Everyday Control

Once commissioned, the A/C is a normal local Home Assistant device. This page covers what shows up, how to collapse it into one clean entity, the special modes, and the dashboard card.

What HA exposes natively

HA’s Matter integration presents the raw W41H1 as several entities on one device:

  • a climate entity (HVAC mode + setpoint),
  • a separate fan entity (speed + oscillate/swing),
  • a redundant device-mandated Power switch,
  • unnamed On/Off switches for the special modes, plus a sleep select.

Usable, but split across tiles. HVAC modes: off / cool / heat / dry / fan-only (Auto needs a firmware FeatureMap bit). Setpoint is only honored in cool/heat. A temp change in dry / fan / auto / off is a no-op.

integrations/hisense-unified-ac is a HACS custom integration that merges those entities into one climate entity, so you get a single Thermostat card with the special modes as presets. Details: integrations/hisense-unified-ac/README.md.

It gives you:

  • HVAC: off / cool / heat / auto / dry / fan-only
  • Fan: auto / low / medium / high
  • Swing: off / vertical
  • Presets: eco / quiet / turbo / sleep (folded in from the special-mode switches + sleep select)
  • Setpoint gated to cool/heat (a temp change elsewhere shows no target and is a no-op)

Install (HACS):

  1. HACS → Integrations → ⋮ → Custom repositories → add the repo, category Integration.
  2. Install Hisense W41H1 Unified AC, restart HA.
  3. Settings → Devices & Services → Add Integration → Hisense W41H1 Unified AC → pick the A/C’s native Matter climate entity (fan / special-mode switches / sleep select auto-detect). Repeat per A/C.

Then hide the now-redundant native entities (the Power switch and the raw special-mode switches).

Prerequisite: dry / fan-only / single-setpoint must be unlocked on the native climate. HA gates those on a vendor allow-list; the companion ha-matter-extra-hvac-modes integration (domain matter_extra_hvac_modes) lifts that gate for test-vendor 0xFFF1 devices.

Special modes (Eco / Turbo / Mute-Quiet / Sleep)

On the raw Matter device these live in a manufacturer cluster (0xFFF1FC00) that python-matter-server can’t write: its custom-cluster path is read/poll only, so a direct matter_write template switch does not work. The unified integration is what makes them controllable (as presets); on the plain device they surface only as the auto-detected switches/select. Background and the guard/interlock matrix (Eco⊕Turbo exclusivity, forced fan states, etc.): firmware/docs/05-ha-control-and-native-ui.md.

Dashboard card

Both READMEs converge on a built-in vertical-stack with a Thermostat card plus fan/swing tiles (a HA integration can’t ship a native Lovelace card, so you add it yourself). With the unified entity it collapses to one thermostat card with HVAC modes, fan/swing icons, and a preset dropdown:

type: thermostat
entity: climate.your_ac_unified
features:
  - type: climate-hvac-modes
  - type: climate-fan-modes
    style: icons
  - type: climate-swing-modes
    style: icons
  - type: climate-preset-modes
    style: dropdown

The full ~200-line native (no-JS) layout with the link/health chip and the guard rationale is in firmware/docs/05-ha-control-and-native-ui.md. Point entity at your unit, one card per A/C.

Don’t place the ep2 Humidity / ep3 Temperature tiles; they report NULL (known gap).

Back to top