Got mine to work eventually.
Originally I just had the IR LED directly tied to the GPIO pin of the ESP.
I put a mosfet (FQP30N06L) in the circuit to increase the brightness of the LED, and now the A/C responds!
I can see that the part you posted in the issue tracker shows what I assume to be a mosfet on it, so I don’t know why you seem to have the issue.
Most reliable results were within a meter distance for me.