2

I have a Nedis WIFIHTPL20FWT Smart conversion heater. It seems that I need to register to Nedis cloud service and only then using Nedis SmartLife App this device could be connected to my local WLAN.

I have an IoT gateway and services of my own in which I was hoping to have this device integrated somehow and to be able to do that the first step would be to learn howto have the device to connect.

So related to this question I am interested if and how it is possible to have this device connected.

Read some posts like linked one and tried WPS, WPS with PBC but without success. I am not too experienced with WPS but also it could be that there is something in the protocol.

I am quite in the beginning of my study so please excuse if my question is too broad or vague.

Things that I am now pondering:

If I use WPS I think the only option would be that I knew the PIN connecting device is trying to send to have it configured in my WLAN router. So I should dig that PIN somewhere...

If the device acts like (in linked question) Chromecast does as an access point howto proceed with my wlan router?

Update:

Nedis on-line manual instructs to reset the device by pressing the [+] (Button 5) for 5 seconds and the see some led blinking. Well the heater does not seem to have such al led but a text AP0 appears into the display.

Could that be an Access Point 0? Well can not connect to that :( Then I found out that pressing [-] button I could switch to AP1. That is it. I can now connect one device to that access point AP1 but it does not seem to recognize http-protocol. So guess AP0 is access point OFF and AP1 is ON.

Conlusion: the led that manual points is actually the WLAN symbol in LCD display. Blinking fast when AP0, slower when AP1.

As a word of warning if someone is thinking to purchase one:

Had difficulties to get device connected because the device (older tab) I use with app did not show all controls as should and I just accidentally managed to get the heater connected but this is my devices problem only. Using AP mode and AP1 worked well for me. The text shown needs a magnifier :)

When battery is turned on it does not start heating. It seems not to have any persistent memory to store any critical values except WLAN settings. You need to manually press two buttons before it starts heating OR poll the app if the device has been shut down and put it ON there. It really should be someway automatic thing. Maybe there is a setting.

For my use this is not acceptable. I need to ensure my storage room is warm. I live about 500km from that place. After electric shortage if anything goes wrong this heater is not waking up. I assume it wakes up only until connected to Nedis cloud service or so. But it is not sure even that the network in that area works always.

I could accept that it does not store the target temperature and starts to warm up to some default value which I could then change as soon the connection gets back. But now it is not doing even that.

Anyway I am still browsing and searching documentation to find out how to get the heater to wake up after electric shortage. Maybe there is a setting or so but I doubt that since there seen not to be any persistent memory :(

pirho
  • 121
  • 4
  • Is there a specific reason you don’t want to use the Smart Life app? It still allows integration with Google Home and Alexa. What kind of setup to you have? It’s probable that it’s the app which will discover the device (via BLE, most likely) and will then share your network’s name and password from the phone to the heater, or some similar workflow. Whether there are other methods to do this is going to difficult to find out given the limited information available. – jcaron Oct 31 '20 at 16:28
  • 2
    @jcaron As I wrote I have my own services built up and I do not wish to use several apps nor cloud services to manage my already working system. I am just interested of the possibilities to use some ready "hardware" in parallel with my home made stuff. Yes the information is limited, all I know is that the device is trying to establish connection when powering up. Cannot find as a bt-device, seems not to be WLAN hotspot either. – pirho Oct 31 '20 at 17:35
  • @pirhi there aren’t that many ways for a smartphone to talk to a device which isn’t yet on the network. It’s either BLE (with either the phone or the device as peripheral), or WiFi (though I think this only works on Android, not sure), or some funky stuff such as sending data encoded as variable length packets over WiFi). But there are two different things at play here: getting the device connected to your network, and then trying to control it. Doing the former shouldn’t preclude you from doing the latter, if that’s in any way possible. – jcaron Oct 31 '20 at 21:37
  • @jcaron Yes, thank you for clarification. I'm aware of that, at least somehow and I know that even I am able to have device connected my attempts to reverse engineer communication most propably fail :) – pirho Oct 31 '20 at 21:54
  • Once the device is connected, you have quite a few options available to you, including scanning ports or sniffing traffic which may help you determine ways to control the device. But unless someone has done it before you and published their results, that's definitely in the realm of hacking... – jcaron Oct 31 '20 at 22:47
  • 1
    I found this student project that got very far in reverse engineering. E.g., "...able to link to the device and control it from the console...the device can be controlled locally, without having to go through...cloud services" – Peter Mortensen Oct 17 '22 at 17:08

0 Answers0