[denismi]

> The latest Daikin indoor units have a built-in WiFi module which only allows control through their cloud infrastructure.

Which ones?

My Alira X from a couple of years ago is currently talking directly to Home Assistant over WiFi. For a year or so I've been unable to update firmware without losing the functionality, but it looks like the community has a fix pending verification: https://github.com/home-assistant/core/issues/99251

I have another old unit that I'll have to replace eventually, and ideally it could be Daikin and would work natively without involving external hardware.

[twtran]

My experience is strictly with Daikin Stylish units bought a few months ago in the EU. They still have both the S21 port and a compartment for an external WiFi module, and for all intents and purposes it's plug and play. Their standard WiFi module is built in the internal unit motherboard AFAICT, and it only works with their Daikin Onecta platform (no local API whatsoever).