Just wondering if there's any way to do this without breaking the bank. Basically I have some LED light strips, those kind that use those thin plastic remote controls where you can pick a colour, brightness and so on from Amazon. I can use Logitech Harmony and have it learn each button and control it via Harmony but is there any device to connect directly to Hubitat? I want a way that I can learn the remote's IR controls and then send them to the lights, but ideally over the LAN as Hubitat hub is nowhere near the lights. Guessing it will be cheaper to just buy multiple z-wave switches or other and just use a few of these strips but wanted to check. Kind of sick of Hue as I have a lot of issues with them or bridge failures.
Harmony is one option, though it isn't greatly integrated into Hubitat and I find with manually added devices it doesn't work very well. Broadlink is another, I tried this and couldn't even get the broadlink hub to connect to my wifi so I gave up.
I decided to build my own. I used an ESP8266 module, and got some IR receivers and IR LED's. There is code available for the ESP to use the IR Receiver to read the codes from a remote and report them to the serial command. Using that I recorded all the buttons I wanted to use. Then I wrote a code that allows me to send the code from a webserver. I can go to the ESP's IP address and press the buttons.
Taking this one step further, I use Webcore (can be done in Rule Machine too) to send HTTP commands to the ESP board telling it which command to send. Its not the most straightforward integration, but works really well and has been 100% reliable for me. Would be easy to write some logic for a virtual switch to turn a light on and off.
I have a Stream Deck at my desk and have buttons on that I use to toggle a fan on and off, control speed, oscillate, and fan modes. It works really well and has less than a second delay from button press to fan control. Though, this is probably outside of your scope.
I would highly recommend buying the harmony IR extenders and using that as your IR blaster. The range and viewing angle on those are far superior to any IR LED you can buy. Logitech really has a solid design for those. I have one of these mounted on a LED light in my office about 6 feet up the wall, and it can reach the fan quite well (on the floor, 10+ feet away).
In terms of price, well you can only buy most of this stuff in bulk. 3 pack of ESP Boards is $14. 10 pack of IR LED's and Receivers $6. 100 pack of Resistors $6.50. 100 pack of Transistors $4.50
Total cost: $31, maybe a bit more if you get a harmony extender, but they are $12 or so which is cheap. Also, you would be able to build 3 units for this price (and more if you buy more ESP boards). This is good if you want to expand because you won't get much further than 1 room of functionality for this setup, maybe not even that.
I know this is sort of the long way to a solution, but it works great. If you like DIY, then it might be right up your alley. I'm happy to help as well
These are the parts I used:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B081CSJV2V/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XYNDRGF/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0185FID32/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07X5RXSX1/
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The (Withdrawn) Broadlink app and Broadlink RM3 Minis work for me.
I've read you can now set local Wifi access after initializing each BL IR device using the latest Broadlink phone app. I used the older Broadlink IHC app because the new BL app previously locked out the devices from local access.
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Global cache ip2ir
I have 3 broadlinks connected. You seem to have a good deal of skills, surprised the broadlink wouldn't connect. Usually it's the newer routers combining the SSID of the 2.4 & 5 ghz bands or the cellphone doing some fancy wifi magic, where it won't connect with the hotspot that the broadlink establishes during intial setup.
The broadlinks work well for me. I have an rm pro2 and an RM Mini3 and RM Mini4, all 3 work fine
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Shutting off 5ghz in the router, giving each band a unique SSID, or moving out of 5ghz range is required with the IHC app when initializing a device. Hopefully that issue is fixed with the latest Broadlink app, but I have not tried.
Yeah I tried that, still no luck. Not sure if the wifi channel I am on isn't compatible with the broadlink or what. Could have just been defective as well. Not a big deal, I found a good workaround. I don't need too much IR control, as most of my stuff works off the harmony (TV, etc).
Might not be what you're looking for, but I'll put this here anyway in case it helps someone...
There are zigbee light strips available. I got the one below to use as a backlight for my TV after I found out the USB light strips require USB 3 to work correctly. My TV is too old for USB 3. I had this strip connected to my Hue bridge for a while, but it kept dropping. I now have it connected directly to HE and it's been rock solid. The same company — Giderwell — also sells zigbee controllers for strip lights that could be added to an existing strip.
ETA: I have a Logitech Harmony and have it connected to HE. I use rules to turn the light strip on and off and change the color based on what Harmony activity is triggered.
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This appears to be a ZLL lightstrip, as opposed to ZHA. ZLL is known to create problems, if it behaves as a repeater, it will cause mesh problems
That's why I originally paired it to my Hue bridge. But I haven't had any problem with it, and no weird mesh problems or anything. If it starts misbehaving, I can always pair it back to Hue and keep my fingers crossed that it doesn't keep dropping. Or I still have a ST hub in a drawer some where that I could dust off...
It will be fine... until devices start routing messages through it, then the fun starts. I didn't realize this and was like it was fine for 2 weeks, and now it messes up.
Hopefully this will never happen to you, but if zigbee decides the lightstrip is somehow a better route than an existing one, you could have problems.
That is IF IT IS A REPEATER. Oddly enough I have 2 mains powered zigbee water valves, but neither of them repeat zigbee signal, so my mesh is unaffected
Poked around some more. According to Giderwel in answers to questions on Amazon, none of their Zigbee controllers or light strips act as repeaters.
I've had it connected to HE for about 3 weeks. I'll just keep hoping their information is correct.
smart move on Giderdone's part. Removes chance for problems
After flashing the Hub IR Tuya with Tasmota, I started to develop some drivers to use it in Hubitat
Initially I made this driver, which sends an IR command to turn the device on and another IR command to turn it off
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jorgespneto/Hubitat-Jorge/main/Tasmota%20Switch%20IR
Like this
Then I went to a driver where I could control an air conditioner
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jorgespneto/Hubitat-Jorge/main/Tasmota%20Ar%20Condicionado%20IR%20Zero.1
With this driver you can turn the air conditioning on and off, and adjust the temperature (the reference is the cooling temperature), working very well on Alexa
Then I ended up making a scene driver, where I managed to connect a TV, change the TV's HDMI input and then the channel to a chosen channel on the TV Box
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jorgespneto/Hubitat-Jorge/main/Cenas%20Switch%20IR%20Tuya
Finally, I'm trying to develop a driver to send TV commands, but unfortunately I'm having problems because the dashboard doesn't accept adding these commands, Alexa doesn't accept it either.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jorgespneto/Hubitat-Jorge/main/Tasmota%20TV%20IR%20Control
I need help and reviews that can improve these drivers
Regard, Jorge Palmeira
Well... I used this light strip for 6 months with no problem. Nothing ever tried to route through it. Then I added about 6 or 8 new zigbee devices, and... yeah... I woke up to find my kitchen lights blazing because one of the motion sensors decided to route through the light strip, had lost its mind, and had been bouncing between active/inactive about every second or so since the wee hours. I removed the light strip from HE. I can't get the darn thing to pair to Hue again, no matter how many times I reset it. So I guess I'm done with it. Too bad. It actually worked well until it didn't.
