Today I became the proud owner of a Klikr – my friend Jonathan dropped one in for me – so, this afternoon I decided to investigate.
Here it is seen photographed next to my Samsung Gear Classic watch on my normal size hand to put it into perspective. I have the black one but there are other options.
The unit contains a Bluetooth transceiver and infra-red transmitter and receiver. The idea is simple – you can have it learn key commands to control, say, your TV (by learning existing commands) and you can control that by Bluetooth on your phone.
You might, like me say – well that’s a bit pointless, I have IR remote control on your phone. You might also have a TV which you can already control remotely over the Internet. However, if you happen to have a central control system, say, a Raspberry Pi controlling the house – you COULD stick Bluetooth onto that (unless it already has it) and control a TV that otherwise has nothing but Infra-red, from anywhere in the world. The device claims to have “voice control” but in reality that is something they’ve put onto the controlling App on your phone. Still, a nice touch.
Anyway, I’m sure you can read all about it if you’re interested, they seem to cost about £25. If you’ve no other way to remotely control a gadget that responds to infra-red this might be another tool to add to your home control toolbox. I tested it, took no more than a minute to get it talking to my TV and having the Android (they do Apple) App turning things on and off. Doddle.
Oh yes, it was a Kickstarter project, it is made in China, it runs on a single CR2032 battery and will last a long time as it uses low power Bluetooth. Well, as long as you don’t sit turning stuff on and off all day with it.
While interested in this subject I did find this.. http://www.banggood.com/Broadlink-Black-Bean-Smart-Home-Wifi-Remote-IR-Controller-Universal-Appliances-Smart-Control-p-1049494.html?utm_design=18&utm_source=emarsys&utm_medium=Mail_mid90_email&utm_campaign=newsletter-emarsys&utm_content=Winna&sc_src=email_2129478&sc_eh=e375077fc58ebb7d1&sc_llid=376931&sc_lid=89002665&sc_uid=sBhI5Zx9FB
At first glance looks great as it runs on WIFI and can learn infra-red controls… (as does the Anymote hardware but I could not get that to work properly AT ALL). I was about to order one of these devices when I watched an American video – the guy was praising the Black Bean board but said that while it learned his TV remote controls – on playback, nothing happened. Think I’ll wait a while on that one.
Don’t know if you are still interested in this area but I have the Blackbean aka RM Mini 3 working with a range of IR devices and fully integrated into node red. Various ways of doing it including RM Bridge for learning codes but this does require an android device as a bridge device. Simplest way was a little python routine called BlackBeanControl https://github.com/davorf/BlackBeanControl which you can exec from node red and if its the first time a command is sent the RM Mini 3 will wait for a remote to learn from – each subsequent time it fires off the signal to the device. Stored codes are then available in the .ini if required. Works well, good wifi and IR range on the RM Mini 3. It is also possible to integrate via MQTT and also HA-Bridge and Alexa
Especially like it with these lights https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01ESZ37RK/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 which are regularly on offer for around £6.
Indeed. On a beach break but on our return I will investigate further.
oh, i have that black bean! Time to resurrect it! Thanks for sharing! 🙂
Indeed now the devices are hardcoded, but i can get the from a lirc server located in cloud, its still an esp .. I had bad experiences with learning remotes all the devices around rhe house. Just select brand and model, get the ir codes and store them i to the memory. Space exists so is a matter od adaptation and testing.
can be useful? http://www.remotecentral.com/cgi-bin/codes/
this is a nice device to centralize remotes (it has a costellation of ir beamer in the top, there’s a version with RF, too): http://www.banggood.com/it/Broadlink-Black-Bean-Smart-Home-Wifi-Remote-IR-Controller-Universal-Appliances-Smart-Control-p-1049494.html
Hi Peter, Nice this little gadget if you have bluetooth. Maybe can be paired in the future with ESP32. Until then I’ve created my own way to control my Panasonic TV:
https://myesp8266.blogspot.com/2015/12/esp8266-as-ir-remote-control.html
and for the summer my Air Con with: https://myesp8266.blogspot.com/2016/05/keep-your-house-cool-with-esp8266.html
Nice – but – am I right in saying – your IR effort has no learning capability? For me that’s a must as I always end up with kit that no-one supports. I do wish we had better ESP libraries for learning.