MELCloud HomeAssistant custom component

ℹ️ Note

Due to the latest restrictions introduced by MELCloud platform (see here) I decided to implement the control of my AC devices through the adoption of small and economical ESP8266 devices connected to CN105 units connector which allow real-time control via MQTT (see here an example).

As consequence I no longer have a way to maintain this integration, fixing bug, implementing new features and adapting to HA architecture changes.

If anyone is interested in taking charge of it, they can possibly fork this repository and I will report the new reference link here in the notes.

This repository will be shortly moved in state archived.

Description

A full featured Homeassistant custom component to drive MELCloud ATA and ATW devices.

This custom component is based on the native Home Assistant MELCloud component released with version 0.106 and on the same underlying PyMelCloud library.

Custom component additional features

I just added some features to the existing native components, waiting for the same features to be implemented:

Add support for login language from a list of available options. The language should be the same that you normaly use for other MELCloud application (e.g. your phone app).
Added control for Vertical and Horizontal Swing Modes on ATA devices using default Swing features.
Added sensor to monitor WiFi signal.
Added binary sensor to monitor error state.
Added some attributes to the sensors to provide additional information (SerialNo, Unit Info, etc)
Implemented use of coordinator to have update for all entities syncronizes

Installation & configuration

You can install this component in two ways: via HACS or manually.

Option A: Installing via HACS

If you have HACS, you must add this repository ("https://github.com/ollo69/ha-melcloud-custom") to your Custom Repository selecting the Configuration Tab in the HACS page. After this you can go in the Integration Tab and search the "MELCloud Custom" component to install it.

Option B: Manually installation (custom_component)

Clone the git master branch.
Unzip/copy the melcloud_custom direcotry within the custom_components directory of your homeassistant installation. The custom_components directory resides within your homeassistant configuration directory. Usually, the configuration directory is within your home (~/.homeassistant/). In other words, the configuration directory of homeassistant is where the configuration.yaml file is located. After a correct installation, your configuration directory should look like the following.
```
└── ...
└── configuration.yaml
└── secrects.yaml
└── custom_components
    └── melcloud_custom
        └── __init__.py
        └── binary_sensor.py
        └── climate.py
        └── ...
```
Note: if the custom_components directory does not exist, you need to create it.

Component setup

Once the component has been installed, you need to configure it in order to make it work. There are two ways of doing so:

Using the web interface (Lovelace) [recommended]
Manually editing the configuration.yaml file

Option A: Configuration using the web UI [recommended]

Simply add a new "integration" and look for "MELCloud Custom" among the proposed ones. Do not confuse with "MELCloud" that is the native one!

Option B: Configuration via editing configuration.yaml

Follow these steps only if the previous configuration method did not work for you.

Setup your MELCloud credentials. Edit/create the secrets.yaml file, which is located within the config directory as well. Add the following:
```
melcloud_username: my_melcloud_email@domain.com
melcloud_password: my_melcloud_password
```
Where "my_melcloud_email@domain.com" is your MELCloud account email and "my_melcloud_password" is the associated password.

Enable the component by editing the configuration.yaml file (within the config directory as well). Edit it by adding the following lines:

melcloud_custom:
  username: !secret melcloud_username
  password: !secret melcloud_password
  language: my_melcloud_language

Where "my_melcloud_language" is your MELCloud account language and can be one of the following (eg: EN):

 EN = English
 BG = Bulgarian
 CS = Czech
 DA = Danish
 DE = German
 ET = Estonian
 ES = Spanish
 FR = French
 HY = Armenian
 LV = Latvian
 LT = Lithuanian
 HU = Hungarian
 NL = Dutch
 NO = Norwegian
 PL = Polish
 PT = Portuguese
 RU = Russian
 FI = Finnish
 SV = Swedish
 IT = Italian
 UK = Ukrainian
 TR = Turkish
 EL = Greek
 HR = Croatian
 RO = Romanian
 SL = Slovenian

Note! In this case you do not need to replace "!secret melcloud_username" and "!secret melcloud_password". Those are place holders that homeassistant automatically replaces by looking at the secrets.yaml file.

Reboot home assistant
Congrats! You're all set!