I think my biggest issue with IR is that there is no feedback. Which means that you either just do something when the user presses some button or you assume some state. This for example is what Logitech does with the Harmony series. Sends some commands and assumes that everyone got them (and that everything was in the correct state before). And this is what I find most annoying about the Harmony.
And thanks for the tip with Broadlink devices. It might be useful.
i spent more money on power monitoring devices to monitor the stupid IR devices 
i have something like 3 Sonoff POWs for the TVs and ACs , to know if the device is on or off
and i cannot tell what channel or state they are, i just assume on and off
you can skip it for AC , as you can always send off or on, but my TV don’t have separate on and off so i need to know what is the state
so much mess just to automate the TV, makes you want to go buy a new one…
so i got myself a new Samsung N7100 or something (75 Inch 
)
and you would think it will be easy but, when the TV is off you cannot control shit! so back again to the broadlink!!!
I’m using the Xiaomi IR remote.
cost’s 17$ and works like a charm.
You can implement it with the MIIO Binding and this cli programm:
It’s pretty easy to learn and action IR commands.
Just a shot in the dark, but would some kind of CEC HDMI polling something work?
never heard of it, till now 
do you have a working example or guide?
Sorry, it’s not something I’ve played with yet.
Does this help you?
I found this …
But I have no idea what to do with it
That is actually the direction I took in the end. I bought a One For All Streamer remote ( https://www.oneforall.com/universal-remotes/urc7935-streamer-remote ) - which is a nice compact learning remote. And I configured it to directly control my TV. But the Shield doesn’t have an IR receiver however it does listen to CEC events. So I configured the remote to work in CEC mode (it is a special option in the settings). And I can now control the TV, my AV receiver, Shield and my Blu Ray player - TV and AV receiver directly, the other two via CEC. I will configure some of the remaining buttons to control my Openhab via an IR receiver and LIRC.
But because the TV is one of the devices controllable via network as well I can send key press events from openhab to the TV and those then get transmitted to the devices connected to it via CEC.
Basically for those unfamiliar with HDMI CEC. It is a standard that enables devices connected via HDMI to control one another. That way a TV can turn on when you power on a bluray player or something similar. It also enables you to control your player/AV receiver just with your TV remote for instance. The only issue - implementations of this standard vary a lot. And not all devices always play nicely with others.
Any Humax devices fall firmly into that category.
As in…
No CEC support at all. (Other than switching the input of my Amp when the Humax gets switched on)
My Denon and Samsung devices behave extremely well together.
IE.
Denon AVR-X Android WiFi remote control app shows 3 keypad options for my Samsung Blu-ray player, but nothing at all for the Humax
Just a small bit of an update. I finally found a cheap solution to my problems that works better than LIRC on raspberry pi…
YTF IR bridge (or Eachen IR bridge/Tuya IR bridge). They are basically cheap (around 10$ on ebay) ir-wifi bridges using ESP Wifi modules. And they are supported by the Tasmota firmware. So just install sonoff tasmota FW onto them and use MQTT to connect them. They support sending and receiving IR and everything. Really awesome solution.
sounds cool but can you teach them stuff?
the advantge of somthing like Broadlink is that you can teach it every command
Whenever the receiver detects something it spews out the decoded data (or raw data for unknown protocols - though the majority should be supported). All you need to do is tell it to send that data and it will do just that. So the short answer is yes. Unless that’s not what you meant.
Well, I am looking currently to use ESP IR blaster. Has anyone used this approach here ?
Basically trying to send commands through MQTT and control IR based gadgets. Planning to put the ESP on a microUSB based card (maybe use nodemcu) and power it through USB.
Since it is running on ESP8266 you could always install Sonoff Tasmota Firmware on it and run that.
Although the above mentioned Eachen/YTF IR bridges run on ESP8266 and come in a nice package. And they are cheaper than that IR blaster. So they would probably be a better choice.
Roli, Thanks for pointing it out. Actually I did run through that earlier, Maybe it already exists only trying to see if there exists some device in a different form factor including a 2.5 mm audio jack. where I can power it through a USB jack and extend the IR emitter where it is required.
My guess is that you want to stick this into a cabinet or something?
If not - from my experience these blasters are really quite 360° and you won’t have much trouble placing them anywhere really. As long as you have USB for power. If you want to place one inside a cabinet… you could just buy 2 and stick one in the cabinet and the other somewhere else in the room and have them listen to the same MQTT topic (as long as two of them don’t “see” each other). Or if you want more hands on… Desolder the IR LED, and run a wire from there.
Being new to this, I can understand the .items, but what about the .things? Could you include all the necessary script to get your Humax PVR working as you have shown above?
Well, this might be the easiest ever then.
There isn’t a .things file.
And to my knowledge, I didn’t need to do anything with the udp.cfg or tcp.cfg file.
And there aren’t any scripts as such for the Humax codes.
All I did was add a button widget to HabPanel, point it to the outgoing UDP Item.
And copy the required HEX code into the button payload / “command value”
As shown here :-
This might be of interest…
Can someone explain how to make it work with YTF IR Bridge?
