I bought picrel IR transmitter/receivers and flashed ESPHome on them. Also 3d printed cases and soldered usb-c pigtails to power them.
I spent an hour recording codes from remotes and now I can control my AC and tower fan with home assistant. Very comfy.
My next project is turning my window fan into a controllable unit. There's no IR so I have to use a relay board/octocoupler to bypass the physical buttons. I want the physical buttons to work too so its ballooning into a bigger project than I thought. Probably cheaper to just buy an IR controlled box fan.