EspIRBlastR

An infrared blaster and receiver carrier board for CPU modules with the Seeed Studio XIAO footprint, with ESPHome firmware.

The board provides an IR transmitter, an IRM-8601S IR receiver, five capacitive touch pads, and I2C and UART headers. KiCad sources for revisions 0.1 and 0.2 are under hw/, and the IR receiver datasheet is in datasheets/.

cp esphome/secrets.yaml.example esphome/secrets.yaml   # add your WiFi
$EDITOR esphome/secrets.yaml

docker compose run --rm esphome compile ir-blastr.yaml
docker compose run --rm esphome run ir-blastr.yaml     # build and flash
docker compose up -d                                   # dashboard, port 6052

On Docker Desktop for Mac, the dashboard is published with an explicit port mapping (6052:6052). Do not use network_mode: host there — it binds inside Docker's Linux VM and localhost:6052 on the Mac never sees it.

docker compose pins the same ESPHome version CI uses, so a build that works locally works in CI. Override it with ESPHOME_VERSION in a .env file if you want to try a different release.

Toolchains and build output live in a named Docker volume rather than the repo, so nothing needs cleaning up between builds.

Reusable pieces live under esphome/packages/. The example-*.yaml files at the top of esphome/ are complete device configs you can copy and adapt; they are not meant to be included from other configs.

The three examples solve the "how do I talk to this thing" problem in different ways. example-ceiling-fan.yaml transmits pronto codes captured from the original remote. example-midea-ac.yaml uses a climate platform, and ships alternative stanzas to work through until the unit responds. example-sharp-tv.yaml generates Sharp IR frames in a lambda because ESPHome has no Sharp codec.

A minimal configuration of your own:

substitutions:
  device_name: den-ir-blastr
  friendly_name: "Den IR BlastR"

packages:
  board: !include packages/boards/xiao-s3.yaml
  ir_blastr: !include packages/ir-blastr.yaml
  touch: !include packages/touch.yaml

Or, to keep your own WiFi, API and OTA conventions, copy only packages/boards/ and the IR pin definitions you need.

Files named esphome/local*.yaml are git ignored. Put configurations for your actual devices there and they will stay out of the repository while still being visible to the ESPHome dashboard.

The board is a carrier for any module with the XIAO footprint, so nothing outside packages/boards/ refers to a GPIO number. Board packages define substitutions for the board's logical signals, and every other package consumes those:

To add a module, copy packages/boards/xiao-s3.yaml, change the esp32: block, and remap the substitutions. Modules whose chip has no capacitive touch peripheral simply can't be used with packages/touch.yaml.

Anything worth changing is a substitution with a default, overridable from your device config. The most useful ones:

To capture codes from an existing remote, build with dump enabled, watch docker compose run --rm esphome logs example-ceiling-fan.yaml, and press buttons. Copy the resulting pronto strings into your own config.

CI compiles every reference configuration on each push and pull request and uploads the resulting firmware as a build artifact. Lint runs yamllint over the repository, actionlint over the workflows, and esphome config over each configuration - the last expands all packages and substitutions and runs every component's schema validation without paying for a full compile.

Both workflows and docker-compose.yaml pin the same ESPHOME_VERSION; bump all three together.

Run the same checks locally:

yamllint --strict .
docker run --rm -v "$PWD:/repo" --workdir /repo rhysd/actionlint
docker compose run --rm esphome config ir-blastr.yaml

MIT. See also the code of conduct.