The humble Wi-Fi IR blaster is a powerful tool in home automation. Suddenly any device with a traditional remote control can be commanded over the air. With my Broadlink RM Mini 3 and its Home Assistant Component, all I need to do is tell Home Assistant to send a packet to the blaster and it will do the job! I want to answer a couple of questions here:

• What is a packet, anyway?
• What packet do I send?

These are questions I only recently answered for myself by reverse-engineering a heatpump remote. In this post I’ll use simpler examples...•••