This is a simplified explanation of the setup I'm using to get rid of the IR remote that came with my Nitori ceiling lamps.
The setup assumes:
- I never touch the original IR remotes or the 'master' light switches (the ones that cut the power off)
- I have internet access and Nature Remote Cloud API is working fine (yes, it's not a local setup).
- 2x Nitori ceiling light with an IR remote allowing for brightness and color temperature control (similar to this)
- 2x Nature Remo Mini
- 1x RaspberryPi 4
- 4x Flic 2 button
I've used the official Nature Remo mobile app to set up the lights. By setting them up I mean not only letting the app detect that I'm using Nitori light and giving me some preconfigured buttons, but also going to the other screen to manually register some other buttons that my IR remote has.
Note that Remo doesn't seem to remember any state of my lights, not even if they are currently on. Well, it does seem to remember which button you pressed, but that's not very useful.
I'm running Home Assistant with docker (homeassistant/raspberrypi4-homeassistant:stable) on a Raspberry Pi 4. I keep it at home, but the setup doesn't require it to be on the same network as Nature Remo - the integration is using the Cloud API, not the local one.
To be able to control Nature Remo, I needed this custom component. The link will get you to a branch on my fork, where I added support for light devices. Hopefully it will get merged upstream at some point. The integration gives me light entities as well as 2 services that I can use to 'press IR remote buttons'.
Flic buttons were supported out of the box.
I'm running flicd from https://github.com/50ButtonsEach/fliclib-linux-hci on my Raspberry Pi. Note that due to how flicd is implemented, I won't be able to use any other bluetooth devices from that Raspberry Pi (or I could use a bluetooth dongle).
The buttons are in convenient locations - entrance to the room (next to the 'master' light switch, the one that cuts the power off), next to the bed etc.
I'm controlling what each button does using automations (see the yaml config).
I used picture elements cards to expose all the functionality that the IR remote offers in a somewhat compact format.
The pictures are in config/www directory (where config is the directory with all the yaml stuff), so that Home
Assistant serves them. The main idea behind the card setup is that I've put a bunch of invisible buttons on top of
the edited photo of the IR remote. It'd be great if someone better than me at photo editing would help improve the
visuals of my remotes (especially the dark one), but for now I'm OK with the ones I made.
