Press the buttons on your appliances' radio remotes from Indigo, through a Broadlink RM4 Pro on your home network.
Version: 1.6.0 | Author: CliveS & Claude | Needs: Indigo 2025.1 or later and a Broadlink RM4 Pro
Read the full guide — setting up, what everything means, and what to do when something goes wrong.
A good many things in a house still come with a plain radio remote and nothing else — an electric fire, a set of blinds. This plugin lets Indigo press those buttons through a Broadlink RM4 Pro. It talks to the RM4 Pro directly over your home network, so there is no Broadlink account involved and nothing goes out to the internet.
- Learns a button from a remote you already own, and keeps it under a name you choose.
- Presses it from Indigo, a control page, a schedule or a trigger.
- Makes an appliance behave like a switch. A relay device uses one button for on and another for off, so schedules, triggers, action groups and control pages treat the appliance like any other switch.
- Shows what the appliance is really doing if it runs from a smart plug or anything else that reports its power. The relay then follows the reading, so a press on the appliance's own remote shows up in Indigo, and a press the appliance ignored is reported as ignored. I use it on the living room fire.
- Keeps an eye on the hub. An RM4 Pro gives no sign when it drops off the network, so the plugin checks it on a timer, says once when it goes missing, shows it red, and can switch off the plug it runs from for a few seconds to bring it back.
- Finds the hub on your network from the Plugins menu, which is the quickest way back if your router gives it a new address.
| In Indigo | What it is |
|---|---|
| Broadlink RM4 Pro | The hub itself, which sends the buttons |
| Broadlink RF Relay | An appliance with an on button and an off button |
| Broadlink RF Command | A single button, pressed with an action |
It copies radio remotes that send the same signal every time a button is pressed. Remotes that send a different signal each time — often called rolling-code remotes — cannot be copied, and this plugin does not learn infrared remotes.
- Go to the Releases page and download
BroadlinkRF.indigoPlugin.zip - Unzip the downloaded file — you will get
Broadlink RF.indigoPlugin - Double-click
Broadlink RF.indigoPlugin— Indigo will install it automatically
The first time the plugin starts, Indigo downloads the broadlink software it needs, so the Mac has to be on the internet for that.
- If you do not know the RM4 Pro's network address — the four numbers, such as
192.168.1.100, that the Broadlink app shows — choose Plugins → Broadlink RF → Discover Broadlink Devices and look in the Event Log. - Create a New Device, choose Broadlink RF and Broadlink RM4 Pro, and type in the hub's address.
- Choose Plugins → Broadlink RF → Learn RF Command..., name the button, click Start Learning, and press and hold the button on the remote near the hub when the Event Log says it is ready.
- Create a Broadlink RF Relay device and choose the buttons for on and off. Switch it on from Indigo, and the appliance should respond.
The full guide goes through each step, explains every setting, and covers what to do if something does not work.
v1.6.0 — An unreachable hub stays red until it answers again.
- The next check, or a failed button press, no longer clears the red while the hub is still missing.
- Choosing Never for the hub check clears the red, since nothing is checking any more.
- A button sent from a Command device no longer logs an error about a state it does not have.
v1.5.0 — Fixes found while writing the guide.
- Default RF frequency can be left blank, and then the hub finds the frequency, as the learn dialogs say.
- Reload RF Code Store on a Command or Relay device reads that device's hub's file.
- Learn RF Command no longer shows a new button in Selected RF Code while the device still presses its old one.
v1.4.0 — A relay can follow a power meter on the appliance it switches, and its On or Off then comes from the reading instead of the last button pressed.
- Presses on the appliance's own remote show in Indigo.
- A press the appliance ignored is reported as ignored, with the reading.
- Toggle goes the right way even after someone used the handset.
- New Measured Watts, Measured State, Feedback Status and Heavy Load states for triggers and control pages.
Every version is listed in the version history.
Built on python-broadlink by Mike Ryan and Matthew Garrett, which does the work of talking to the hardware. It is MIT licensed, and this plugin would have been a great deal harder without it.
Vibed into existence by CliveS, who knew what he wanted, argued until he got it, and tested it on a real house. Typed at inhuman speed by Claude (Anthropic), who mostly did as it was told.
© 2026 CliveS · MIT licence — copy it, fork it, bend it, break it, fix it, ship it. If it breaks, you get to keep both pieces.