comments:
I bought this and then 3d printed a little case for it and called it a day. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KGXNZ2Q?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_2
Also found this. It’s the same chip I use but with a different body. So you just need to update my YAML example for esp8266 and switch the board line to “board: esp8285” and the pin to GPIO14 and it should work. https://a.co/d/0b26Sa23
Yes as mentioned above any IR Diode works. But this is just for receiving not transmitting IR. You COULD use the same ESPHome device to do transmit and receive but you need 2 separate IR diodes on different GPIO pins. I personally don’t do transmit but 2026.4 added support for transmit using a ESPHome IR Proxy (same thing this uses for receiving) and someone could quickly Claude that up too. I’m using a esp8266 wemo board with an IR diode on pin 14 and usb for power. I went DIY route as I had the receiver diode sitting around. But you could just buy this device as it has receiver and transmitter all together. You would just need to tweak the model number in my esp8266 example to 8285 (it’s basically the same just smaller board with less GPIO) https://a.co/d/0b26Sa23