Disclosure: This article may contain affiliate links. If you decide to make a purchase, I'll make a small commission at no extra cost to you.
I recently picked up an IKEA Trådfri Remote to try out. My computer is in the Living Room and I thought it would be nice to have a multi function remote to manage the fan and lights around me.
Updates
-
2020-09-05
- Source: Added section to share snapshots of full multiple remote automation and my full script.
-
2020-09-06
- Additional functionality: Added section to document the double-click and long press functionality I added to the top and bottom buttons on the remote.
- Source: Updated the link to an updated snapshot of my full multiple remote automation.
5 button remote
The remote has five buttons to do whatever I want with. Using Home Assistant this become a custom “Scene Controller”. Initially I setup the large power button in the middle to toggle the fan on and off. The top and bottom “brightness” buttons turn the primary light group on and off, and the right and left arrow buttons turn the secondary lamp on and off.
My wife asked me if she could adjust the light brightness with the remote as well. That led me to discover that zha_event captures hold events for the 4 light control buttons. A long press on one of those buttons either raises or lowers the assigned light’s brightness by 20%.
Nice! That brings me up to 9 “scenes” that I can control with this remote.
Double click?
Well, I thought it would be nice to be able to toggle the TV on and off. After checking though zha_event does not capture double taps of any of the IKEA remote’s buttons. Darn.
One thought kept nagging at the back of my mind though. Although zha_event didn’t provide a unique command for a “double click” event, I noticed that double the center power button did fire two events in quick succession. I knew there was probably a way to exploit that.
How to store the information needed for later comparison?
After a few hours (and a couple of breaks) I figured it out! Storing the previous click’s timestamp to compare it with the current click’s timestamp. The trick was to find a way to store the data. At first I used the custom_component hass-variables to store the timestamp of the current click, device_ieee, command, and the difference in time between the previous click and the current click. While that worked great and gave my data structure, I wanted to make it easier for everyone to use.
I created a “Helper” entity named input_text.zha_click. In it I store a comma separate list of the values needed. Here is a table with some captured click data:
| device_ieee | command | previous_click | click_count | click_delta |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ec:1b:bd:ff:fe:23:9c:ee | toggle | 1599275643.719181 | 1 | 6.6513881683349609 |
| ec:1b:bd:ff:fe:23:9c:ee | toggle | 1599276764.579644 | 2 | 0.2137620449066162 |
| ec:1b:bd:ff:fe:23:9c:ee | toggle | 1599276776.025289 | 3 | 0.16803312301635742 |
The “click_delta” has been remarked out from my current code, but it was very helpful to help me understand the timing during testing! For example it told me 1 second not only felt too long to wait for my fan to turn on, but it also felt like too long to wait for a second click. I found half of a second to be a pretty sweet spot between the two.
Example Automation
Below is an example of the automation I use. In this section of the code that handles the large button in the middle. Theoretically it can have an unlimited number of clicks. I have held it to 3 for now: 1x - Toggle Fan, 2x - Toggle TV, 3x - Toggle Front Door Lock.
Note: I chose `mode: restart` so a second click within the allotted delay time (0.5 seconds) would cancel the default single click action.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
automation:
alias: "ZHA: IKEA Remote Click Handler"
id: zha_ikea_remote_click
initial_state: true
mode: restart # Force restart to pickup double click
trigger:
platform: event
event_type: zha_event
event_data:
data.device_ieee: "ec:1b:bd:ff:fe:23:9c:ee"
action:
- choose:
# Middle Button: "Power"
- conditions:
- condition: template
value_template: '{{ trigger.event.data.command == "toggle" }}'
sequence:
# Store the previous click values and decide if this click was a double click or not.
- service: script.zha_store_click
data_template:
device: '{{ trigger.event.data.device_ieee }}'
command: '{{ trigger.event.data.command }}'
- choose:
# Double click
- conditions:
# Click count: returned by 4th value
- condition: template
value_template: |
{% set click_count = states("input_text.zha_click").split(",")[3]|int %}
{{ click_count == 2 }}
sequence:
# Delay 0.5 second to allow for a second click to cancel the second action.
- delay:
seconds: 0.5
- service: switch.toggle
entity_id: switch.tv_family_room
# Triple click
- conditions:
# Click count: returned by 4th value
- condition: template
value_template: |
{% set click_count = states("input_text.zha_click").split(",")[3]|int %}
{{ click_count == 3 }}
sequence:
# Delay 0.5 second to allow for a second click to cancel the third action.
- delay:
seconds: 0.5
- choose:
# The door us locked
- conditions:
- condition: template
value_template: '{{ states("lock.front_door")|lower|trim == "locked" }}'
sequence:
- service: lock.unlock
entity_id: lock.front_door
- service: input_boolean.turn_on
entity_id: input_boolean.leave_unlocked
# The door is unlocked
default:
- service: input_boolean.turn_off
entity_id: input_boolean.leave_unlocked
- service: lock.lock
entity_id: lock.front_door
# Single Click
default:
# Delay 0.5 second to allow for a second click to cancel the first action.
- delay:
seconds: 0.5
# Toggle the fan.
- service: switch.toggle
entity_id: switch.family_room_fan
##########################################################
# Omitting handlers for the other 4 buttons for brevity. #
##########################################################
Reusable logic in a script
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
# The click data is stored in CSV fomat in the order: device_ieee, command, click, click_count
#
# Note: you can extract the data from the input_text list like so.
# {% set data = states("input_text.zha_click").split(",") %}
# {% set previous_device = data[0] %}
# {% set previous_command = data[1] %}
# {% set previous_click = data[2] %}
# {% set click_count = data[3] %}
script:
zha_store_click:
mode: queued
sequence:
# Store the previous click values, and whether or not the current click is a double click.
# * second click must occur within 0.5 second of the first click
# * must be the same remote
# * must be sending the same command
- service: input_text.set_value
data_template:
entity_id: input_text.zha_click
# CSV Order: device_ieee, command, click, click_count
value: >-
{%- set data = states("input_text.zha_click").split(",") %}
{%- set previous_device = data[0]|trim %}
{%- set previous_command = data[1]|trim %}
{%- set click = as_timestamp(now())|float %}
{%- set previous_click = data[2]|float %}
{%- set click_delta = click - previous_click %}
{%- set click_count = data[3]|int %}
{{- device|trim }},
{{- command|trim }},
{{- click }},
{%- if click_delta <= 0.5 and previous_device == device|trim and previous_command == command %}
{{- click_count + 1 }}
{%- else %}
{{- 1 }}
{%- endif %}
# ,{{ click_delta }}
# ^^^ Unremark the last line to show the timing between clicks during debugging.
Additional functionality
So far I only covered how to capture multi-clicking on the center button. This also works on the other 4 buttons as well! This means we can use this remote for a practically unlimited number of actions!
So now we can use this remote for:
- 5 single click actions
- 4 long press actions
- 5 double click actions
- 5 triple click actions
- etc.
For example, I setup my top and bottom buttons to:
- 1 click = turn on/off primary lamp
- 2 clicks = turn on/off table lamp
- Long press up = increase primary and/or table lamp brightness by 20%
- Long press down = decrease primary and/or table lamp brightness by 20%
Source
You can find full versions of my universal ZHA remote automation and script at the links below. My full automation handles multiple remotes instead of just the one in the below example.
Snapshot 2020-09-06: automation.zha_button_click
Snapshot 2020-09-05: script.zha_store_click
Discuss
Post any questions on the Home Assistant Community post or below and I will be happy to answer any questions.