ESPHome CC1101 Success with MinkaAire Ceiling Fan (303.875 MHz)

ESPHome
1

I recently set up the new ESPHome CC1101 component on an ESP32 DevKit board and wanted to share some findings that may help others.

Hardware
ESP32 DevKit VROOM
CC1101 8-pin module

Wiring:
CC1101 Pin 1 GND → ESP32 GND
CC1101 Pin 2 VCC → ESP32 3.3V
CC1101 Pin 3 GDO0 → GPIO26
CC1101 Pin 4 CSN → GPIO5
CC1101 Pin 5 SCK → GPIO18
CC1101 Pin 6 MOSI → GPIO23
CC1101 Pin 7 MISO → GPIO19
CC1101 Pin 8 GDO2 → GPIO27

Initial Results
The CC1101 initialized correctly and could immediately receive RF traffic.
The fan remote turned out to operate on 303.875 MHz rather than 433.92 MHz.

Using frequency: 303.875MHz allowed reliable reception of the MinkaAire remote. And,
ESPHome successfully decoded button presses using:

remote_receiver:
  pin: GPIO27
  dump:
    - rc_switch
  tolerance: 50%
  filter: 100us
  idle: 10ms
  buffer_size: 30kb

Example decoded values:
Stop: 000000111101
Speed 1: 000000110111
Speed 2: 000000110101
Speed 3: 000000101111
Speed 4: 000000100111
Speed 5: 000000011101
Speed 6: 000000011111
Reverse: 000000111011
An end code of:
000000111111
was transmitted after commands.

However this produced weak and unreliable operations transmitting the codes using:

- remote_transmitter.transmit_rc_switch_raw:

and the fan would only respond at very close range and often required multiple attempts.

Solution
Switching to raw codes produced dramatically better results. Captured the original remote waveform with:

remote_receiver:
  pin: GPIO27
  dump:
    - raw
  tolerance: 50%
  filter: 100us
  idle: 10ms
  buffer_size: 30kb

and replayed the captured waveform using for example this button for Stop:

 - platform: template
   name: MinkaAire Stop
   on_press:
     - remote_transmitter.transmit_raw:
         code: [300, -376, 650, -376, 625, -400, 626, -375, 651, -375, 625, -376, 650, -701, 300, -726, 300, -700, 301, -725, 301, -375, 625, -726, 300]
         repeat:
           times: 16
           wait_time: 20ms

Home assistant performance became comparable to the original remote and reliability improved substantially.

Recommendation
If you can successfully decode a device with rc_switch but transmission is unreliable, try capturing the actual waveform and replaying it with transmit_raw rather than relying on protocol-based retransmission.

For my MinkaAire fan this was the difference between "barely works" and "works like the factory remote."

2

If you set high tolerance, you always can get signal decoded with rc-switch. But it's total crap at certain point. 50% is not usable in any case.
And yes, always start with raw, at least you see how the real signal is.