I’d like to be able to control my ceiling fan through HA. Its remote and controller look identical to this:
EXCEPT instead of the “8H” button, it has “R/F” to reverse fan direction and the controller has 2 extra wires, red and orange. It doesn’t appear any commonly available smart controller like iFan03 can handle direction change. There is no FCC ID or anything on the controller or remote that would indicate its frequency. Does anyone know if remotes similar to the one in the pic are a common frequency like 433MHz? If it does use a common frequency, what would be the best way to control it? I know emulating the remote won’t support states, but is it important to support states? Right now I’m not sure that’s an absolute necessity.
My setup is using a VM on a PC, so whatever hardware I use on the HA end needs to be USB.
I was hesitant to take it apart because so many remotes these days just snap together and are painful to disassemble without breaking off plastic clips and getting tool marks all along the edges, but turns out this one was pretty easy and had 3 screws and 4 plastic clips on the sides. I also assumed ICs would be sanded down and unidentifiable, which turned out to be true, but I did get lucky and find the answer: The PCB itself is labeled “RF-433”. Doesn’t get any easier than that.
Broadlinks seem to be a pricier solution. I know you get what you pay for, but I don’t mind doing some hacking. Could something like a Sonoff RF Bridge be made to work?
I can’t find my order, but I feel like I got my broadlink rm pro for like $30ish, it controls some of my IR stuff and some RF stuff too so I figured it was worth it.
However, before doing that I used something like this
