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Comment by kalleboo | Hacker News Reader

All our ceiling lights, aircon, outlets are IR-controlled.

Then I got generic Chinese IR blasters, and use homebridge to connect it all over the LAN to Apple HomeKit.

If there is a shift in tech, someone will always be selling new IR blasters due to the installed base. Worse case, I'll always have the IR remote controls (or can build something out of an raspberry pi/arduino)

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Wow, that's pretty cool. What level of iOS device do you need to run it? I try to avoid using my phone too much so I'm wondering if I could control it all with a really old iPad or a cheap old iTouch. Any recommendations on the IR blaster? I've been wanting to have some sort of non-remote control but I don't trust alexa/google home so this looks like a good option that would let me use my existing devices.

HomeKit was first supported in iOS 8, so I think anything newer than that?

The IR blaster I use is a Broadlink RM Mini, it's cheap, has been reverse-engineered, and after you've set it it's happy running it on an "IoT" VLAN with no internet access.

Friends installed a new IR controlled ceiling light, but it was a little buggy and kept turning off.

It was using the same IR frequency as one of the buttons on the TV remote :)

Haha, yeah IR isn't foolproof either. We bought some bottom-of-the-barrel Chinese humidifier, and it reacted to absolutely anything IR, even sunlight sometimes.

433mhz radio is better because of that for that kind of devices :) there are products out there.

Interesting. Most of what I've seen is either wifi based or zigbee/zwave style. Isn't IR inconvenient due to line of sight?

You connect the IR blasters over WiFi, so you just position the IR blasters in line-of-sight, which isn't difficult (put one on top of a bookshelf)

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