Just bought a BroadLink RM4 Pro to control some RF switches that we have for Christmas light since everyone seems to love this device. What a PitA to setup!!
I was finally able to configure a switch after 2+ hours of messing with this thing to learn a single remote command via HA. Don’t bother setting up devices in the BroadLink app, they are worthless. Also, you need to run the learn command action/service twice back-to-back in order for the command to actually be written to HA, even though you get the green check that the service ran successfully. If you don’t see the .storage/broadcom file get created, then your code was not learned.
Not sure why it took you hours to get going. You only need the Broadlink app to set the wifi credentials in the RM4, after that you can get rid of the app completely.
Anyway, I suggest you look into SmartIR. You will still need to learn the remote codes, but after that it makes things really nice to use.
I had none of these issues with broadlink, I just learned the codes with the service in developer tools → service tab. Were you use that or an automation/script to call the service?
In the BroadLink app, RF codes were learned every time, by pressing and releasing the button I wanted to learn once.
In HA, using the remote.learn_command action/service the code would never be learned by just pressing the button once. I had to repeatedly press the button and execute the learn action several times before the file with the codes would be updated. Also needed to make sure and check that the .storage/broadcom file was updated before moving to the next code, even though the perform action button would go to green check and the notification would go away like the learn was successful. Even after figuring this out, it was hit and miss for learning RF commands. I didn’t try any IR commands, just a few RF things.
This is a brand new BroadLink device running the latest firmware. I’m going to see if I can find an older firmware tonight to see if that helps, cause it was frustrating last night!
Just spent hours myself today and as with almost all HA stuff the UI sucks.
Need to click notifications to see prompts.
It says to click on the second round but in fact need to click, then hold, then click or it wont learn RF for me.
Can’t see all commands that have been learnt. For me the longest issue was there was a power_off already, which I had to delete as I couldn’t learn over the top.
No feedback that it captured anything. How about simply showing the code it collected?
No simple test button after learning the command. Need to switch to Send command which clears the device etc.
Instructions are all YAML, which is not intuitive for new user. Where are the GUI instructions?
Spent 45 min trying to find a device ID and Command name not realising you can enter whatever you want.
Needed to use helper to do On\Off when its two buttons. (might be a me thing)
There definitely should be a setup page that shows learned commands and has a learn command UI. That is a major pain point with Broadlink and is doable from an HA standpoint. We would just need to get the broadlink dev on board with it.
Kinda seems backwards to me. Learn the code, see the code, then assign it.
or, a better setup might be ask the user to enter a device for capture (device id), enter in all the buttons\commands, then go through pushing the buttons like in the yaml example to capture multiple commands. But it must have some feedback to the user.
Did you know if you fail at learning a command, the learn call ends and the button goes green with a tick anyway? I lost at least an hour to that, before i started switching over to sending command to test after.
I was working down the documentation page from the top but I should have scanned it first, then I would have used the CLI tool to at least see its doing something.
FYI, I already had most commands from previous attempt, so it actually took me almost 4 hours to add only 3-4 extra.
All this being said, it was more of an example of the poor user experience in general. Too often we need to drop back to yaml or other config files to setup. I’ve had HA for 4 years and would say that today is first time I did something mildly complex (other then adding a light or some such) and was successful. Once I understood devices, entities, scripts, automations via GUI it all clicked today, but when using YAML and not understanding the fundamentals is why I think people curse HA. Maybe a 1-3 minute animation on first run would be a good way to convey the basics, along with some “tooltips” or “help icons”.
Yep. Doesn’t make sense that the BroadLink app succeeds every time after one button press and HA takes several times running the service call and pressing the button that needs to be captured repeatedly throughout the service running and maybe it works.
same experience here. the IR remotes learned easily. The RF remotes will learn via the broadlink app very easily. I tried to follow the documentation, but the notification just lingers to hold the button for sweep frequency till it times out. After hours of trying, repeatedly, it finally learned 1 button on my remote. and it did it rather quickly (a couple seconds) while “sweeping” I never got the second notification. could not repeat the success with other buttons on the same remote.