This project is maintained in my free time. A coffee ☕ is always appreciated!

Custom ESPHome external component that drives a Panasonic AC over infrared.

This is the second generation of PanaAC_ESPHome (PanaAC v1). It addresses the earlier UI limitation of separate fan-level, vertical-swing, and horizontal-swing selects:

• PanaAC v1 exposes separate fan-level, vertical-swing, and horizontal-swing selects alongside the climate entity in the ESPHome device.

  

• PanaAC v2 combines those controls in the climate entity through the PanaAC_v2_HA integration, providing a cleaner climate-card UI. The native (v1) climate and selects remain available by default; in v2 MQTT mode, set hide_legacy_comps: true to hide them from Home Assistant and use only the PanaAC v2 climate entity.

  

• Implemented contributor features:

  • POWERFUL/ECO presets & device_id grouping (from @axa88)

• Planned feature:

  • [UPCOMING] Humidity sensor support (from @anhthao8x).

It runs in two modes, selected by whether you set topic_prefix on the panaac_v2: block:

• v2 MQTT mode (topic_prefix set + a mqtt: block) — the full-featured climate is exposed over custom <prefix>/state|traits|availability|set MQTT JSON topics, consumed by the PanaAC v2 HA custom integration as a single all-in-one climate card. The on-device (v1) climate and selects stay visible on the native API by default. Set hide_legacy_comps: true to hide them from Home Assistant.
• v1 native mode (topic_prefix omitted) — a native climate entity (named "<name> (v1)") whose Fan Mode offers the full Panasonic fan levels (Auto / Level 1…5 / Quiet), plus a Swing Vertical select and, when enabled, a Swing Horizontal select. Exposed via the ESPHome native API / standard MQTT discovery. No broker required. Behaves like PanaAC_ESPHome.

The IR encode/decode core and the canonical ac_state are shared between both modes. See DESIGN.md for the architecture, MQTT contract, and IR protocol.

In this workspace, the custom PanaAC v2 repositories now live under panaac_v2/, and the consolidated shared test workspace is ../PanaAC_v2_Testing.

• Panasonic IR protocol (two-frame, 27-byte) encode + decode
• Full fan levels: Auto, Level 1–5, Quiet, and conditional Powerful (3- or 5-level, configurable)
• Vertical swing positions: Auto, Highest, High, Middle, Low, Lowest
• Separate horizontal swing axis: Auto, Left Max, Left, Middle, Right, Right Max
• Optional None, Powerful, and Eco preset modes (Auto/Cool/Dry only)
• IR receiver syncs state from the physical remote
• v2 MQTT mode with retained traits/state and auto-configured availability (republished on every reconnect)

• ESP8266 or ESP32 (tested on Wemos D1 mini / ESP8266, 4 MB flash)
• ESPHome CLI 2025.9.0+

Load the component from the components folder:

external_components:
  - source: components

Then add a panaac_v2: block. Start from an example:

• esphome/esphome-panaac-v2.yaml — v2 MQTT mode (topic_prefix + mqtt:).
• esphome/esphome-panaac-v2-v1mode.yaml — v1 native mode (api:, no topic_prefix, no mqtt: required).

See INSTALL.md for step-by-step hardware, compile, flash, and verify instructions (including the required secrets.yaml for v2 mode).

To group the native climate and Swing V/H entities under one ESPHome sub-device, define an ESPHome device and set device_id on panaac_v2::

esphome:
  devices:
    - id: hvac
      name: Living Room AC

panaac_v2:
  device_id: hvac

The PanaAC v2 Home Assistant integration remains a single climate entity; swing controls are not created as separate HA swing entities.

Note: in v2 mode the build fails if topic_prefix is set without a global mqtt: block.

With topic_prefix: panaac_v2/esphome-panaac-v2:

Commands are partial JSON, e.g. {"fan_mode": "Level 2"}. See DESIGN.md for the full topic contract, payloads, and the reconnect-republish behaviour.

• DESIGN.md — architecture, MQTT topic contract, IR protocol, startup/reconnect behaviour.
• INSTALL.md — hardware, compile, flash, and verify.

• This PanaAC v2 project is vibe coded with the help of AI Agents (Codex & Claude), using various models cross checked each other - gpt 5.5, gpt 5.6, opus 4.6, glm 5.2, minimax-m3, kimi-k2.7-code).