We own a Comfee Dehumidifier to keep the humidity in the basement under control. It has WiFi-Support, but in the last couple of years I never came around to actually set it up. Now I wanted to integrate it into HomeAssistant and that was much harder than it should be.

First of all this humidifier or similar ones are sold under various brand names. In the end they are all made (or licensed?) by a company named Midea.

In theory there are multiple apps that should be able to communicate with the device, but none of them worked. I spent a few hours to finally get it to work. Here is how (using Android).

The main problem was probably that the firmware in my device was not able to cope with a WiFi password that contained non-alphanumeric characters.

In addition the whole setup process requires that your phone connects to an access point opened by the dehumidifier which then itself of course has no Internet connection. So to make it easier on yourself, I recommend disabling anything on your phone that might make it connect to a different network mid-process. Disable mobile data and disable the Turn on Wi-Fi automatically setting under Settings → Network & Internet → Internet → Network Preferences.

For the setup you need the Smarthome (MSmartHome) app by AIDEOLOGY. None of the other options worked for me. Register an account and log into the app.

Next you need to prepare your router. Disable the 5GHz network and add a second guest network. For that network set a simple password containing letters only. If your router doesn't have a guest network option, you could maybe open a hotspot on a second phone, though I don't know how to restrict that to 2.4GHz only.

Now connect your phone to the guest network and go to the app. Click the + button and pick Add new device. You can now scan the QR code on the back of the dehumidifier or pick it manually from the list.

Now follow the on-screen instructions to set the password for the guest network, bring the device into AP mode and let it connect. Theoretically the app should auto connect to the net_xxx WiFi created by the AP mode, but if that fails it will ask you to do it manually (password is 12345678). This process should hopefully finally succeed with adding the device to your app (and thus the Midea cloud service).

We're halfway there now. Select the device, tap the three dots menu in upper left corner and pick Firmware update. You should hopefully see an available update. For me it was an update from v3.0.6 to v3.0.8. Apply the update.

Now it's finally time to add the device to your real WiFi. First connect your phone to your normal network, then go back to the app's home screen and again pick Add device. Repeat the previous steps, but this time provide your normal WiFi password. With the updated firmware it should work.

The new device will replace the previously set up device, since it has the same serial number. So when you return to the app's home screen you still will only see one device.

You now can undo all the preparations you did before:

• re-enable the 5GHz network in your router
• disable the guest network in your router
• re-enable WiFi auto connections in your phone
• re-enable mobile data in your phone

From now on it gets easier. Go to HACS (if you don't have it yet refer to their homepage on how to install it), click Integrations → Explore & Download Repositories, enter “Midea” and pick the Midea Air Appliances (LAN) repo. Finally click Download and restart HomeAssistant.

Finally go to Settings → Devices & Services and click Add Integration. In the dialog enter your E-Mail and Password you used to register in the app and it should add the dehumidifier as a new HomeAssistant device.

You now can uninstall the Smart Home app again. HomeAssistant will talk directly to your device without needing the cloud anymore.

It is however recommended to assign a fixed IP address to your dehumidifier in the router.

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