Esphome on a Tuya IR Remote Control blaster

!!! Please mind we are getting reports that this products no longer houses a esp8266 chip !!!

This time we put esphome on a Tuya Smart IR Remote Control WiFi IR Blaster which we bought from Aliexpress seller ‘FrankEver‘.

It’s just a cheap IR blaster that runs Tuya cloud software which potentially exposes all your data to the Chinese government. Not something we particularly like 😛

When using esphome software on this ‘thing’ it transforms into a powerful locally controlled IR gateway for use with Home Assistant. You can control your TV, Airconditioning, Radio and so on…. all directly from Home Assistant. without any cloud interference 😉

What do You need for the ‘operation’?

• A few dupont wires (male to female)
• A Soldering iron. More about soldering here
• A small Phillips-head screwdriver, or get a fantastic set here: Aliexpress
• A USB to UART TTL Module (choose: CP2102 5PIN)
• Nerves 😉

So let’s begin and put a screwdriver to the thing!

1. On the bottom, carefully remove the 3 rubber feet and put them somewhere safe. You need to stick those back!
   
2. Using a small “watchmaker screwdriver” remove the 3 tiny phillips-head screws. If you do not have such a screwdriver, consider this excellent set from Aliexpress
3. Remove the PCB.
4. Solder 3 dupont wires on the PCB on position 4 (RX), 5 (TX) and 7 (3,3v). Just solder the male side of the wire on there using a low temperature (350 degrees or so). These need to be removed later. If you do not have any dupont wires, buy some here.
   
5. Take 2 dupont wires. Cut one in half. Use the half with the male pin and strip the shielding off on the other side of the wire. On the other dupot-wire, remove some shielding halfway the wire. Twist them together and solder the twisted copper connection. It will now look like this:
   
6. Solder one male pin to position 1 (GND) and the other male pin to position 3 (IO0) on the PCB.
7. Connect the USB to UART TTL Module to the corresponding pins.
   1+3 > GND  (To put the esp in flash-mode)
   4 > RX
   5 > TX
   7 > 3,3v (be careful not to connect to 5v on the USB to UART TTL Module side!)
8. Use esphome flasher to upload the esphome binary (refer to he config below). Check if the the firmware flashing was successful.
9. Remove the USB to UART TTL Module and carefully desolder all 5 wires and test boot the IR-blaster.
10. If all works OK, put the thing back together and enjoy!

The example below controls a Daikin Climate unit, but You can virtually control any IR device. Read the instructions on the esphome website!

substitutions:
  devicename: esp_ir_01
  upper_devicename: ESP IR - 01"

esphome:
  name: ${devicename}
  platform: ESP8266
  board: esp01_1m
  
wifi:
  ssid: !secret esphome_wifi_ssid
  password: !secret esphome_wifi_password
  power_save_mode: high
  ap:
    ssid: $devicename
    password: !secret esphome_ap_password

captive_portal:
  
api:
  password: !secret esphome_api_password

ota:
  password: !secret esphome_ota_password

logger:

web_server:
  port: 80
  
# GPIO	Component	Description
# 04	LED1i (52)	Blue LED - Link status
# 05	IRrecv (51)	IR Receiver
# 13	Button1 (17)	Button
# 14	IRsend (8)	IR Transmitter
  
remote_transmitter:
  pin: GPIO14
  carrier_duty_percent: 30%
  
remote_receiver:
  id: rcvr
  pin:
    number: GPIO5
    inverted: True
  tolerance: 55%
  dump: all
    
climate:
  - platform: daikin
    name: "$upper_devicename Living AC"
    receiver_id: rcvr

binary_sensor:
  - platform: gpio
    pin: 
      number: GPIO13
      mode: INPUT_PULLUP
      inverted: true
    name: "button"
    on_press:
      - logger.log: "$upper_devicename button pressed"
      
output:
  - platform: esp8266_pwm
    id: esphome_ir1_led
    pin:
      number: GPIO4
      inverted: false
      
light:
  - platform: monochromatic
    name: "$upper_devicename Blue LED"
    output: esphome_ir1_led
    id: light_led

If you have any issues, just put them in the comments.

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