Simple Homekit connector for Tadiran ACs, without Homebridge

With the AC unit off, press MODE+WIFI until it beeps to reset the WiFi settings.

Connect to the newly broadcast WiFi network ("GR-AC-something-or-other") and send it your WiFi credentials (2.4GHz only):

echo -n "{\"psw\": \"[PASSWORD]\",\"ssid\": \"[SSID]\",\"t\": \"wlan\"}" | nc -u 192.168.1.1 7000

The AC units are listening on port 7000, either find their IP in your router or scan for them using https://github.com/cmroche/greeclimate

git clone https://github.com/cmroche/greeclimate
cd greeclimate
python3 gree.py --discovery

greeclimate.discovery - INFO - Found gree device Device: xxxxxxxxxxxx @ 192.168.1.100:7000 (mac: xxxxxxxxxxxx)

You can run the server directly, the only thing you have to explictly set is the target ip:

TARGET_IP=192.168.1.100 node src/main.js

For convenience, a Dockerfile is provided. Build by running:

sudo docker build -t tadirankit .

And then run:

sudo docker run -d  -t --restart always --net=host -e TARGET_IP=192.168.1.100 -e tadirankit
sudo docker logs [container id] # To get QR code

In my router - added a rule to drop all outgoing connections on the internet interface for the MAC addresses of the two devices, as well as gave them static IPs. Since they are on WiFi, it would be better to block it at the access point level.

Once you do this, you will see the WiFi interface on the AC becoming somewhat unavailable on the network - perhaps it's spinning on timeouts to the management server, which is now blocked.

To resolve this, I installed https://github.com/emtek-at/GreeAC-DummyServer, also in a Docker container. I had to change the target image:

FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/sdk:6.0

I also added the following hostnames to resolve to the IP of my Docker host, which is running the DummyServer

dis.gree.com
gree.home.com
info-acq.gree.com

These are not strictly necessary, but make the following step redundant (I think?), which is to use https://github.com/emtek-at/GreeAC-ConfigTool to change the remote host on the device.