I recently implemented the ability to control the user’s air conditioner’s fan speed and air direction.

Originally, I didn’t want to do this as the more functionality I add, the farther I get from the original, purposely basic goal: “simply control your AC from outside the home”.

However, for some air conditioner models, we do need to set the fan mode for signals to reliably reach the user’s unit.

It would have been possible for me to just update the ESP32 code to set every request’s fan speed to the “auto” mode but that would overwrite any of the user’s existing fan speed settings causing confusion. I believe this would result in any users just not using the app.

It’s hard to clarify whether an air conditioner is doing exactly what it’s told to as fan speed behaviour and temperature ramping is not an easy thing to measure or confirm. The moment the user has a suspicion that AC_thing isn’t sending exactly the settings they believe, confidence gets lost.

So I implemented the ability to control both fan speed and air direction flow. Take a look!


It was fun making the colours reflect the warm/dry/cool mode’s theme. As far as maintaining the original goal of a simple UI, I tried to emulate remote controls with slide down panels which reveal custom controls like these. I’m not sure I’m happy with it just yet but it does do a decent job of retaining the original simple UI whilst also providing more advanced functionality for those who need it.