Broadlink Support

Feature Requests
#24

Thanks, I can shoot him an email. Although I’m beginning to have some doubts about whether this will even help us. That video you shared seemed to be geared towards hardware manufacturers. I wonder if this is more like an Alexa Skills SDK. By that I mean, we use their SDK to make our devices compatible with their app. Kind of the opposite of what we want which is to make their devices compatible with our app.

It’s worth looking into though. Most of the integrations I’ve found online do not have a way to download your configured IR & RF devices from the Broadlink cloud. We’d pretty much have to reteach & reconfigure everything which could be a bit of a pain. I’d love to avoid that if possible. I’m hoping this SDK will let us download the user’s devices from the Broadlink hub or cloud.

#25

@deathwh1sper Andy replied back right away to my email. That SDK is only available to Chinese developers that are selling their Broadlink products.

Back to the original plan. Control is still possible but you’ll just have to reteach all of your IR & RF commands. I have found some IR databases online that can help this process.

#26

yes, the local code learning is a common factor for most of the broadlink integrations in another platforms, but I think most of users can bear with that in favor of the possibility to achieve local control.

I wonder if it might be easier or not take the avantage of another software which already integrated broadlink locally, for example: homebridge which allows using broadlink devices with apple homekit

#27

I agree with Deathwhisper, relearning all ir/rf commands is much better than nothing!

#28

Noticed that Home Assistant seems to include also a Broadlink Integration for local control. Maybe a reasonable way might be to integrate HA instead?

#29

Home Assistant support is definitely something I plan on adding but I’m sure there will still be people that want a direct integration as well.

#30

I plan to start working on Broadlink very soon. Hopefully in the next week or 2.

1 Like
#31

There was a major detail that I missed during my initial research. For me to connect & authenticate with these devices, they’d have to be removed from your BroadLink account. That means that not only would you no longer be able to control them with the official BroadLink app, but you wouldn’t be able to control them with Alexa or Google Assistant either.

In light of this new discovery, I think I’m going to postpone the direct integration. I feel there won’t be enough individuals that’d be willing to go through all these hurdles & lose voice support in the process.

Instead, I’m going to propose some indirect solutions:

  1. I’ll add the ability to have Alexa send any voice command as text. Currently the Home Remote’s Alexa integration is all voice based & is done using the microphone. I’ll add support that’ll let you send Broadlink commands with text so you can link them to Buttons on any custom page.

  2. I’ll add support for Home Assistant. As @deathwh1sper mentioned earlier, Home Assistant already supports BroadLink so we can control it through their integration. Yes, with HA you’ll also have to unpair your BroadLink devices from the official BroadLink apps, but HA has their own skills for Alexa & Google Assistant so you won’t have to worry about losing voice control.

I’ll work on this now. Not only will these solutions provide a way to control BroadLink from the Home Remote but they’ll be quicker for me to develop. I’m not saying no to a future “direct” BroadLink integration. I’m just saying I’m going to complete these 2 updates 1st.

#34

For Broadlink direct then I would wait until next day … because I am not using HA and I cannot add a Raspberry yet, Alexa in text command is not also available in all countries.

#35

I am working on the Alexa feature right now & hope to have it available by the end of the week.

#36

I confused then. Because Amazon is developing a solution that allows you to translate speech into text and translate two voice conversations for example someone who speaks French and another English.

#37

That’s not what I’m talking about. If you can currently control devices with Alexa, this upcoming feature will work for you.

1 Like
#38

The Alexa solution I proposed earlier is available. Any command Alexa can send your Broadlink devices can now also be sent with Home Remote through AVS.

#39

Hi, Bill! Has the integration with IR / RF Hubs (Tuya or Broadlink) advanced anything? Or did you rule out that possibility?

#40

As mentioned earlier, you should be able to control your Broadlink devices now through the new Alexa integration. The Home Assistant integration will be complete in about a week or 2. That will provide another path to controlling Broadlink devices if you don’t want to use the Alexa solution.

Nothing has changed in terms of a direct integration. To communicate directly with either of those platforms, the user would have to use Home Remote exclusively. They’d no longer be able to use the official Broadlink or Tuya apps. That means they’d also lose access to services like Alexa & Google Assistant. I’m just not a fan of pursuing that because it really limits the number of users we can target. A lot of people will not be happy with those conditions. It’s not worth spending weeks of time developing something that only a few are going to use. Like always though, I’m willing to make exceptions when users pay for the development cost. My ballpark estimate on this would be somewhere in the $1000 range.

#41

Is there an alternative more “open” product you might be able to recommend that has similar features to the broadlink yet work with the home remote software?

Personally, I would use this option as I don’t use Alexa or google assistant.

#42

Yes, Global Cache. Their systems are “Open”.

https://www.globalcache.com/products/

#43

Broadlink devices can be reached in Fibaro system. There is a quickApp that recignoizes all the Broaldink hubs in your network, and you can create a QuickApp that will send commands to Broadlink.
That QuickApp has a possibility to learn actual IR/RF commands and upon a button press you can send a command to broadlink to send that re-learnt IR/RF code. It works for me with many devices. I have all of them in HR as well, since they are devices of Fibaro already.
All of them i can use in scenes, or wherever i just want. Working rellay well.
All the devices also stayes in the original Broadlink hub, so there’s nothing to change. All of them are reachable by Google Assistant, or Siri or Alexa if you want.

1 Like
#44

Hi folks,
when I read along here, my heart bleeds for not having paid much attention to advertising our IR/RF transmitter. It works similarly to the GlobalCache devices, but supports many more IR formats and also RF433/315 MHz. The firmware has an open API interface to which HTTP requests can be sent.
Example IR Command for LG TV to toggle ON/OFF:
http://device_IP/sendIR?/n=1&p=NEC&code=0x8E740B
The GlobalCache codes can also be sent, just omit the initial code “senddir,1:1,40000,1,1,” and you have the RAW code.
This is then sent with http://device_IP/sendIR?n=1&l=2&f=38&code={GlobalCache RawCode}
I would be happy if someone can use such a device (I would provide the boards at cost price or the board layout and the firmware for free), can contact me here. The device works locally in the WiFi network (2.4GHz)
The documentation for the device can be found here in GoogleDocs:

Pictures and further information can be found here: BEAM documentation / news

I would like to clarify again - this device is not for sale, it is only to be made available to the THR community.

Kalle

#45

Hi Bell
The Broadlink app now has a button to unlock the device. This issue no longer exists.