I have a few devices in my house that I purchased before I started smart-homing, and I’d like to gain some control over them. Before I started with Home Asisstant, I put together an rpi that could learn IR codes and transmit them, but it wouldn’t learn the IR codes for one of my devices - I assumed it was because the device manufacturer used cheap equipment and didn’t follow standards, but that doesn’t really make sense if the rpi was simply watching the IR from the remote and then replaying it. Also, if I did that again I don’t know how I’d integrate it with Home Assistant.
Anyway, I just learned about IR blasters, thanks to BeardedTinker, and he mentioned that there are also RF blasters (I also have a few RF devices I’d like to control).
I’d like a device that doesn’t phone home and can blast IR and RF - but I’d but fine getting separate devices for IR and for RF. Do you have any suggestions for such devices? Which ones might have a better chance at learning IR codes that may not follow standards? For IR devices, is range or directionality an issue?
Thanks for sharing your experience.
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I use the Sonoff RF Bridge flashed with tasmota https://sonoff.tech/product-document/gateway-and-sensors-doc/rfbridge-doc/. It’s been rock solid. It looks like there are newer versions that can’t be flashed so do some research before buying. For IR, I purchased a Tuya IR Wi-Fi device and replaced the Wi-Fi chip with an ESP-12f flashed with Tasmota. The process isn’t the easiest but I’m happy with the results. This is the device I bought: https://www.ebay.com/itm/144473686315?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=z4O68KxtR8S&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=aQmoJOvlQJy&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY. Range is good but placement is key due to how the IR blasters are positioned. Good luck!
Thanks for sharing what works well for you. You replaced a chip?! That’s way beyond my abilities.
Flashing the Sonoff RF bridge can be tricky. There are different hardware revisions of the bridge, and not all can be flashed.
Both the WiFi chip and RF chip need to be flashed for full functionality. The newest version can’t be flashed, and the older version I have I could set up Tasmota but could not find any working way to flash the RF firmware.
Others have had no issues at all though, so results vary.
The Broadlink RM4 Pro is a RF and IR blaster, and it integrates with home assistant. It can be a little tricky to get set up initially depending on your router, it doesn’t always figure out the 2.4 ghz signal from certain brands (like the Asus I have apparently), but once its set up it works pretty well. The integration to home assistant is a little bit of a learning curve depending on how familiar you are with it, but it wasn’t too bad. I’m not sure if it phones home is the only thing, I know they have an online app and ecosystem, but the home assistant integration is local.
I have a Broadlink RM4 Mini, it only does IR but it has worked well so far. The hardware is discreet and compact, so can easily placed somewhere discreet while still keeping line of sight. It has worked very reliably m.
Setting it up in Home Assistant is a bit cumbersome, it’s a bit time consuming to get all of the IR codes programmed. But once I had mine set up it’s worked fine with my TV, stereo, satellite box, and some IR remote controlled lights.
It can also be run fully locally. I have mine on a VLAN with no internet access and it runs without issue. There is also a Python program that can do initial setup to avoid the Broadlink app.
I have one of these too, works well. Pretty sure it phones home, but it only needs internet for initial setup so it can be blocked in the firewall after that.
Thanks - I’ll check it out. You said “can be tricky” and “bit of a learning curve” so I’m concernednitll be beyond my skillset, but I can try.
The tricky part is the initial wifi setup, at least with the app, might be different if you use the Python mentioned above. It just doesn’t like some routers, it’s 2.4ghz only, and from what I’ve read some routers do the 2.4ghz/5ghz thing differently, and my Asus is one of them. I don’t have problems with other devices, but I had to use a phone set up as a wifi hotspot with my router ssid & password to set it up, otherwise it wouldn’t complete the wifi setup, but YMMV.
Beyond that it’s worked well, it’s just kinda time consuming to learn every individual RF/IR signal you need from each remote. If you’re familiar with home assistant the integration isn’t hard to set up, just make sure if you look up videos about it to look at the most recent, the process has gotten a lot easier over the last few years.
For the cost I’d say its definitely worth giving a shot, RF plugs work great for holiday lights. I’m not an expert by any means, but I was able to make it work without too much hassle (other then figuring out the trick for the wifi setup) and its pretty neat.
Let’s keep going down the rabbit hole! You can build your own using ESPHome.
m5stack ftw
This doesn’t meet your criteria for not phoning home, but still worth sharing: I use Logitech Harmony Hub and find the experience of using it with Hass to be excellent.
Harmony is really good at onboarding devices and has a huge library of supported devices, but the interface for using them is awful. Hass makes it much easier to build simple multi-device remotes, and to create nice automations. (Harmony’s version of this is utterly useless)
You also get a nice physical remote to use with it too, which I’m personally not interested in but the less technical members of my family love it.
Worth considering I think. You can always block the phoning home using Pi-hole, as I have.
Thanks. I’ll take a look, keeping an eye out for phoning home. :)
