As best as I can tell, Sensibo and Cielo do not know the current state of your mini-splits.
If you have a schedule to set the units on/off and someone in your house inadvertently uses the remote to toggle the on/off state, all your subsequent schedule triggers will be off — for instance an “off” action you create in the Cielo app will turn ON a mini-split that’s already off, because it’s only a basic, binary toggle.
Obviously this is annoying, so I’ve been researching for controls that are smarter. I have no experience with Kumo but I think I’d switch if I knew it had this functionality. Does anyone have any recommendations?
I went this way, as well (though I didn’t spend anywhere near $150 - it came to under $5 per mini-split ordered from AliExpress, plus $11.50 for the programming tool from Amazon [including shipping and taxes]). It works really well. I can even use the remotes, if I want to, but the remote won’t be updated with the state of the mini-split if I use Home Assistant to adjust settings. Home Assistant will get an update of the state of the mini-split if I adjust settings via the remote.
More accurately, I’m using this repo that supports ESPHome and Home Assistant.
The only issue I have is it doesn’t seem to let me control the horizontal vane, but I may have an issue with the config somewhere.
You might also need to add the additional fan speed options. My testing showed I was missing “diffuse” and “middle”. You can figure it out by seeing what the esp logs show when you set the fan speed of the remote to each level.
You could try doing the same with the horizontal vane, I haven’t tested that yet.
I hadn’t tried checking the logs while using the remote. Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, when I press “Wide Vane” on my remote, I don’t get an update in the logs about it. I do see updates when I change the mode or fan speed, as well as the vertical swing setting.