in today's video we're going to be having a look at a smart dehumidifier by inventor
we're going to be having a look at its main feature set and if you stick around till the
end i'll be showing you how to integrate it into home assistant for full local control check it out
what's going on guys i hope you're all doing well in my house i've got a utility room with
a tumble dryer and washing machine and this room happens to be right next to the front door so
whenever these are both on they create a lot of humidity and when this humidity meets the front
door it creates a lot of condensation as this is a brand new house i really wanted to reduce
that condensation as much as possible in order to avoid things like mold and water marks on the wall
and my solution for actually doing this was to make use of a dehumidifier and this is where
the inventor dehumidifier comes in i should also point out here that this video isn't a full review
it's more of a quick preview for the dehumidifier and also showing how to integrate this thing
into home assistant pull transparency as always i was given this unit of the dehumidifier for free
but this video isn't sponsored and i was never paid or asked to create the video by inventor
and everything you see and hear in the video are my own personal thoughts and opinions and with
that said let's check out this thing's features and the reasons i've incorporated this into my
own home so this thing is the eva ion pro wi-fi 20 litre dehumidifier it's created and manufactured
by inventor appliances who create a wide range of different home appliances including things like
mini fridges wine coolers vacuum cleaners and more the dehumidifiers got five main features
which include wi-fi an air ionizer a hepa filter a carbon filter and low noise level by making use
of wi-fi you're able to connect the dehumidifier to the inventor app and remotely control the unit
this step will be required if you want to make use of the local control with home assistant
by making use of the inventor app which is available for both android and ios
you're able to connect your dehumidifier to your local wi-fi and once it's connected you're able
to make use of the smart controls which allow you to control all aspects of the dehumidifier
one cool thing about this device is it has full local control
meaning it doesn't require the cloud or any additional services in order to be able to
be fully operable on your home network and those are just some of its core features
let's have a look at what you get in the box and some of its other features the dehumidifier comes
packaged in a thick inventor box on the outside of the box you'll find all the specifications for
the dehumidifier and you'll also find that which by certification logo inside the box you'll find
the dehumidifier unit itself as well as all of the documentation that you'll need to set it up
you'll also find a small hose which can be added to the product to give it continuous drainage
so that you never have to empty the water tank the dehumidifiers outer casing is made out of a
hard white acrylic it's got a bit of weight to it and weighs about 14 kilograms which kind of
adds to the premium feel of it on the front of the unit you'll find the clear blue water drawer
and this is where the water will sit if you're not using the optional drainage hose the removable
water drawer can hold up to three liters of water and the dehumidifier can process about 20 liters
of water a day if you keep replacing the water in it if you're using that optional hose then
you'll never have to empty this thing out as no water will get into it on the left of the water
drawer you'll see this gray piece of plastic and the purpose of this little piece of plastic
is to trigger the overflow sensor so as the water rises this piece of plastic will touch the sensor
and when the sensor touches it will tell the unit that the water is full and it will automatically
turn off the dehumidifier to prevent any unwanted water leakage the drawer slides out very easily
even when it's got a full tank of water there's a little plastic handle in the center to allow
you to pick it up easier so you can easily empty the water out and then slide it back into place
on the top of the unit you'll find all of the physical buttons which control all of the main
functionality of the dehumidifier this includes things like turning on the ion mode changing the
fan speed changing the mode and turning the device on and off there's also a small display between
those buttons and this will show the value of the humidity for the room that the device is currently
in and this value is pulled straight from the hydrometer that's built into the dehumidifier
just in front of the control buttons you'll find the air outlet and this is where all the air is
going to be pushed out of the dehumidifier and you'll need to leave a clearance above this in
order to avoid any issues with the dehumidifier if we head on to the back then you'll find that drain
outlet and this is where you'll attach that hose if you want to automatically drain the water out
there's a little rubber bung that's attached to the back so you can keep that clipped in if you're
not using it just below that there's an electrical diagram to show you all of the different parts and
how it's all wired together one really cool thing about this dehumidifier is everything on it is
serviceable so if you wanted to take it apart and change bits out then it's very simple to do
below the electrical diagram you'll find the power cable and two sticky out pegs these pegs allow you
to wind the cable around it when it's not in use just to keep it tidy the majority of the back of
the unit is taken up by the removable air intake grille so if you pop this grille off you'll find
a little slot to house both the carbon filter and also the hepa filter following the manufacturer's
guides you should clear the air filter every 15 days and you should never turn the device on with
no air filter on it some other nice additions to the device's design are the built-in handles so at
the top of the unit are some built-in handles that just curve under the top of the unit another nice
feature are the four caster wheels that are on the bottom of the unit and this simply allows you to
slide the device along the floor and this could be very handy if you were moving it from room to room
and didn't want to keep picking it up especially as it can get a bit heavy with the added water so
that's a quick look at the dehumidifiers design and some of its features now let's have a look
at how we set it up using the inventor app the setup is very simple it's a simple case
of downloading the app from the app store and once you've got the app downloaded you'll just need to
register for a user account and with your user account signed in you can just click add device
when you do that it should automatically detect your dehumidifier and you can then just select
that and then pass your wi-fi credentials to it once you've entered your credentials it will then
just register this device against your inventor account with that registered on the network you
can name the device and then you can start making use of the app to control the device the app gives
