Alexa Controlled AirCon Unit
By Brendan Stafford The Problem I recently had air conditioning installed in my home extension. It is supplied with a hand controller that has a wide range of functions. I should have asked for the Wi-Fi option but I missed a trick. I quite fancied the idea of controlling it via Alexa inside the house and via my phone when outside. A discussion at one of our maker meetings set me thinking. It seems that an Arduino extension called SinRic Pro will implement Alexa commands in a ‘home made’ Arduino based device. Having learned about SinRic Pro, and the ability to control devices by Alexa voice commands, I then decided to make a device that can mimic the InfraRed controller. Learning about the Handset First of all I needed to decode the protocol that the remote used. I built a simple decoder using a trusty old Arduino Uno I had to hand. An Infra Red receiver diode can be interrogated by the code in order to ‘see’ the protocol. There is also a lot of information on the internet about IR communication for this type of application. Similar protocols are used by a rang