Broadlink
About the vendor and its products
Broadlink is a Chinese company that on the one hand offers classical products for the smart home and on the other hand sets itself apart from similar companies through its universal remote controls. These are useful to control “non-smart” products as part of a smart home system. Key products from Broadlink are:
Smart plugs, in some versions
Smart light sources, in the form of a couple of smart bulbs and a light strip
Smart light switches, including one with a touch panel
A couple of sensors; motion sensor and door/window sensor
Base station, but it is unclear to me whether this is required to connect some of the above-mentioned products
Universal remote controls, in a couple of variants (one that only supports IR and one that supports both IR and RF), even though the term universal remote control can be a little misleading - these are units that can send signals to control different products that can be operated using a remote control, but there are no buttons on the Broadlink units, the signals must be triggered from an app on a phone or other device
Broadlink offers its own Broadlink app, but the products are also compatible with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa as well as IFTTT. Via Homebridge it is also possible to integrate the universal remote controls into Apple Home.
Our experiences
Notice that on phones, the table might only display in landscape mode
| Component | Room | Experiences |
|---|---|---|
Broadlink RM4 Pro |
This “universal remote control” was purchased to integrate a future ceiling fan into Apple Home. The ceiling fan has in fact not yet been bought, but the Broadlink device has made it possible to connect some old Nexa smart plugs (that use an RF-based remote control) to Apple Home as well as an RF-based laser for Christmas lighting. I won’t deny that this took some effort, in registering the RF codes, getting these into the Homebridge config file, etc., but really not very difficult. Such a device enables “smartifying” products that are not online in any way, but which can be controlled using a traditional remote control. The only downside is that the state of such products shown in Apple Home is only based on the signal that the remote has sent, it is not possible to read the true state (so that a smart plug can be interpreted to be on since an on command has been sent, but the signal didn’t reach the plug, which is in fact still off). |