Posted by: @johndunlop

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I'm counting this as a small win but appreciate it must be rather frustrating for you! 

Actually I was thinking the same thing, but for you.

It seems to me I may have missed something somewhere, so apologies if that's the case. However, I've found some documentation (Initial configuration - HACS) which reminds me of something I'd forgotten. The idea is that all these extra integrations people put together are made available on a web site called GitHub which, given you were installing Predbat, I suspect you may have an account for already. HACS needs to be told which account to use to connect to GitHub, so the documentation gives the steps for configuring it and, in fact, it's just the same steps as adding any other integration so it should be fairly familiar to you.

Success!!

Excellent, @johndunlop.

My guess is that the HACS icon is that gap on your button bar between "History" and "Media"; I sometimes find the actual icon not being served up by the browser until the page is refreshed. No matter; it's installed.

Next step is to add the custom integration I found and see if it can connect with your heat pump. Even if, after all this, we find that particular integration doesn't work we can still use HACS for other integrations - Octopus Energy springs to mind immediately - so the effort won't be wasted.

Firstly, go into HACS either by clicking on the icon or by going to http://homeassistant.local:8123/hacs, and then click on the three dots in the top right hand corner of the screen and select "Custom Repositories". This will give you a dialogue box where you can paste https://github.com/jeatheak/Mitsubishi-WF-RAC-Integration into the Repository box and select "Integration" from the dropdown list for Type. Clicking the Add button at this point will mean the Smart M-Air integration is then added to Home Assistant's list of integrations you can install. You can close the dialogue box at that point and it will leave you viewing the Home Assistant Community Store page with a list of lots of repositories on it.

Next, on that page use the search box at the top and type in smart m-air. This will filter so you can just see that integration; it should say it's available for download. Using the three dots on the right hand side of that integration's row, select "download". Once you agree to the ensuing dialogue box you should the integration will now say it's pending restart, and your cog at the bottom left corner of the screen (for Settings) should now have an orange 1 against it. Click on that and on the settings page it should say at the top a restart is required and allow you to perform said restart of Home Assistant.

Now Home Assistant is restarted, you can go to your Devices & Services page and install the new integration exactly as normal. In this case, click on the Add Integration button and search for Mitsubishi WF-RAC, and continue with the answering of the questions the dialogue box asks for. As far as I can see, you just need to give it a name, tell it the IP address of your unit and provide a port number (which I suspect can likely be left at the default of 51443).

From this point, I know you're well aware now of how to add cards to your dashboards so I won't repeat those steps. I'd be grateful if you could let me know how you get on and then we can move on to adding Octopus as well.

@majordennisbloodnok 

I'll attack it when I get back at about 5, feeling a lot more positive about the whole HA thing. 

Thanks for your patience 👍

@johndunlop   Keep at it.  It's worth persevering. When I began with HA I was simply following instructions on Youtube videos (with many pauses and rewinds!). I didn't have anyone like the Major to give 1-1 support.  Once you have a few applications working with useful information and controls it will be more meaningful when you take a look at some of the yaml code behind it.  You may even be tempted to try tweaking the code or dashboard cards to present the data differently or create your own automations.

@majordennisbloodnok 

All installed and controlling both the split systems.

I normally don't get too excited about much but I can't explain how chuffed I am about installing this thanks to your guidance and detailed instructions

Great news, @johndunlop; I'll take that as a win for us both.

Next step, as I said, is to get Octopus onto HA. Looking back at your initial post on this thread, you said you had the Octopus API configured but I'm not sure if that also includes the Octopus Energy integration within HA. If not, we can wander back to HACS again and do the same as you did for the Smart M-Air stuff but this time looking for and then downloading the Octopus Energy integration. If I remember correctly, you won't need to do the initial adding of a custom repository and should be able to find the Octopus integration more easily, but bear in mind that there are several - you'll want Octopus Energy, not Octopus Agile or Octopus Spain. See what happens when independent techies start playing with new toys? They each build their own tool...

As before, once you've added and downloaded the Octopus Energy integration, don't forget you'll need to restart HA and then wander over to Devices & Settings to add the integration and configure it.

I'm also going to ask that once you've done all that you repeat the whole process yet again, this time for the Octopus Energy Rates Card ( https://github.com/lozzd/octopus-energy-rates-card - instructions for installation will now be familiar but this page will give you the repository address to use and the correct category). Once you've got the card downloaded, you won't actually then be installing another integration but it'll be in preparation for our next step which is to give you a really user-friendly way of viewing all the agile half-hour slots. Let me know once you've downloaded the repository and I can talk you through using the card at that point.

