Teaching Home Assistant air conditioning infrared codes

Configuration
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I am using a Broadlink RM3 Mini with Home Assistant to control my Air Conditioners.

My problem is that every time I try to increase/decrease the temperature, the infrared code is different. So if my AC is blowing HOT air, and my infrared code for increasing the temperature was set while the AC was blowing COLD air, the all the settings of the AC will be changed to COLD.

I don’t know if I’m making any sense here, but it’s like with every button pressed on the AC remote, all the settings are sent to the AC. Not just the temperature increase.

So theoretically, if I wanted to control my AC using Home Assistant, I would have to get the infrared codes for all the possible combinations of my AC remote. Which I suspect would be A LOT! Considering the range of temperatures start from 17 and go up to 32 degrees Celsius, and then we have cold, hot, fan, dry, auto, and then swing 1, swing 2. I mean, it could be thousands.

How is everyone else handling this? Is there something I’m missing here? Is there a way to separate the infrared codes for each function so I don’t have to teach HA all the combinations?

Thanks

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Set a heating temperature and fan speed you like. Record that code by turning the unit on.

Set a cooling temperature and fan speed you like. Record that code by turning the unit on.

Have three buttons. HEAT. COOL. OFF.

Or get fancy with different power and fan speeds. Record separate on codes for each:

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That is how AC remotes work. The remote has no feedback on the current state of the AC. It therefore sends every setting, every button press.

Handling this via a sensibo, which knows this stuff.

2 Likes
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So if I buy a sensibo, I won’t have to teach home assistant each combination? This is taken care of by sensibo?

It’a a shame though. Sensibo is expensive, and the Broadlink can send IR commands. It would be nice if I could somehow separate the IR commands.

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Yes, provided it is a supported model.

Yes it is likely possible, depends how much your time and sanity is worth :slight_smile:

Having said that, it is a cloud based alternative, so all your data is available to sensibo. What model is your AC?

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it’s a ballu air conditioner

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This is why I love this forum. I had no idea this existed. My AC’s are compatible too. Does it work well with the HA Climate component?

EDIT: hmmm it’s a cloud polling device. That’s put a damper on my enthusiasm.

1 Like
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I use the brilliant SmartIR Climate component by Vassilis : SmartIR - Control your Climate, TV and Fan devices via IR/RF controllers

It has all of my Fujitsu codes built in - you might be lucky with yours as well. I then use my broadlink mini to control the aircon.

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There’s an RF learning program somewhere in the forums, it should make the learning process a breeze. However as you described you’re gonna end up with 300 codes easily…and you have to press the remote 300 times as you learn the codes… So my question is more on how do you use your aircon? Do you NEED and USE ALL the modes on your AC? You cannot control that advanced via Google Assistant it seems.

What I did is learn the codes of the settings I use and put them in an easy understandable way that can also be used with Google Assistant.
I actually don’t use them properly with all the speeds such as low,medium,high and auto; and then all the modes…
As per the post above use:
“SmartIR - Control your Climate, TV and Fan devices via IR/RF controllers”
I use the climate component above with 2 modes and single speed setting for easy use (the whole point of home automation):

Cool mode is made of: “silent mode” + temperature (cool) combination. Comfortable setting and quiet, is what I use nearly all the time.
Dry: mode I use “auto fan speed” and temperature (cool) combination. I use this when the day is a bit too hot as the fans runs in auto (much better than silent fan mode).

Since I use it nearly 90% of the time in silent mode, that works for me I can control it via Google Assistant and works great.

If you truly want to have complete control of the AC at least on HA, then just learn the codes, you can reuse them for all AC units. I faced the same issue as you my AC is the dumbest AC there is.
Power on or power off use the same code.
Then for any other command, it combines everything in a single code (fan speed, air flow direction, turbo/silent fan mode, and AC mode).
Then I faced issues with Google assistant telling me that the temperature cannot be changed in certain modes or not working properly.

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This SmartIR Climate component really made it easy for me to create all the modes of the AC. Granted, I had to generate 256 infrared codes, but that’s just done once.

My only issue now is that I want to bring the AC controls out on the card. Currently I have to click on the card, and I get the AC controls in a popup. I want them to be on the card so I don’t have to click on it to control my AC. How can I do that?

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Found it. This is a very nice component!

2019-04-09%2007_51_08-Home%20Assistant

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Yes I meant to come back and mention that. What brand are yours?

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This one is a Ballu

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Daikin FTXD50BVMA.

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Right, because there seem to be some direct, non cloud solutions for mitsubishi (2 of my 3 AC units are mitsi). You can plug a microprocessor like a ESP8266 direct to a serial port. This makes me happy, and perhaps I will sell my sensibos when I get it working. https://github.com/SwiCago/HeatPump

PS I expect you have seen this https://www.home-assistant.io/components/daikin/

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Yeah my AC units aren’t that new or clever. No network connection. I actually use a rest sensor and shell commands that talk to this for the upstairs unit:

For the downstairs unit I use a Global Cache IP2IR bridge.

I had both of these set up before starting with HA.

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Hi all!
I have the Daikin AC model CTXS09PMVM5 and I did not found the apropriate IR code for it.
I learned some code to test with RM PRO and when AC is ON and I send the IR code learned, then the AC turned off.
I don’t know what happens, so if someone could help me.
I am using HA, Broadlink RMPRO, SmartIR and the Daikin AC.

Thanks in advance.
Carlos - Brazil.

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I have GCIP2IR devices for Daikin AC’s. I am keen to control them using the SmartIR integration and Itach but am running into problems. Did you use this approach? I have it working except for the codes.

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This is a very old topic.

There are far better options than IR control now. See: Need Daikin Wifi? Use the Open-Source Faikin ESP32 Hardware instead of the official wifi Modules

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I tried to set this up but it doesnt work.
I correctly installed the integration using HACS, then in the configuration.yaml added this:

smartir:

climate:
  - platform: smartir
    name: Livingroom AC
    unique_id: livingroom_ac
    device_code: 1137
    controller_data: remote.m3_mini
    temperature_sensor: sensor.livingroom_temperature
    humidity_sensor: sensor.livingroom_humidity

then add the card climate to my dashboard and choose Livingroom AC as entity and tried various commands, none work.
I tested the mini3 and it works. I also take some base64 string and tried to copy paste into the config of .storage/broadlink_remote_xxxxx where I saved some other test code and it does work when I call it from the Action developer tools.
Any suggestions?
Thank you