you access to all of the dehumidifiers controls you can turn the dehumidifier on and off you can
change its mode you can toggle between the smart mode the continuous mode the drying mode and you
can also adjust the fan speed in addition to this you can also access the scheduler so you can set
a schedule for when you want the dehumidifier to wake up and you can set this on a regular basis
or if you just want it on a couple of days the other thing you can do with the app is you can
check for any firmware updates so at the time of recording this the default fire is currently up
to date so that's a very quick look at the setup and a very quick look at the app and some of the
app functionality it's also worth noting here that you do need to perform that setup before you move
on to the next step which is going to be setting the device up in home assistant in order to get
the dehumidifier into home assistant there is also one of the prerequisite that you need to have and
that's you need to have hacks set up and installed in your home assistant so if you haven't got hacks
then go get it and if you do have it let's carry this on so on the left there we're just going to
head into hacks and then from here we're going to choose integrations up at the top in hacks we're
going to hit this blue button in the bottom right corner that says explore and download repositories
then in the search box we're going to start typing media and the one that we're interested in is this
bottom one it's the media dehumidifier lan and what this integration's going to allow us to do
is to control our dehumidifier locally with home assistant so we're going to select that and then
we're going to hit download this repositories in hacks in the bottom right corner there and then
download we'll then see that that's pending a restart so we'll just need to reboot home
assistant for this to kick in so in the bottom left there we're going to choose configuration
then settings and then we're going to hit restart once home assistant comes back to life we're going
to need to add that new integration so we're going to head into configuration again then devices
and services then in the bottom right corner we're going to choose add integration and if
we start typing midia you should see that appear in your list there it's media air appliances lan
if when you're typing it it doesn't appear then more than likely it's a browser cache issue the
simplest way to fix this is to just hit control and hit f5 so we're going to select that and that
should then just take a second to run through the setup once that completes it's going to ask us to
sign into our media app account and this account is going to be the account that you signed into
on the inventor app so go ahead and enter those account details the username and password there
with those entered you can go ahead and click submit and then you might see something like
this where it says it's been unable to discover your appliance with the name of the dehumidifier
so in my case mine is just called dehumidifier and what we can do here is select the ipv4 address of
the device so go look that up in your router and then paste the ip address in here and once you've
pasted that address in you want to just scroll down and hit submit what this will then do is it
will go and get those api tokens for that device and this device will then be controllable locally
so i can see that mine's found it there and it's been added in as dehumidifier and if i hit finish
there i can now see that device has been added into home assistant so if we have a quick look
here we can see that we've got one device and four entities so if we select that device we can see
that that singular device is my dehumidifier and i can see i've got a couple of different controls
here that are exposed so i've got the dehumidifier on or off i've got the fan controls and i've also
got that ion mode i can then also see here for the sensors i've got a humidity sensor i've got
an option for if the tank is full and i've also got the current temperature of the dehumidifier by
selecting the dehumidifier at the top we can head into the controls and we can switch between those
three different modes that are offered by this particular model so we can have the drying mode
the continuous mode and also that smart mode all of the dehumidifiers controls and sensors are all
available from within your scripts and automations and in a future video i'll be showing you how i've
automated this dehumidifier so that it reacts to my tumble dryer or washing machine being used
before we wrap this up then let's quickly run through some pros and cons for this device
so let's start off with the pros and our first pro is obviously local control so from a smart
home and a home assistant perspective local control is ideally what we want we don't rely on
any cloud services or need any additional services or subscriptions to actually be able to control a
device that we have next up we've got the casters now this might seem like a very small thing but
having those wheels on the bottom just makes it so much easier to move this thing around and if
you're not mounting it on a tabletop or a surface then these casters are going to be ideal for when
you want to just move it from one room to another and the final pro then is definitely going to have
to be the drainage now a lot of dehumidifiers in this category don't actually offer this so
it's nice that this one does and on the topic of the hose let's move over to the cons because i've
also got the hose listed as a con this is based on me and my setup but i'd personally like it if the
hose was at least double if not triple in length and that will just give you a bit more flexibility
in order to actually lay it down a drain or pipe out of a window or something and my second con is
also to do with length so i'd like it if the power cable was also a little bit longer and that would
just give you a bit more flexibility and freedom with when you're placing and laying this device
another con that i have is again down to personal preference and it's the fact that the water tank
doesn't have a convenient pouring method so there's just a square cut out that you can
pull the water out of and i found that if you don't do this properly it can spill everywhere
and my final con then is to do with one of the dehumidifiers main features which is the low noise
levels although on lower fan speeds and lower energy modes the dehumidifier is a lot quieter i'd
never list this as a low noise level as it does make a fair bit of noise now it's not going to be
anything earth breaking and it's not really going to keep you up at night at least it doesn't bother
me anyway but i wouldn't list this as a feature so that's why i'm calling it a con overall i
think this is a great smart home dehumidifier and i would highly recommend it if you are interested
in seeing a full review of this thing and some of the automations that i've set up and i'm making
use of then do make sure you are subscribed and there we go guys that's been a quick look at the
eva ion pro wi-fi dehumidifier by inventor if you've enjoyed this video then don't forget to
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the description below thank you for watching and i'll catch you in the next one cheers
you