air-q-kotlin

air-q-kotlin is a small helper written in Kotlin giving you the ability to access commonly required features which are missing in air-Q’s UI and official Python library aioairq.

Motivation

I bought air-Q because it’s advertised as “Cloud is optional”. However, I was very disappointed when the built-in UI did not allow me to set any relevant configuration. One cannot set the many LED themes the device supports, it’s not even possible to configure the IP setup. 😒

Support initially redirected me to official apps for Android and iOS. This is of course not the same as “Cloud”, but for privacy-concerned people (like me 🤓) this is also unacceptable. I do not want to install additional software on some phone to configure another device.

Luckily, both the Python library and air-Q UI’s JavaScript show how to access the API and from the structure of the config data one can easily guess what data to set to. This is how air-q-kotlin was born.

At this point, a thanks to the air-Q guys, providing me with additional documentation, making it a bit easier for me. 😀

Features

The following table compares all supported features between air-q-kotlin, the air-Q’s UI and the official Python library (as of 2023-04-11).

Feature	supported byair-q-kotlin	supported byair-Q’s UI	supported byaioairq
check for correct password by ping endpoint	✅	–	✅
read all configuration keys/values	✅	✅	✅
read current data	✅	✅	✅
read average data	❌	❌	✅
access the device’s log	✅	❌	❌
set WLAN login data	❌	✅	❌
set air-Q’s password	❌	✅	❌
read/change the device’s category	❌	✅	❌
read/change the device’s name	✅	✅	❌
enable/disable cloud upload	❌	✅	❌
enable/disable cloud remote	✅	❌	❌
trigger firmware update	❌	✅	❌
configure NTP server	✅	❌	❌
configure custom IP setup (disabling DHCP)	✅	❌	❌
set IP setup back to DHCP	✅	❌	❌
set LED brightness	✅	❌	❌
set LED brightness (day/night mode)	✅	❌	❌
set LED theme (individually for each side)	✅	❌	❌
identify air-Q device (by blinking its LEDs)	✅	❌	❌
manually restart air-Q device	✅	❌	❌
gracefully shutdown air-Q device	✅	❌	❌

air-Q has a lot more features to be configured. I only implemented the missing things I needed for it to operate. Also, air-Q support warned me not every feature is available for every device tier. So I tinkered with my device as little as possible.

Usage

air-q-kotlin is not a nice console tool, but for “run once”.

• Go to Main.kt, uncomment and change the parts you need.
• Setup environment variables
  • AIRQ_HOST (mDNS name or current IP address) and
  • AIRQ_PASSWORD.
• Run the application.

As the better alternative, you can use an IDE (I used IntelliJ).

• Create a run configuration with above environment variables.
• But a breakpoint in Main.kt after airQ is declared, that is the } line.
• Run in Debug mode.
• Use “Evaluate Expression” on the airQ instance to read from/apply to your air-Q device instantly. 😎

Screenshots

Custom IP setup

Accessing LED theme configuration

GitHub

View Github