How should I connect my non-wifi Samsung AC to HA

[feral creek]

I have an old Samsung AC that doesn't support wifi. I do know that I can use IR transmitters to send signals to it and use ESPhome to communicate with HA. But I'd like to also have the AC synced with HA.

I haven't used IR transmitters/receivers yet and especially not ESPHome. Is something like this even possible that there's an IR receiver that listens to the signals from my remote and updates HA and a transmitter that sends signals to the AC?

Not sure where to post this. This forum channel seemed the best place as it's related to ESPHome.