tech

Running Mill Gen 3 heaters locally

Why I wrote this

I got the idea of writing this post when I got an email from Mill, apologizing for making me reset my Gen 3 heaters (again). As probably a lot of other people, I turned on all my heaters when I got home checking if they broke.
Mine were still running as I left before summer.

How did it not break

Since I have set mine up to run locally towards my Home-Assistant server at home, I don't rely on whatever they broke during summer. The Home-Assistant integration contributed by @danielhiversen made it possible to connect the heaters locally by connecting directly to the heaters' local IP-adress. Instead of through Mill's cloud server.

This post won't get into how I have set up my Home-Assistant server, but will go through how I connected my Mill heaters, making sure they stay local-only, and what small nifty automations I am running throughout winter.

Prepare

  1. Phone with the Mill app installed.
  2. Make sure are able to connect to and configure your home router.
  3. Already have Home-Assistant up and running.

How I set it up

First you need to set up the heater through Mill's app, follow their instruction until the heater is connected to your Wi-Fi.

Log in to your home router's settings page (usually reachable at the local IP 192.168.0.1), and find your Mill heater's local IP-adress. Reserve this IP for your heater, this is to make sure that if your heater reconnects to the same local IP-adress if it were to be shut off or disconnect.

Now open your heater's IP-adress in your browser, this will open a simple page with "WiFi setup" and "Device Status". In the WiFi section, change the Cloud without local API to No cloud, local API (as STA).
NB: Your heaters will not be available in the Mill App, until you change this back or reset them
Input your WiFi's SSID and Password again (this might disconnect your device for a second or two).

You are now free to add your heaters into Home-Assistant locally with the built in integration without relying Mill's cloud server.

Automations!

This is why I wanted these smart heaters!
By connecting them to all my other sensor, buttons, and automations in Home Assistant, I am able to change the temperatures automatically by using different sensors in my home.
Current ones I got running are:

  • Day, Night and Away mode.
  • Before my alarm goes off in the morning, turn up the heat in my bedroom, and switch to Day mode.
  • Opening my bedroom window turns off the heater, turn it to the correct mode (not last temp) when closed.
  • When I turn on my desktop PC, turn off heating in my office.

Things I still want to automate

Turn off or reduce heating above certain wattage thresholds in the house, to save on the electricity bill.