How do I control devices with the Athom (Iotorero) RF IR Remote?

Hardware
1

So after I saw the post about how Iotorero joined the Works for Home Assistant program I decided to browse there catalogue again and found the RF IR remote which is pre flashed with ESPHome. I bought it thinking I could just use the learn remote command in the Action section of Developer tools.

Well it doesn’t work that way. After asking AI, I updated it in ESPHome and received a bunch of new entities. After that I thought it was as simple as choosing a slot, learning a press with that slot and then sending the command. When I did that, it would say the command was learned. And when I hit send, it would say it was sent. But my ceiling fan does nothing.

7523
7523419×829 34.2 KB

I checked the logs in ESPHome and stuff does happen. For example, this shows up after one of my presses


[22:46:50.617][I][RF_LEARNING:216]: Learned protocol=6 code=1411515763 slot=11
[22:46:50.618][I][remote.rc_switch:260]: Received RCSwitch Raw: protocol=6 data='01010100001000100000010101110011'
[22:46:50.625][I][remote.rc_switch:260]: Received RCSwitch Raw: protocol=6 data='01010100001000100000010101110011'
[22:46:50.652][I][remote.rc_switch:260]: Received RCSwitch Raw: protocol=6 data='01010100001000100000010101110011'
[22:46:50.719][S][text_sensor]: 'RF Learning Status' >> 'Signal learned!'
[22:46:50.723][I][remote.rc_switch:260]: Received RCSwitch Raw: protocol=6 data='01010100001000100000010101110011'
[22:46:50.746][I][remote.rc_switch:260]: Received RCSwitch Raw: protocol=6 data='01010100001000100000010101110011'

I ask AI and it suggested a bunch of things. None of which worked though. So with all that said, Does anybody know how I’m supposed to use this thing to control devices? And is this a topic that’s actually more suitable in Esphome instead of here?

2

The IR and RF “building block” integrations are still quite new, and most IR and RF devices will not have a specific integration for them… right now there are only 6 included in core for IR and even fewer for RF.

You may want to check out HAIR which is kind of a bridge between the Infrared integration and devices that don’t yet have device-specific integrations.

There may be something similar for RF available, but I haven’t seen it yet.

For anyone to help you further, it would help to see the ESPHome config.

3

TBH, I don’t know where I would find the ESPHome config. Admittedly, I’m a user that tries to stay away from the more technical stuff as much as possible. I didn’t even have ESPHome installed before I got this device. Then I only got it because that was the only way to update it.

But yeah I know the IR and RF integrations are fairly new. I made the mistake of thinking that the Athom would just show up as a remote that could learn commands in Developer Tools. And that’s how I thought I was going to use it when I decided to buy it.

4

Athom’s approach to “learn” RF remotes is pretty naive.
It tries to decode all signals with rc-switch, which obviously doesn’t work if signal is not one of the eight protocols supported. Setting tolerance to 50% is silly and gives just illusion that signal got decoded properly. Repeats are not counted and gap between repeats is ignored.

You need to find better approach or learn esphome and build it by yourself. To get control of your fan is likely easy task, but to have universal learning tool that works with all remotes is not so.

5

I think I got it, thanks. So this was never meant to be beginner friendly or plug and play basically.

I’m just going to accept defeat on this because I have no idea where to start nor do I even want to take the time to learn admittedly.

6

Up to you.
Put it in a drawer and wait if guys that made HAIR manage do do something useful with RF.
That Athom hardware looks pretty universal.

7

I updated the title. Athom is actually a Homey trademark so clarifying to the new name of the WWHA vendor in the title.