In a smart home, you can manage different aspects such as lights, blinds, heating, irrigation, electric gate… and also infrared devices such as a TV, air conditioning or any other device you have at home.
Why does the UFO-R11 controller have such a low price?
MOES is a famous company in the smart home market with a wide range of smart devices at low prices. Proof of this with the IR Zigbee UFO-R11 / ZR-X-R11-A-MS being an affordable device being one of the cheapest options to give intelligence to a climate control, TV and any other IR device.
Advantages and Disadvantages of the UFO-R11 Smart Controller
Advantages
- Dual technology: This MOES smart remote control has the great advantage of working with both Infrared and Zigbee technologies. With the Zigbee technology, you can link it to a compatible home automation hub and the built-in infrared allows you to control your infrared devices.
- Price: This IR/Zigbee remote control is very economical.
- Battery: Battery operated, you can place it in any strategic area of your home.
- Compatibility: This MOES smart remote is compatible with both the Tuya Smart Life ecosystem and Zigbee2MQTT which is used by Jeedom and Home Assistant.
Disadvantages
- No status feedback: With this type of device, you cannot know if your commands have been correctly executed as there is no status feedback.
- Maintenance: As it is battery operated, unlike a mains powered controller, you must change the batteries every X months.
Tutorial on how to use the Moes Smart Controller
Today we are going to discover how to control infrared devices from your phone anywhere in the world, but also how to create routines so that these infrared devices are automatically activated or deactivated according to defined criteria.
What is the Zigbee IR MOES controller used for?
MOES is a company that plays a leading role in the smart home market, offering a wide range of devices, generally communicating with Zigbee, WIFI or Bluetooth technologies and at very attractive prices.
We had already seen how to have a smart heating in a user’s house thanks to MOES thermostatic heads that we have put in place by replacing the default thermostatic heads.
But MOES has other devices that can be very useful for us, such as infrared controllers to control our TV, air conditioning or any other device, replacing all our traditional controls.
In other words, thanks to these MOES devices that we are going to link to a home automation hub.
Either Home Assistant or Jeedom with Zigbee2MQTT.
Or an Ethernet version of Tuya’s own MOES Ethernet hub.
We will be able to control our TV, air conditioning and much more from anywhere in the world and, of course, the most interesting thing is to be able to create scenes to automate some tasks.
For example, we can configure a presence and absence scene so that, when we are present, the air conditioning automatically switches to comfort mode and when we are absent, the air conditioning automatically switches to economy mode.
Of course, we could also control the temperature in our home remotely from our phone.
How does this IR Zigbee MOES controller work?
This MOES UFO-R11 smart controller works with 2 technologies: infrared and Zigbee.
Thanks to infrared, we will be able to learn any order of your infrared controls at home.
After this training, this MOES controller will be able to perform the same actions as your remotes, so you can put these remotes in a drawer and place the MOES controller on the wall or on top of a piece of furniture but in the same area as these infrared controller devices.
It is powered by 2 AAA batteries, allowing us to install it comfortably in any strategic area without relying on electrical cables.
How to link the MOES UFO-R11 controller?
Thanks to this Zigbee technology, you will be able to link it to a MOES home automation hub or any other hub of the Tuya, Home Assistant or Jeedom ecosystem with Zigbee2MQTT to be able to control your infrared devices from anywhere in the world.
With the MOES home automation hub, you must access the Smart Life application.
And to include the UFO-R11 controller, you must launch the inclusion mode of your home automation hub and press the button on the MOES controller for 5 seconds.
Once included, you can add an infrared device.
And the very interesting thing is that you have a library of infrared device brands already registered.
So you can search for your model, in my example, I am looking for my LG TV.
And thus, test if the commands of your device work with the device you have chosen in the list of your application.
If the commands work, you can hit “Can Control”.
And if you are missing some commands, you can click “More” on your device and create them thanks to your infrared remote control.
If the commands proposed in the Smart Life application do not work, you can click on “Another One” to continue with other tests.
And if it still doesn’t work, you have the DIY option.
This option allows you to learn your command, command by command.
If we want to use this MOES UFO-R11 Zigbee IR remote control with the Home Assistant or Jeedom home automation hub, we will use Zigbee2Mqtt.
We will launch the inclusion mode.
And press the button on the MOES controller for 5 seconds.
Ready, the Zigbee MOES IR Zigbee controller appears on your interface.
Once included, we go to its commands and we will see one called “State”.
We click “ON” to put our MOES controller into learning mode.
At this point, we can press a button on our traditional controller so that this controller has the code for this command.
And to use this code, which corresponds to the command used by our infrared remote control, we will be able to put it in the command “ir code to send”.
So we can repeat the same process for each command and thus have control of our TV, our air conditioning and any other device from the Home Assistant or Jeedom home automation hub.
And, of course, thanks to this integration, we can define multiple use cases such as, for example, a time scene that adjusts the climate control in comfort mode when we return from work and in economy mode when we leave for work.
Also, if we have voice assistants linked to our home automation hub, we can have voice control of our infrared device.
Examples of Alexa commands:
- Alexa, turn on the TV.
- Alexa, turn up the volume.
- Alexa, turn off the TV.
In short, this MOES UFO-R11 smart controller is a very interesting ally that you can use to give intelligence to your infrared devices and at a very low cost, since you can find it for less than 18 euros.
