Published November 28, 2019 © GPL3+

Turn M5StickC Into Universal IR Remote (Home Automation)

Take a $9 M5StickC, few lines of YAML configuration to build ESPHome, Home Assistant and start controlling your TVs and climates in minutes.

IntermediateFull instructions provided1 hour21,920

Turn M5StickC Into Universal IR Remote (Home Automation)

Things used in this project

Hardware components

M5Stack M5StickC ESP32-PICO Mini IoT Development Board

Software apps and online services

Home Assistant

ESPHome

Story

Hello everybody.

In this project I document how I changed my Home Assistant setup replacing the Logitech Harmony Hub ($60) for a cheaper, smaller, and more versatile M5StickC ($9) with just ESPHome onboard and a few lines of YAML configuration.

The ingredients are:

A running Home Assistant instance (mine is hass.io on a RPi4)
The SmartIR custom component
An MQTT broker (mine is the mosquitto hassio addon)
An M5StickC (or M5Atom, see UPDATE below)
The configuration/source files of this project

Due to the great ability of the ESPHome lib/firmware for templatable actions, I was able to setup the remote_transmitter component to translate generic JSON inputs into IR codes to transmit with just 16 lines of ESPHome YAML config.

So I built a firmware that acts as an MQTT->IR bridge, and that can run on a M5StickC, making it fully integrated with the smartir custom component of Home Assistant.

In this way I can set up several "media_player" or "climate" entities, with just the list of codes they support as commands.

The configuration files are attached.

Code

esphome:
  name: m5stick-lg
  friendly_name: M5Stick-C LG

esp32:
  board: m5stick-c

logger:

ota:
  platform: esphome

wifi:
  networks:
    - ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
      password: !secret wifi_password

sensor:
  - platform: wifi_signal
    name: WiFi Signal
  - platform: uptime
    name: Uptime

button:
  - platform: restart
    name: Restart

web_server:

mqtt:
  broker: !secret mqtt_broker
  username: !secret mqtt_username
  password: !secret mqtt_password
  discovery_unique_id_generator: mac
  on_json_message:
    topic: m5stick-lg/transmit_lg        # Examples of json payload : { "data": 551494620, "nbits": 32 }
    then:                                #                            { "data": 551494620 }
      - remote_transmitter.transmit_lg:
          data: !lambda |-
            uint32_t data = 0;
            if (x.containsKey("data"))
              data = x["data"];
            return data;
          nbits: !lambda |-
            uint8_t nbits = 32;
            if (x.containsKey("nbits"))
              nbits = x["nbits"];
            return nbits;

#api:

i2c:
  - id: bus_a
    # Internal/system i2c bus
    sda: GPIO21
    scl: GPIO22
  - id: bus_b 
    # external/second i2c bus
    sda: GPIO0
    scl: GPIO26

spi:
  clk_pin: GPIO13
  mosi_pin: GPIO15

output:
  - platform: ledc
    id: builtin_led
    pin: 10
    inverted: true

light:
  - platform: monochromatic
    id: led1
    output: builtin_led
    name: Led

binary_sensor:
  - platform: gpio
    pin:
      number: GPIO37
      inverted: true
    name: Button A
    on_press:
      then:
        - light.turn_on: led1
        - remote_transmitter.transmit_lg:
            data: 0x20DF10EF # power on/off
            nbits: 32
    on_release:
      then:
        - light.turn_off: led1

# Grove IR Receiver
#remote_receiver:
#  pin:
#    number: GPIO33
#    inverted: true
#  dump: all

# Grove IR Transmitter
remote_transmitter:
#  - pin:
#      number: GPIO32
#    carrier_duty_percent: 50%
#    id: grove
# M5StickC internal IR Transmitter
  - pin:
      number: GPIO9
    carrier_duty_percent: 50%
    id: ir1

{
    "manufacturer": "LG",
    "supportedModels": [
      "OLED55B6V via transmit_lg"
    ],
    "supportedController": "MQTT",
    "commandsEncoding": "Raw",
    "commands": {
        "off": "{\"data\": 551527260 }",
        "on": "{\"data\": 551494620 }",
        "previousChannel": "{\"data\": 551518335 }",
        "nextChannel": "{\"data\": 551485695 }",
        "volumeDown": "{\"data\": 551534655 }",
        "volumeUp": "{\"data\": 551502015 }",
        "mute": "{\"data\": 551522415 }",
        "sources": {
            "Channel 1": "{\"data\": 551520375 }",
            "Channel 2": "{\"data\": 551504055 }",
            "Channel 3": "{\"data\": 551536695 }",
            "Channel 4": "{\"data\": 551495895 }",
            "Channel 5": "{\"data\": 551528535 }",
            "Channel 6": "{\"data\": 551512215 }",
            "Channel 7": "{\"data\": 551544855 }",
            "Channel 8": "{\"data\": 551491815 }",
            "Channel 9": "{\"data\": 551524455 }",
            "Channel 0": "{\"data\": 551487735 }"
        }
    }
}

Turn M5StickC Into Universal IR Remote (Home Automation)

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Story

Schematics

M5StickC schematics

Code

m5stick-lg.yaml to build esphome

json file with IR codes for my LG TV

Home Assistant configuration.yaml snippet

Credits

Alessandro Polselli

Comments

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Turn M5StickC Into Universal IR Remote (Home Automation)

Turn M5StickC Into Universal IR Remote (Home Automation)

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Story

Schematics

M5StickC schematics

Code

m5stick-lg.yaml to build esphome

json file with IR codes for my LG TV

Home Assistant configuration.yaml snippet

Credits

Alessandro Polselli

Comments

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