After acquiring another Tuya compatible IR blaster from the same brand/seller I found out that they no longer use an ESP chip. Instead they’ve opted to use Tuya’s WB3s chip. This is not compatible with ESPHome(at the time of this writing).

Luckily this module is a chip for chip replacement of most ESP8266 module like ESP-12F

Removal of WB3s module. I used bismuth to help me in the desoldering. Bismuth lowers the melting temperature of existing solder when mixed.

Soldering of ESP12-F and associated pull-up resistor on GPIO_0 and GPIO_2 with pull-down resistor on GPIO_15 1

Intial attempt on programming ESP-12F failed as the chip doesn’t seem to respond when attempting to download the esphome firwmware.

After troubleshooting the tx and rx pin had to be isolated from the board as it prevents programming.

Re-soldering back ESP-12F, I didn’t resolder back the pull-up resistor as it doesn’t seem to affect the boot up anyway.