I recently added a window air conditioner to keep the bedroom cool at night. This air conditioner was a "smart" unit, with built-in wifi. But like most commercial smart devices, it required installation of a (poorly reviewed) mobile app, creation of a cloud account and Internet connectivity (with reports that the unit routinely dropped off of wifi). While I did want to use automation for control of this AC unit, I wanted that control to be local like most of my other devices. So that's what I set out to do.
