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 hour21,422

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 (or a M5CameraF + grove IR transmitter), 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 full Home Assistant configuration is here:

https://github.com/apolselli/home-assistant-config

UPDATE: You can even use a M5Atom (smaller, cheaper, + cool Led Matrix) for this project! For this device the YAML is here:

https://github.com/apolselli/home-assistant-config/blob/master/esphome/m5atom_ir.yaml

Code

substitutions:
  devicename: m5stickc_ir
  upper_devicename: M5StickC IR Remote

esphome:
  name: $devicename
  platform: ESP32
  board: m5stick-c
  platformio_options:
    upload_speed: 115200

wifi:
  ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
  password: !secret wifi_password
  
  ap:
    ssid: $devicename Fallback Hotspot
    password: !secret wifi_password

captive_portal:

logger:

api:

ota:

web_server:

binary_sensor:

  - platform: gpio
    pin:
      number: GPIO37
      inverted: true
    name: ${upper_devicename} Button A
    on_press:
      then:
        - switch.turn_on: led1
    on_release:
      then:
        - switch.turn_off: led1
        
  - platform: gpio
    pin:
      number: GPIO39
      inverted: true
    name: ${upper_devicename} Button B
    on_press:
      then:
        - switch.turn_on: led1
    on_release:
      then:
        - switch.turn_off: led1

sensor:
  - platform: wifi_signal
    name: ${upper_devicename} WiFi Signal
  - platform: uptime
    name: ${upper_devicename} Uptime

switch:

  - platform: restart
    name: ${upper_devicename} Restart

  - platform: gpio
    pin:
      number: GPIO10
      inverted: true
    name: ${upper_devicename} Led
    id: led1

  - platform: template
    name: ${upper_devicename} LG TV Power On
    turn_on_action:
      - remote_transmitter.transmit_lg:
          data: 0x20DF23DC              # = 551494620
          nbits: 32
          transmitter_id: internal

mqtt:
  broker: 192.168.1.200
  discovery: false
  on_json_message:
    topic: ${devicename}/transmit_lg        # Examples of json payload : { "data": 551494620, "nbits": 32 }
    then:                                   #                            { "data": 551494620 }
      - remote_transmitter.transmit_lg:
          transmitter_id: internal
          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;

# 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: internal

{
    "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\": 551538225 }",
        "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 }"
        }
    }
}

Credits

Alessandro Polselli

3 projects • 16 followers

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

m5stickc_ir.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

m5stickc_ir.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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