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Hijacking infrared to make a dumb device smart

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Re: Hijacking infrared to make a dumb device smart

#31

Post by ochoseis »

chime wrote: post #5

Using Pico to get state from LED lights is ingenious. Mad props! If you just want to control infrared devices and set their state without first reading their state (like any standard IR remote), looking into BroadLink RM4 Mini. Works with almost everything I've thrown at it.

Do those work with mini split AC units? They have really odd remotes, but they’re IR. We have some Fujitsu halcyon units I would love to control over the web.

Re: Hijacking infrared to make a dumb device smart

#33

Post by m463 »

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #6

Good post. Honestly though, I’m more interested in making smart devices dumb. Rip out their Wi-Fi hardware etc.

I've found this to be harder than it seems.

I had a tesla gen3 wall charger. I updated it and .. crap ... it created a wifi access point that I did not want and would not go away.

so I decided to disconnect the external antenna. unplug the mmcx connector and easy peasy disconnected.

...and the wifi board switched to its internal antenna which was just about as strong.

so I thought... Hmmm.. maybe I can add a dummy load. I wired up an mmcx->rp-sma wire plus a dummy load.

same thing. It may choose the strongest input? or do diversity?

I've now been thinking of downgrading the firmware.

Re: Hijacking infrared to make a dumb device smart

#34

Post by ArchOversight »

cassepipe wrote: post #32

This has no bearing on the project but since I am implementing a toy server I am wondering about the choice of the PUT method. I thought that it was mostly unused (browser don't send PUT requests) and was replaced by POST request most of the time.

PUT can be used from XMLHttpRequest as well as fetch() and allows you to build a REST API using JavaScript.

Re: Hijacking infrared to make a dumb device smart

#36

Post by poofsoda »

ochoseis wrote: post #31
chime wrote: post #5

Using Pico to get state from LED lights is ingenious. Mad props! If you just want to control infrared devices and set their state without first reading their state (like any standard IR remote), looking into BroadLink RM4 Mini. Works with almost everything I've thrown at it.

Do those work with mini split AC units? They have really odd remotes, but they’re IR. We have some Fujitsu halcyon units I would love to control over the web.

Yes. I have a Mitsubishi mini split and my broadlink (RM3, but effectively the same from an IR standpoint) is able to transmit codes. I did have to train the broadlink unit, which basically consists of putting it into a “learn” mode and then pressing the desired button on the mini split remote.

Re: Hijacking infrared to make a dumb device smart

#37

Post by girvo »

Not quite the same thing, but it still amuses me that we use the infrared Remote Control Tranceiver driver and hardware in the ESP32 to generate LED strip PWM signals!

https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/latest/esp32/...

https://github.com/Lucas-Bruder/ESP32_LED_STRIP/blob/master/...

Re: Hijacking infrared to make a dumb device smart

#38

Post by anonomousename »

ochoseis wrote: post #31
chime wrote: post #5

Using Pico to get state from LED lights is ingenious. Mad props! If you just want to control infrared devices and set their state without first reading their state (like any standard IR remote), looking into BroadLink RM4 Mini. Works with almost everything I've thrown at it.

Do those work with mini split AC units? They have really odd remotes, but they’re IR. We have some Fujitsu halcyon units I would love to control over the web.

It depends - some units broadcast individual commands to turn up/down temp, so those would be easy. Some units broadcast the entire state every time you press the button though (normally remotes with an display on them), so recoding the remote would just give you a state to cycle through. You may be able to find just the individual temperature commands on remotecentral.com or other places online by searching “Pronto Code database” - those can be converted to whatever format you need.

Re: Hijacking infrared to make a dumb device smart

#39

Post by srcreigh »

bil7 wrote: post #12
jdboyd wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it easier to start with a dumb device. However as that increasingly looks not so possible for TVs, I'd love to see somebody document the process for what you propose.

you can still find some dumb displays if you search for "monitors" rather than "tvs".

Projectors are another option

Re: Hijacking infrared to make a dumb device smart

#40

Post by jhugo »

cassepipe wrote: post #32

This has no bearing on the project but since I am implementing a toy server I am wondering about the choice of the PUT method. I thought that it was mostly unused (browser don't send PUT requests) and was replaced by POST request most of the time.

Browsers will happily send any standard HTTP method including PUT. HTML forms always produce a GET or POST [0], but nowadays most requests are probably made with fetch() etc, not HTML forms.

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/fo...

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