Connecting iHeater Link to Home Assistant

iHeater Link publishes the device to Home Assistant via MQTT Discovery: HA automatically creates a card with real sensors and controls (target temperature, duration, mode IDLE/DRYING/STORAGE).

Note

The device will not appear in Settings → Devices & services → Discovered. iHeater Link uses MQTT Discovery, not UPnP/zeroconf. The MQTT integration must already be added in Home Assistant, pointing at your broker.

Prerequisites

1. An MQTT broker (e.g. Mosquitto add-on) is running on the HA side or reachable over the network.
2. The MQTT integration is added in HA and configured against that broker.
3. iHeater Link has received link_integration {type:"ha"} from the portal and established a connection to the same broker.

Step 1. Open settings

In the Home Assistant sidebar, click Settings at the bottom.

Step 2. Go to Devices & services

From the settings list pick Devices & services.

Step 3. Open the MQTT integration

Find the MQTT card in the integrations list. Below the name is the connected-device count.

Step 4. Locate the iDryer device

On the integration page expand the broker entry under Services (127.0.0.1 or your broker's address). All iDryer devices are listed below it by serial number (DEVICE_*).

Click the device you need.

Step 5. Control & state

The device page has two blocks:

• Controls — input elements:
• iDryer U1 duration — duration in minutes
• iDryer U1 mode control — mode (IDLE / DRYING / STORAGE)
• iDryer U1 target temp — target temperature (slider)
• Sensors — real values. Set depends on device type (Config decides which sensors are published):
• iHeater Link: heater_power, mode, alerts
• Storage Link: same plus temperature, humidity

To start heating:

1. Set the target temperature with the slider.
2. Set the duration.
3. Select DRYING or STORAGE in the mode selector.

To stop — switch the selector to IDLE.

Note

target temp and duration are first stored on the device as pending values; the actual run starts when you pick the mode. This lets you set parameters in any order and trigger with one action.

Under the hood

• Discovery (HA UI entities with proper icons) is published automatically on connect. Set is driven by Config.hasXxx flags — missing sensors do not appear as ghosts.
• State (current values) is published to HA topics every 5 seconds in parallel with the portal.
• Commands (set_temp / set_duration / set_mode) go HA → MQTT broker → device → assembled into a Request and routed through the same path as portal commands. No HA-specific branches in product code.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	What to check
Device does not appear in HA	On the device in the portal: Home Assistant → Enabled: yes. The ha.state field in integrations/status should be online.
Discovery is published, card is empty	Wait 5–10 seconds after the first connect. If values are still missing — verify the MQTT broker is not dropping retained messages.
Control buttons do nothing	Check the command_topic from Discovery — it must match idryer/{serial}/U1/set_mode and friends.
Ghost sensors stuck at Unknown	Stale retained Discovery from a previous firmware. Either wait for the next Discovery publish cycle or clear retained manually: mosquitto_pub -t 'homeassistant/.../config' -n -r.