Hello there,
at first, please excuse my english, i am from germany.
I would like to begin with the infomation, that i am pretty new to the whole HA system. I have installed
it in a VM on my already 24/7 running server. So far i was able to include all my WiFi controlled lights
and sensors into LocalTuya. But now i want to go a step further, but i have no idea how to start. I want
to include three different 433MHz remotes. One for the ceiling fan (11 buttons) and two remotes for two
electric Velux blinds (each 3 buttons). I have no idea if there is some sort of encryption. So what is the
best place to start with? What hardware do i need? And if it is possible at all, what is the next step?
I would appreciate any help, but please keep in mind, i am very new to this
Thank you!
You “teach” it the RF commands by pointing the physical remote controls at it and pressing the buttons. After that HA can either control devices using the remote.send_command service, or you can create switches for your dashboards.
It’s a bit fiddly to set up, but works well - in my case a single Broadlink is enough to send RF commands to any room in the house, for multiple devices. It will send IR commands too, but only in the same room of course.
That sounds promising. And i can get it from Amazon for about 50€. I have no problem with “fiddly”
as long as it follows at least a litte bit of logic XD
And are the IR commands usable through HA too? If so, i would place it in the living room. There are
some more devices that only use IR.
If you do get one, there’s a trick to setting it up. You have to download the Broadlink Android or iPhone app, which you use to connect to the device and give it your wifi details. Stop once you have done that. All you need for the HA integration is the address of the device - if you go on to connect it to a Broadlink cloud account it becomes much harder to use with Home Assistant.
Nice, thanks for the hint. I just got one off of ebay for about 33€
And is there a problem with encryption? I have no idea how the remotes for the blinds work.
You CAN buy a bridge direct from Velux to get smartphone access. And i think you can control
how much % the blinds go open or closed. How is this possible with the Broadlink? Can it even receive
the signals from the blind itself if there are ones?
I don’t know about your blinds, but most remotes don’t receive signals back from the devices they’re controlling. The Broadlink doesn’t, at any rate. It just copies the signal you “show” it and reproduces it when the remote.send_command is issued by HA.
I use a sonoff RF bridge.
It’s the old black one, which can have radio set completely free, but the newer white one is still quite capable.
It can run ESPHome and both send and receive and it is cheap enough that if it fails, then it should not be that big a deal.
That’s the first thing you should find out (before spending money) because if rolling codes are in use than just replaying captured codes will not work. Afaik nether the commercial 50€ broadlink device nor a dirt cheap ESP with RF module for 1/10th of the costs are handling encrypted payloads.
Probably can’t get any better than HA + ESPHome Not only a HA internal integration with local push (first class ) but also tighly integrated thank’s to the native api. That way a service (like this example for the rf bridge) can be generated to send any codes from HA to have them directly firing on the esphome node The received codes can also probably to be forwarded to the HA event stream or as a tag scanned action
Okay, so, i have to ask. Which one is better for the job? The Sonoff RF or the Broadlink? I can order a used working Sonoff for about 13€. I use ESPHome already with some ESP8266 and ESP32. Or is there no real difference in case of use?
If you can get a black Sonoff RF bridge, then I would go for that.
It can be flashed with Portisch on the RF chip to make it really versatile and then ESPHome on the control chip.
My black Sonoff RF Bridge captures all 433Mhz RF codes and it is only the rolling code I can’t handle in HA.
The other avantage of Sonoff RF Bridges is that you can record a signal on one bridge and retransmit it on another and you can handle the same signal received by two bridges, because the bridge has an entity_id.
I use two bridges, one in my bedroom and one in my living room, but I ignore signals from my remotes in the bedroom on my living room bridge and vice-versa.
If it is a white Sonoff RF Bridge, then it is more limited, because it can’t be flashed with Portisch.
How limited I do not know, but it is still the cheaper solution compared to a Broadlink, and you need something to test your remotes on to learn about their workings, which can often not be found in other ways.
You can also start small (DIY) and just make use of a d1 mini and a pair rf module which should cost less than $5 in total when bought directly from the country of origin .
Not only a HA internal integration with local push (
The received codes can also probably to be forwarded to the 
.