Im trying to set up some IR-controlled devices and i cannot stop having a feeling that IR is quite neglected in Home Assistant. I don’t fully understand why - as it still is the most popular device remote control “standard” out there.
There is literally no UI configuration for IR remotes. The learned codes are saved into .storage - a place where HA devs clearly dont want users to look into. Each device needs to be “learned” with each blaster separately. Learning a remote is a huge hassle, especially if it has more than a few buttons. IR switches on the other hand are being configured in a completely different and inconsistent way.
Dont get me wrong, its totally awesome that Zigbee or Zwave support in HA is so polished, but why IR support is of much lower quality if the IR devices are much more popular than Zigbee and Zwave together?
Not sure where you’re getting your popularity numbers from, the most popular IR integration has significantly less users than zwave. And ZHA is double zwave almost and that doesn’t include dconz or z2m.
Well, its easy. Just open Amazon or ebay and see how many IR controlled devices are on sale and compare it to the numbers of Zigbee or Zwave devices on sale. Or ask your neighbours how many IR controlled devices they’ve got at homes and if they know what Zigbee or Zwave are.
Sorry but this caught me off guard. I was expecting that someone will start a discussion that “IR blasters are not neglected in HA”, but i wasnt expecting any doubt that IR devices may be more popular overall than Zwave 
Well, there’s an analytics site for HA that shows they are not more popular in HA by a large margin. Less popular means less people will work on the integrations related to IR.
Also, esphome does a pretty decent job with IR
OK i understand your point.
But please try to understand my point - i can safely assume that almost every single HA user has at least one IR controlled device at home… whether it is a TV set, an air purifier, garage door or a dumb leg warmer/massager Could IR be unpopular among Ha users, because currently its so awkward to use in HA?
The amount of devices on the free market is not relevant here. IR is an unreliable one-way command channel and therefore not suited for home automation. They are doomed to disappoint (reliability, feedback loops, status and information, etc) You should strive to solve your use cases in better ways with products that offer better connectivity capabilities.
Taking one step back, of course all of us have these old and simple devices which can only be commanded via IR. Some of these can not easily be replaced or hacked. I understand that the edge case to integrate these unavoidable devices (and only these) with Home Assistant exists.
Regarding UI control: I doubt the goal is to represent a remote in the Home Assistant UI as a “remote”? What stops you from defining buttons, text, dropdown selections and similar for your IR control purposes?
Broadlink, esphome, tasmota all support IR
So perhaps the perception and percentage is higher.
Try to avoid these:
TV set, an air purifier, garage door or a dumb leg warmer/massager
All of those can be integrated in other ways. Some by buying a connected TV, others by hacking your garage door with a microcontroller 
Perhaps it is, but it’s still no where near zigbee and zwave combined as op claims. Personally, I’d never use IR because of the assumed state issues that come along with IR. Basically pointless for automations unless you’re just using turn on or turn off.
And I think that almost sums up all the smart IR blasters.
Well tuya do one I suppose. Although I don’t see much about it, so didn’t include it.
My 3 IR Blasters are ex-Tuya flashed with Tasmota, I don’t think the Tuya integration supports IR.
Yeah not sure about tuya IR stuff. Tasmota is my preference for IR generally.
Although I suppose Google decided they needed an IR remote for chromecast too…
Maybe, but probably not. Like most basic RF devices, IR devices suffer from a lack of feedback that is a significant hindrance to automation. As the adage goes, “You can’t automate what you don’t understand”, without status feedback or monitoring there isn’t real understanding.
Both IR and RF are still around and widely available mostly because they are inexpensive, not because they are good protocols… remote control != home automation.
Even with multi-led IR blasters, IR is still basically limited to line-of-sight; meaning a blaster is needed in every room that has an IR end device. RF isn’t limited by line-of-sight, but its lack of security is problematic for many applications.
Without an explanation of what each technology is and/or how to identify them, I doubt most of my neighbors could give an accurate answer.
I am fully aware of downs of IR, but my point is not “IR is a good protocol”, it is “people still have devices supporting (only) IR comms and that’s not gonna change anytime soon”.
Even myself - having over 50 devices on both Zigbee and Zwave and dozens of wifi and BT - still own a few of IR-only devices. There may be several reasons for that:
- Sometimes there’s simply no “smart” alternative.
- Sometimes smart alternatives are not feasible, for example, they may not fit.
- Sometimes smart devices can only work in the cloud, so replacing an IR device with a device like that is a concern in terms of privacy, security, and relying on third parties.
- A lot of smart devices is based on wifi and wifi is also a crap protocol to build a smart home on.
- Replacing working devices with new ones just to get a better remote control is expensive and very unfriendly to the planet.
I just want to say that supporting IR is still worth it, even if there are much better alternatives. Device state can sometimes be detected using a different sensor.
- List item
But HA does support IR/RF. It’s only that IR/RF aren’t good protocols for home automation.
I had a Broadlink adapter connected to HA for years until I finally got rid of the two devices I needed to “automate” with it. It sucked the entire time.
I just don’t see how HA can be better with it than it is given the severe limitations of the technology.
Maybe you should give examples of what you think HA isn’t doing that it should where IR/RF is concerned and how it could be fixed.
One thing that I think is missing in HA is a way to properly read the learned remotes/commands.
I actually listed a few things in my first post:
There is literally no UI configuration for IR remotes.
The learned codes are saved into .storage - a place that HA devs clearly don’t want users to look into.
Each device needs to be “learned” with each blaster separately.
Learning a remote through service calls is a huge hassle, especially if it has more than a few buttons.
IR switches on the other hand are being configured in a completely different and inconsistent way.
Ability to import/export codes from one of the online IR codes database like IrDB.
Sure, the support is there, but it could be polished, streamlined and made more user-friendly
In my opinion the service calls is a GUI.
What you need to enter there is what is needed.
You need to name the key you want to learn, and the name of the remote.
Sure you could import say you say. But most likely the names from such imports isn’t what you want.
For example “configuration” instead of “options” or “settings”.
You can get the commands learned in a sensor entity if you use node red.
And you can copy paste values inside the JSON files if you know what you are doing.
But now that I think of it I agree that a remote you learn should not be tied to one device/IR-blaster, the remotes should be equivalent to a device (perhaps it should actually be devices) and you have actions on the device, the learned commands.
These commands are used on a IR-blaster.
This way the remotes you learn are free to be used everywhere on any blaster.
That’s at least one way…
The SmartIR custom component does something like that, creating climate, media, or fan entities for blaster/target device pairs.