@majordennisbloodnok 

You are quite right, a win for both of us and hopefully anyone following the thread.

I will attack the next stage in the morning when I don't have to fight for PC access and report back 👍

@majordennisbloodnok 

All done and the account details and API inputted into the Octopus integration

Better and better, @johndunlop.

To set up the fancy cards for the Octopus rates, we first need a wee bit of information and it's easiest to find in a place I haven't shown you yet. If you look on your button bar just above the settings cog you'll see an icon marked "Developer Tools". If you click on that there's a lot there but across the top are several headings, starting with YAML. The one we want is the second along - States.

Selecting States will bring you to a page with LOTS of stuff and it's basically a list of all the entities I was talking about some time ago. The first column contains the entity names and at the top of the column is a grey area marked Filter entities. If you type in there day_rates then that will filter the list down so you can just see a relatively small number of lines, albeit the information in the Attributes column makes each line rather large. The entity names you'll see will look like

event.octopus_energy_electricity_21j00xxxxx_190000xxxxxxx_current_day_rates

with the numbers representing your serial number and MPAN. You'll need to make a note of six entities in total; the ones for current, next and previous day rates for both your import and export tariffs. Copy their names into a text file and keep somewhere accessible for the next step.

Next we can go to the dashboard where you want your fancy cards and, as I'm sure you're familiar with now, you can go up to the top right hand corner and click on the pencil to put the dashboard in edit mode. You can now hit the "Add Card" button in the bottom left and scroll right down to the bottom of the dialogue box to select Custom: Octopus Energy Rates Card.

At this point, it looks a bit more scary since whoever designed this card didn't bother with a nice graphical way of configuring it. However, that's not as big a deal as it seems. On the left is a grey area with a couple of numbered lines and that's where it's possible to type into or, in this case, paste text into. What I'd like you to paste in is the following:

type: custom:octopus-energy-rates-card
currentEntity: event.octopus_energy_electricity_21j00xxxxx_190000xxxxxxx_current_day_rates
pastEntity: event.octopus_energy_electricity_21j00xxxxx_190000xxxxxxx_previous_day_rates
futureEntity: event.octopus_energy_electricity_21j00xxxxx_190000xxxxxxx_next_day_rates
cols: 2
showday: true
showpast: false
hour12: false
title: Agile import rates
mediumlimit: 20
highlimit: 35
cheapest: true

replacing, as I'm sure you've guessed, the entity names with the ones you carefully saved just before. Once done, hit Save and you'll see your card for imports on the dashboard. Repeat the procedure once more pasting in this time the following:

type: custom:octopus-energy-rates-card
currentEntity: event.octopus_energy_electricity_21j00xxxxx_19000xxxxxxx_export_current_day_rates
pastEntity: event.octopus_energy_electricity_21j00xxxxx_19000xxxxxxx_export_previous_day_rates
futureEntity: event.octopus_energy_electricity_21j00xxxxx_19000xxxxxxx_export_next_day_rates
cols: 2
title: Agile export rates
exportrates: true
showday: true
showpast: false
hour12: false
lowlimit: 0
mediumlimit: 8
highlimit: 15
cheapest: false

which will give you the card for exports.

As you can see, it's perfectly possible to customise it to your preferences but I'll quickly explain my thoughts.

• I've set showpast to false since I have no wish to see time slots that have passed. Changing false to true, however, will let you make your own choice.
• I prefer the 24 hour clock and to have the day name included.
• For import rates, I've set arbitrary boundaries. Less than 20p/kWh I see as reasonably cheap and so set it to green. From there up to 35p/kWh I see as not great but not terrible and so set that to orange. Anything more than 35p/kWh I see as a real no-no and so set it to red.
• For export rates, my boundaries are good being anything above 15p, OK as anything above 8p and anything below 8p as bad hence green, orange and red set accordingly.
• I've also set "cheapest" to true for imports and false for exports. That means that, just for imports, it will highlight the cheapest time slot with a light green making it easy to see.
• Finally, albeit not configurable, the card will show any zero or negative prices in blue.

Have a go and see how you get on.

@majordennisbloodnok 

Having concluded that it is so much easier to do this on the PC I have "booked" the next available PC slot from my wife which unfortunately is Thursday. I will try and fudge along with the iPad until then but I think following your latest instructions would be much easier on the big screen with a keyboard and mouse!

If it's quiet for a couple of days I haven't forgotten about it and will get stuck in properly again on Thursday.

Once again, many thanks for your patience and support

Not a problem at all, @johndunlop. I agree having a screen and keyboard/mouse is much easier. Let me know how you get on.