this tiny black box costs $7 with shipping included and you can use it to control and automate dumb devices like older TVs airon units speakers ceiling fans and more so in this video I'll explain exactly what this thing is where you can pick one up and how to set it up for yourself before I get into this I want to quickly give credit to smarthomes scene.com which is where I originally found out about this device so a link to that article will be in the description below let's start from the top
what exactly is this device this is the Toya zs6 it's a smart infrared remote often referred to as an IR blaster it runs on zigby and it controls virtually any infrared device in your home within a range of 30 ft or so all you do is point a remote at it press a button such as on or off to teach it that action and after that you can trigger that same action without ever having to use use the original remote again if you're familiar with the broadlink rm4 mini which is a popular IR Blaster the Toy
a Zs 06 is an alternative to that it does take a bit more work to set up initially but considering the huge cost difference it might just be worth that extra time investment especially if you're picking up multiple units so with that said where can you actually buy the zs6 you can find it on Amazon but you certainly won't find it for anywhere near $7 and if you're having to pay double or even triple that amount you may as well just stretch a little bit more and get the broadlink mini instead you
'll want to head over to aliexpress.com and do a search for Toya zs6 you can take your pick from one of the many listings or you can use my link in the description below this one for example has sold hundreds of units and it cost $448 plus .99 for shipping so actually even less than $77 in total and yes it will be sent from China and you will have to wait a while for it to be delivered 3 to 4 weeks is not uncommon but again the savings might just be worth the extra weight especially if you're pl
anning to put one of these in every room of your house because infrared cannot penetrate walls now a quick thing to watch out for there is a similar version called the UFO R11 and it looks to be identical in every way except that it runs on batteries if you prefer a wireless version this might be a better option for you but do note it won't act as a repeater so it won't extend the range of your zigby mesh Network I have the wired version the Z06 so I can only speak to the reliability of that one
and it's what I'll be using throughout this video now let's tuck on HUB requirements because like I said this runs on zigby not Wi-Fi which means you will need to use it with some kind of hub since this is a Toya device you would typically pair it with a Toya zigby Gateway and control it with the Toya Smart Life app so if you don't have a universal hub like home assistant and you're happy to go this route by all means go ahead and pick up a Toya zigby Gateway this will set you back about $15 to
$20 but you will be able to add multiple IR blasters to it and in theory other Toya devices but be aware the IR blast only works with specific models of zigby Gateway and it seems to be the wired version that doesn't have Bluetooth included the listing doesn't specify any one model so I'm hesitant to recommend one for this video I'm going to sidestep all of that drama by using home assistant with a zigby dongle this removes the need for the Toya Gateway and the Toya Smart Life app and it allows
you to use the IR Blaster inside of Home assistant along with home assistant powerful for automations if you like the idea of experimenting with obscure devices like this one and you haven't made the leap to home assistant yet I have a video on screen now that will walk you through the setup process step by step you will have to spend a bit more money up front to get it going but you won't have to buy any more proprietary hubs and it will work with virtually any smart device you throw at it oka
y let's get into the actual setup process first of all if you're using the default zigby into integration inside home assistant called Zha I recommend switching over to zigby to mqtt terrible name but it supports a much broader range of devices including the IR Blaster we're going to be using it's also widely considered to be a significant upgrade over the default integration so I'll link you a video on how to do that in the description keep in mind you will have to repair all of your zigby devi
ces after making this switch so if that's a deal breaker for you you can use this with Zha but you will need to use a custom Quirk this basically extends the functionality of Zha to work with this particular IR Blaster I'll link to more information regarding that process in the description but I won't be covering it in this video now if you're already using zigg B2 mqtt then you don't need to worry about any of that and we can go ahead and add the IR Blaster to home assistant start by heading ov
er to zigby to mqtt in your sidebar make sure you're on the devices page and at the top of your screen click permit to join this will give you 5 minutes to put the IR Blaster into a pairing mode which is easy enough to do by holding the button on the bottom of the device until you see the light flash once it shows up in your devices list go ahead and click on it from here you'll want to rename it by clicking the blue button down here and I'll just call M IR Blaster be sure to check this toggle w
hen renaming in order to update the home assistant entity ID at the same time now if you go to settings devices and devices again you should be able to find your IR Blaster correctly added to home assistant now like any infrared remote this thing needs to learn the IR codes for each of your infrared devices and more specifically each individual action for those devices typically you would use an app to choose from a list of various manufacturers and it would pull in the relevant IR codes for you
we don't have that luxury here so you will need to manually feed it the codes but it isn't all that difficult and it allows you to add practically any IR device you want no matter how obscure head back over to zigby to mqtt from your sidebar make sure you're on the devices page and click into the IR Blaster now go to the exposes tab to see the device attributes and this is where you can start figuring out your IR codes all you need to do is click the word on and keep in mind you have to do this
for each new code then take the standard remote for whatever device you want to teach it point it at the IR Blaster and press whatever button you want to record in this case I'm starting with the power button so I can turn on my airon if done correctly you should see a long string of letters and numbers which is the IR code for that particular action if you copy the whole string you can paste it into the box below to test the code for some reason it doesn't trigger until you click off of this f
ield but if you click anywhere else on the page you should see your device respond as if you were controlling it with the standard remote and you can test this multiple times by clicking in the field and then clicking off of it again once you've verified that it works you'll want to paste this code in your note somewhere along with what device it's for and what action it represents sense repeat this process for all the infrared devices and actions you want to use because we'll need this informat
ion for the next step now that you have all of your IR codes to hand it's time to add them to home assistant so we can trigger them on demand and use them in automations there are a few ways to do this such as using template switches or input booleans but I'm just going to keep this really simple using scripts which you can create within home assistance interface without having to write the yaml code just go to settings automations and scenes then go to the scripts tab as you can see I've alread
y created some scripts for my TV but let's go ahead and add some new ones for my airon click add script create new script the name should be the device and the action so you can easily reference it later in this case I'll do airon on I'll set the icon to power on then click add action set the service to mqtt publish the topic to zigby 2 mqtt slash the name of your IR blaster in this case I've just called it IR Blaster slet and make sure again that that name is exactly as you wrote it before if t
his is even slightly different it will not work check the payload box and write exactly what you see here I'll also have this in the video description if that's easier now from your notes paste in your IR code right between the final set of quotes then set the quality of service to zero and save the script now if you click the three dots in the corner you can run the script to make sure it's working as expected you will need to make a script for every individual action but you can speed this up
by duplicating the script you just created now I'll give this a name change the icon to power off swap out the IR code and hit save once more now just repeat this process as many times as you need once you have all your scripts in place it's time to add them to the home assistant dashboard so you can trigger them like you would any other smart device go to your overview click the three dots edit dashboard then click add card we're going to add an entity card give it the title airon remove all of
these default entities and start adding each of the scripts we just created you'll see a real- Time preview of the card as we add these in and once you're done just click save and you should now have buttons directly on your dashboard that allow you to trigger those infrared devices with a single click if you want to use these scripts inside of automations that's easily done as well just go to settings automations and scenes and create a new automation set your trigger and condition if you want
one and then add a new action from here you simply search for your script and pull it directly into to your Automation and you can even add multiple scripts if you want to control more than one infrared device and there you have it I know there was some work involved there but if you have any questions about this process or any smart home related questions at all please drop them below and I will do my best to help otherwise check out my other videos on screen now I plan to create a lot more co
ntent around home assistant so if you're using this platform or you just plan to in the future stick around because I've got some good stuff in the works either way thank you for watching and I will see you in the next one
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