dc52f04ef6805"],["20a7f99c6ea0efc2"]]},{"id":"1b6dc52f04ef6805","type":"switch","z":"6cbf3993008e44e0","name":"Different Temps","property":"temp_set","propertyType":"msg","rules":[{"t":"neq","v":"temp_cur","vt":"msg"},{"t":"eq","v":"temp_cur","vt":"msg"}],"checkall":"true","repair":false,"outputs":2,"x":460,"y":120,"wires":[["bf72658acb9e3113"],["20a7f99c6ea0efc2"]]},{"id":"bf72658acb9e3113","type":"switch","z":"6cbf3993008e44e0","name":"Cool or Off","property":"temp_set","propertyType":"msg","rules":[{"t":"lt","v":"temp_cur","vt":"msg"},{"t":"gte","v":"temp_cur","vt":"msg"}],"checkall":"true","repair":false,"outputs":2,"x":630,"y":100,"wires":[["6da944783d464c89"],["20a7f99c6ea0efc2"]]},{"id":"2d459d37.8c31f2","type":"server","name":"Home Assistant","version":2,"addon":true,"rejectUnauthorizedCerts":true,"ha_boolean":"y|yes|true|on|home|open","connectionDelay":true,"cacheJson":true,"heartbeat":false,"heartbeatInterval":30}]

Conclusion

As you can see in the video below this solution works great. There’s only about a 3 second delay between setting the temperature at the thermostat and the mini split unit reacting.

Let’s see how we did with the goals from above.

✅ Use physical ecobee thermostat to control mini split units

Setting a cool temperature at the thermostat sucessfully controls the mini split unit.

✅ Locally controlled via Home Assistant

Using the kumo cloud and HomeKit integrations Home Assistant is able to receive updates from the ecobee thermostat and send commands to the mini split units all over the local network without having to rely on a cloud service.

Comments