Hello,
Please forgive my ignorance if the solution to my problem is blatantly obvious. My goal is to integrate my Actron air A/C unit into my home assistant system. I could fork out the $1k odd for the wifi connect module but upon inspection of my indoor unit i found an RS485 port. I did a little research and found that they sell a BMS board which allows for modbus communication. It has a data connection from this RS485 port i mentioned and has a modbus BMS IN and OUT port.
This got me thinking, is it as easy as connecting into this onboard RS485 port coupled with a USB converter and start polling the modbus? Anyway ive tried and failed. I cant get my head around whether i actually need this BMS card or not. What else aside from assigning a slave ID and port settings could this card be used for? I was hoping of implementing an ESP8266 to locally poll the modbus and then wirelessly transmit to my HA.
What am i missing here?
Thanks for any help, even a steer in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.
Please forgive my ignorance if the solution to my problem is blatantly obvious. My goal is to integrate my Actron air A/C unit into my home assistant system. I could fork out the $1k odd for the wifi connect module but upon inspection of my indoor unit i found an RS485 port. I did a little research and found that they sell a BMS board which allows for modbus communication. It has a data connection from this RS485 port i mentioned and has a modbus BMS IN and OUT port.
This got me thinking, is it as easy as connecting into this onboard RS485 port coupled with a USB converter and start polling the modbus? Anyway ive tried and failed. I cant get my head around whether i actually need this BMS card or not. What else aside from assigning a slave ID and port settings could this card be used for? I was hoping of implementing an ESP8266 to locally poll the modbus and then wirelessly transmit to my HA.
What am i missing here?
Thanks for any help, even a steer in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.