Daiken Air Con with Arduino?

Hopefully this is the right location to pose my question

I’ve recently put some computer equipment into my office and it gets too hot during the afternoon. It’s fine if i’m home because I can turn on the aircon with the remote. However, when I’m not home, it gets hot which in turn causes the server and hard disks to heat up beyond what I’m comfortable with.

So i’m looking for a solution that will send a single ON command (the IR code from the remote) to the unit to power it up for a certain amount of time (or until the temp drops) then send the Off button. I don’t need it to adjust the temp up or down. Just turn it on.

Anyone have any ideas what the easiest solution is as i’ve never worked with an arduino.

Here’s the links I was looking at

https://www.reddit.com/r/SmartThings/comments/38qfet/is_there_something_i_can_use_to_control_an_in_the/

Just found this article

Arduino with ThingSheild as IR Bridge

And also this IR remote to send the button press to the Aircon.
https://www.cooking-hacks.com/hvac-ir-remote-module-for-arduino-raspberry-pi

Just need to make sure they can be combined at the same time.
Then I need to figure out where to get the temperature from.

Surely this has been done before and I’ve just missed it.

I really have no idea how to link the SmartThings Shield up

Leaning towards using an Arduino because of the Smarthings work that was already done although I think the PI has some benefits of Linux underneath.

Also looked at a PC USB based IR solution.

Thinking the Arudino is the way to go, and i can possibly adapt it to work for my garage door opener too!

This is a great start but it would be nice to have 2 way communication just incase the ac fails to turn on you would know. You could also add a temp sensor to the arduino I guess.

Hi MikeDL,

It may be a great start but I have no experience in Arduino or the hardware at all :slight_smile: So i’m really just looking to leverage the work of others.

In my case, here is what i’m thinking.
Detection of temperature - Can be a Temperature sensor smart thing or a process on the server that writes a log with a high temp
Trigger - Smart Things will pick up on the detection, send a message/trigger to the Smart Things Arduino shield to take action
Action - Once the trigger to the Smart Things Arduino shield, triggers the IR “ON” to to turn the Air Con on.

Of course an off action would be nice too

I have no idea if this will work.