Create Custom IR remote w/ Home Assistant & ESPHome

I had several nagging reasons to create a single universal remote that was controllable from an app on our phones:

I was looking for a cool Home Assistant project, plus a project to use up some of the extra ESP8266’s I had
We had way too many IR remotes in our living room
We only ever pressed one or two button per remotes
Setting up for the evening using said remotes, was a juggle
Remotes were always stashed high and far from kids, or lost in couch cushions
Related to above, many of the batteries in the remotes are dangerous to small kids if somehow broken/opened
We always had our phones on us, but remotes were always out of reach or forgotten, always after getting comfy

Here’s what I did to build a custom universal remote that replaced all my IR remotes including my AppleTV touch remote:

Requirements

HomeAssistant setup & running (mines on a rpi3b)
HomeAssistant mobile App
ESP8266 (or ESP32) w/ micro usb cable
IR LED and IR Receiver
NPN transistor (BC337)
Jumper cables, or wire + soldering stuff
Heat shrink
Optionally for installation: long micro-usb to usb A cable, 3d printed case, Velcro to stick case to wall

Optional: Setup Apple TV to use IR

Not totally sure what interface the Apple Remote uses, but if looking to Replace Apple TV: you can map the Apple TV to listen to some arbitrary button presses from any unused remote following this doc.

Build an IR Receiver to Capture Codes

First step is to capture all the IR codes. I set up a receiver as follows:

The nice part about this layout for the IR receiver I had is I was able to just slip it into a breadboard, no wiring:

In the ESPHome section of Home Assistant:

Click the big “+” add button in bottom
Fill out the wizard
Once created, edit the module and append to the bottom of the config:

remote_receiver:
  #D5
  pin: 
    number: GPIO14
    inverted: True
    mode: INPUT_PULLUP
  dump: raw
  idle: 25ms

For reference, mine in full looks like:

esphome:
  name: ir_receiver
  platform: ESP8266
  board: nodemcuv2
wifi:
  ssid: !secret wifi_name
  password: !secret wifi_pass
  ap:
    ssid: "Ir Receiver Fallback Hotspot"
    password: !secret irfallback
captive_portal:
logger:
api:
  password: !secret ota_pass
ota:
  password: !secret ota_pass

remote_receiver:
  #D5
  pin: 
    number: GPIO14
    inverted: True
    mode: INPUT_PULLUP
  dump: raw
  idle: 25ms

Then validate, and upload through the USB port if this is the first chunk of code being sent, after that, no need to be plugged in and Over The Air works fine. Home Assistants Notification panel should alert of a new device detected, and you can add in the device and the entity.

Once uploaded, the logs should continue to show in the modal window. Try pointing an IR remote at it and smashing some buttons. If it yells a bunch of crazy number strings at you: it’s working!

There’s some important notes while looking to record a single button:

if the “Received Raw” starts with a negative number, you pin may not be inverted and may need to be. IR signals are a positive number (length of high value), followed by a negative number (length of low value).
A single press resulted for me in 3 lines. I needed to manually merge the first two and ignore the third. Why? I have no idea. For example, here’s the power button for my TV:

[20:13:30][D][remote.raw:028]: Received Raw: 8992, -4452, 619, -541, 598, -1639, 621, -1663, 598, -540, 598, -540, 597, -541, 598, -541, 597, -1641, 620, -1640, 620, -541, 596, -1640, 621, -541, 597, -541, 597, -541, 598, -540, 598, -541, 597, -1639, 621, -1640, 620, -1640, 620, 
[20:13:30][D][remote.raw:041]:   -1641, 620, -541, 597, -541, 598, -540, 598, -540, 598, -540, 598, -540, 598, -541, 597, -541, 597, -1640, 620, -1640, 621, -1641, 619, -1640, 621
[20:13:30][D][remote.raw:041]: Received Raw: 8993, -2205, 621

I combine the first and second lines, and remove the last line. The need to remove the third comes from line 2 ending in a positive, and line 3 starting in a positive, IR patterns must be positive negative. I don’t know why that third line is there, but removing it everything still worked in the end. From the above, my IR signal for the TV power button ended up being:

8992, -4452, 619, -541, 598, -1639, 621, -1663, 598, -540, 598, -540, 597, -541, 598, -541, 597, -1641, 620, -1640, 620, -541, 596, -1640, 621, -541, 597, -541, 597, -541, 598, -540, 598, -541, 597, -1639, 621, -1640, 620, -1640, 620, -1641, 620, -541, 597, -541, 598, -540, 598, -540, 598, -540, 598, -540, 598, -541, 597, -541, 597, -1640, 620, -1640, 621, -1641, 619, -1640, 621

Creating the IR Blaster

With the codes captured, next step is to build a transmitter. I think it’s best to use a dedicated board for sending, instead of adding the blaster to the receiver. I originally tried to setup just one board that would both receive and sent the codes, but found the boards lacked the brains to push and get at the same time successfully, which made debugging nearly impossible. I found it far easier to dedicate one device to just receiving and another to sending.

