Can Home Assistant Listen to 433MHz Remotes?

Hardware
1

Hello Everyone,

If you have seen the Title, you know my question.

So here is my Setup.
Home Assistant Running on a Pi3.
I have added a 433 MHz Receiver and Sender -> http://amzn.to/2b5wOS1
and i can succesfully change the state of the wall outlets with Home Assistant.

But i have two Remotes that can turn on and off 1 wall outlet.
and if you look at this picture -> https://www.dropbox.com/s/1gbfevxe7laq0bm/2017-05-11%2016.06.05.jpg?dl=0
I can change the Dip switches to transmit to another range.

My plan was to make Dummy switches in Home assistant and let those switches control groups of lights and other things in HA.

But i can’t get HA to listen to for the Remotes.

So i hope anybody is able to help me or point me in the right direction :slight_smile:

I would be very thankfull

2 Likes
2

Check out this video, it may be of some help:

3

ta-da - RF

2 Likes
4

Thank you for your reply,

I have seen this Video in my Google Search, but he only duscusses on how to controll the wall outlets in H.

I Want HA to listen for the remotes and do stuff when it recieves a signal.

5

The receiver that is used in this video are really limited, you need to be inches away, to reliably pick up a signal. An antenna may help but I think I read even with an antenna added the range is still quite limited.

6

I think it strongly depends on the transmitter as I was able to receive signals reliably at 30ft through walls with my 1 euro receiver

7

i used a jumper wire as an antenna and the signal comes in quite strong, it even picks up other signals. the hardware Bit is all taken care off in my case.

8

I am using pilight component to listen to RF signals. I am also using those same Etekcity outlets and I easily get more than 50 m of range with my superheterodyne receiver and transmitter.

With pilight you can do exactly what you want. You listen to RF remotes and wehn HA detects the signal you can do whatever you want - turn on the lights, start a script etc.

1 Like
9

Thank you for the link.

The way that this guy implemented RF was on another Pi and send data trough MQTT to Home assistant.

I can totally do this but i’d rather have Home assistant listen to the RF. doing with MQTT might give some delay that is maybe not needed.

10

There is no noticeable delay sending short messages with MQTT, even an image goes across in less than 3 seconds.

I believe https://home-assistant.io/components/switch.rpi_rf/ uses the rpi-rf module I used in my project, I would recommend a command line sensor using rpi-rf?

11

I use the circuit in this blog post to listen to the two remotes I have, and update the state of lights/switches accordingly.

12

i have a cheap 433 mhz reciever connected to an arduino.
it wasnt really recieving very well. 2 meter at most.
i started tempering with the coil that was set in a specific position with some glue.
and i got a way better response. but only when it was connected to the PC.
as soon as i connected it to another power device the response was almost zero.
that had given me some headaches for a while.
now i have a 12v adapter with a 12 to 5 stepdown. and suddenly i can reach it trough walls, floors, etc. up to 20 meter.

so with a little work and the right power those cheap recievers can recieve a lot.
it is setup as a mysensors sensor and i can see every 433 signal that is made all around the house.
so now i can use any 433 mhz remote to do everything HA can do.

2 Likes
13

You can actually do this easily in HA. You’ll need to use the rfrx.py script that is attached to Ben’s video to sniff the codes. Basically, set your remote controllers to a dip switch setting that your receivers aren’t using. Once that is done, fire up the rfrx.py script from Ben’s video, then press the On button on your remote. Make note of the code, pulse length, and protocol. Then press the Off button on the remote and record the same things.

Once you have the codes recorded, use the RPI-RF module of HA to write automations against them. You’ll basically create a RF switch (or input boolean switch) in HA, then have the remote buttons turn that switch on/off. You then write another automation that watches the RF switch (or input boolean) then performs whatever actions you want in HA (such as turning on/off a group).

I will say that pilight is much more accurate and “true” than RPI-RF. Both will work, but I personally use pilight for my RF switches. And yes, I use the exact Etekcity plugs that you see in Ben’s video.

1 Like
14

I have installed the pilight deamon as described on their website. But my pi’s kernel is to new or something and now I get a hardware error on the gpio module. I tried to look up the error and there are some people who fixed it. But in my case all fixed didn’t work.

15

This is Exactly what i wanted to do. However in the HA documentation Removed integration - Home Assistant
you can only specify the GPIO pin for the TX module (Sender) and not the RX module (Receiver)

and i Also installed Pilight but i can’t get the deamon to work. and after four hours of fiddling with it i just gave up on Pilight.

16

I think HASS needs an RF sensor component (using rpi-rf and the cheap RF receivers), to complement the RF switch component. Perhaps there is a technical reason why this does not exist…

3 Likes
17

If you want to receive signals with respberry Pi，you can use PIGPIO library. Many people recommend 433Utils, but it doesn’t work on my Pi3 and when it run, CPU is so hot. So in one word, go to this website and you will find what you want:
http://abyz.co.uk/rpi/pigpio/
then use a script component to exec it to read and return the value.

18

Yes, there is a problem with the new kernel. I thing the dev version of pilight has already fixed it, otherwise you can just downgrade your kernel a little bit and it’s all working perfectly then, that’s what I did.

Use this command to downgrade:
rpi-update 52241088c1da59a359110d39c1875cda56496764

Here is the thread:

19

Here’s the link on the info to install the dev version of pilight:

20

Thank you,

I got Pilight Running But i’m sorry to say i don’t get how to configure this software.

I can build computers i can install, Linux servers and install all necesary services on them.

But i really get confused from the pilight Documentation or lack of it.

I have spend over 14 hours to get it to do sometiming.
I got the deamon running because i can see webgui on http://hassbian:5001
But thats it. it won’t discover my remotes or any signal in the air and there is some weather station sensor very active on the 433Mhz band. so i know there are signals in the air.

And as an Extra i added

pilight:
  host: 127.0.0.1
  port: 5000

this code in my config to see if HA could do something with Pilight

but i got this Error

2017-05-23 07:35:35 ERROR (Thread-8) [homeassistant.components.pilight] Unable to connect to 127.0.0.1 on port 5000: [Errno 111] Connection refused
2017-05-23 07:35:35 ERROR (MainThread) [homeassistant.setup] Setup failed for pilight: Component failed to initialize.

I also tried port 5001 wich is the web port and i got the same problem.

Oh and as a cherry on top the new update From HA gives errors on discovery.py

And not i can’t even control my Hue lights anymore. So at this moment i’m giving up on pilight and focus more on getting my hue lights back into Home Assistant.

Sorry that i sound so depressed. i really appreciate all the help i have gotten from all of you and maybe i will pick this project up in a later stage or wait till HA could nativly listen to 433GHZ remotes.

:smiley: