I have come a long way, but in the end I cannot set the temperature on the W600 from Home Assistant.
First I added a W600 to the Aqara app, by using the E1 hub. First attempts failed until I found out the hub needs to have the right firmware (4.3.8). You can do the update from the Aqara app. I had to do several updates one after another.
Then it worked seamlessly. This will affect all users choosing Zigbee, I guess.
Now the W600 is Zigbee configured, I want to connect to Home Assistant.
I run Home Assistant on an Odroid M1 with a ZBT-2 Zigbee hub.
It is easy to find Aqara in the integrations and add the device. Weirdly it presents itself as an air conditioner. There are a couple of entities. One seems to be meant to control the device: Aqara lumi.airrtc.aeu005. However its status remains stuck on ‘inactive’. No idea how to change this.
So the big question: how to set the temperature on the W600 form HA?
Even if there were a firmware with Bugfix, how would you update the W600? I can easily see the W600 in the app via Bluetooth, but without an Aqara Hub, an update cannot be performed. Or rather, I haven’t found a way to do it.
To clarify. If on a box is mentioned ‘works with home assistant’ a consumer has every reason to think it will work once out of the box. I would assume that Aqara (or HA) would do the effort to make things work.
Full stop. That appears not the way it works at this time. It is more like early Linux days.
It is a bug in the way that it is not some user error in working with HA. There is not yet a complete working integration in HA.
I bought a rather cheap E1 hub from Aqara just to do firmware updates. I will also need it to calibrate the device. Unpair from HA, pair to Aqara Hub, do things and finally repair with HA.
In the meantime I wrote a few quirk lines and I am now able to drive the valve directly from HA. I will test is for a few more days and post it.