I read that ESP8266’s weren’t that great at sending the blasts and ESP32’s were a better choice due to some improved chips onboard, however I had success with ESP8266.

I wired the blaster like so:

The just like before, created a new ESPHome entry with the following appended to the config, adding the in the buttons and their codes:

remote_transmitter:
  # D2
  pin: 
    number: GPIO4
  carrier_duty_percent: 50%
  
switch:
  - platform: template
    id: tv_power_btn
    name: TV Power Button
    turn_on_action:
      - remote_transmitter.transmit_raw:
          carrier_frequency: 38kHz
          code: [8995, -4449, 623......-1638, 622, -1639, 622]
        
  - platform: template
    name: TV Up Button
    id: tv_up_button
    turn_on_action:
      - remote_transmitter.transmit_raw:
          carrier_frequency: 38kHz
          code: [8995, -4447, 625......-1637, 623, -1637, 624]
          
  - platform: template
    name: TV Left Button
    id: tv_left_button
    turn_on_action:
      - remote_transmitter.transmit_raw:
          carrier_frequency: 38kHz
          code: [8937, -4506, 566......-1671, 590, -1693, 567]

...ect

LoveLace Remote Interface

I saw some articles about using a tiles plugin for remote, but I reckoned I could get away using Button cards in a Vertical and Horizontal cards to create a table for button cards. To do this, I:

Created a vertical group for the remote
Created a horizontal group for a row of buttons
Created more adjacent horizontal groups for the following rows
I created the buttons by selecting a Button Card
1. selecting the entity
2. Getting a cool icon from materialdesignicons.com
3. Setting “show name” to off
4. Setting Icon Height to 50

Here’s a peak at my setup in it’s .yaml form:

type: vertical-stack
cards:
  - type: horizontal-stack
    cards:
      - type: button
        tap_action:
          action: toggle
        entity: switch.insignia_tv_power_button
        name: TV
        icon: 'mdi:power-standby'
        icon_height: 50px
        show_name: false
      - type: button
        tap_action:
          action: toggle
        entity: switch.tv_nothing_button
        show_name: false
        show_icon: false
      - type: button
        ...
  - type: horizontal-stack
    cards:
      - type: button
      ...

Which I laid out to look like:

An important one here is the tv_nothing_button , it is what is says, it’s a button that just like all the others is registered on the esphome setup, however, it sends a invalid value, triggering nothing, but allows the UI to house proper spacing and a consistent look.

Update: looks like the grid card was just released in 0.118 to make this even easier!

Installation Placement

All our devices and lights to control with IR are on a single wall, so mounting the on the opposite wall, higher up towards the roof above our curtains gave the blaster direct line of sight to all devices, and kept it out of the way.

Before mounting I tested all functionality, walking around with the ESP8266 connected to a battery pack to find just the right spot, and quicker debugging.

Case

Most of the designs for esp8266 cases on thingiverse.com were too small or oriented the wrong way for this single LED wall mount use. So I designed a custom case with shapr3d.com. I designed a case for both small and large styles of ESP8266 as I had both, and also did it in a “dead bug” style with lots of room for the bulky dupont connections. I’ll update this post with the design later as I finalize it, but it turned out nice:

Everything Together

Considering for each button press, the flow data is Home Assistant App on Phone > Wifi > Home Assistant > Wifi > ESP8266 blaster > Target Device, it actually works really fast. No noticeable latency or delays connecting. Additionally, I just used the normal HA ESPHome API, not MQTT. Every time I open the app, the module is already connected and ready to press a button (no load or unavailability).

Our families use case for the buttons we needed, is simple and straight forward, so this solution of just firing up the Home Assistant App on our phones was the perfect fit.

Automation & Shortcuts

With all the button entities added into Home Assistant, scripts and automations can be made with ease. For example, I created a “boom button” script that toggles all the power buttons.

Additionally, the Shortcuts app on iOS with the Home Assistant app allows you to turn entities on and off, or run scripts. The title of these shortcuts are pre-wired into Siri, so “Turn TV On” voice commands can be wired up in just a few minutes. More about this here.

I did not store the state (“on/off”) of a button in Home Assistant. Though the button entity can, doing so raised risk of state being incorrect if any of the devices are toggled manually or via the real remotes. I opted it was best to treat the buttons just like an IR remote that are unaware of a device being on or off. This limited automation (eg: turn on if not on), however I’m okay with that.