Hi all,
I have been using home assistant for about a year now and recently I started using 433MHz devices because they seem to be allot cheaper and consume less power than wifi devices. Though today i found out one of the remotes for a ledstrip is acctually using a 2.4G signal. So I have ben wondering, is there a way to control these 2.4G devices with an arduino or some sonoff device? I have been searching around on the internet a lot, but I couldn’t find anyone who did something or even thought of something like this. Maybe there is a way to mod my Sonoff RF bridge to also send/receive other frequenties? Thanks in advance!
Possibly but it is very, very far from easy to get it to go from 433MHz to 2.4GHz. Got a degree in RF engineering and microwave PCB layout? Even if you do it would probably be easier to design your own transceiver than shoehorning in a new LO and mixer/upconverter.
So for all practical purposes - the answer is no.
The simplest solution would be to purchase a spare remote (or sacrifice the one you have) and connect an ESP32’s GPIOs to the remote’s keypad (via open collector transistors or optocouplers if the remote is not 3.3v) and generate key presses by driving the GPIOs with ESPHome.
I’m eventually going to make my room dehumidifiers smart by connecting an ESP32 to the unit’s built in keypad and control it this way.
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I think you can do it with the RFXCOM device:
That indeed is a great idea, do you think it would also work with a Wemos D1 mini (esp8266)? I still have a few of those laying around. Great info, thank you.
Can you check if the MiLight remotes are similar to what you have?
Sure, I was going to say “as long as you have enough GPIOs for the buttons” but looking at your picture there aren’t that many. The brightness slider could be tricky…
Only problem, it has a ‘dimmer slider’ which I probably can’t hook up to an Esp32 or Wemos, or can I?
Is it a capacitive touch sensor?
Yes ,it is a capacitive touch sensor
Yeah that might be show stopper.
Well, only a on/off button is also fine as a backup. Still I am curious if there really isn’t a 2.4G decoder and transmitter. If anyone knows more, please help :).
Zigbee, Bluetooth, Wifi, MiLight are all using 2.4 Ghz band. It might be difficult to identify the protocol with only the remote picture. Does the controller present additional information?
I think you’re right that is not a MiLight unit (although have seen some cases completely different from the original remotes, usually they have discrete buttons for on and off - which are needed for pairing).
Thank you for the info, the only problem is that I think this remote is not using any of those protocols. I’ll try to find some more information about the remote and post it here.
Edit:
Here’s the link with more info
As stated before, it’s using Bluetooth low energy (BLE). And it’s encrypted. So going to be very difficult to reverse engineer. nope that was another topic. I got confused.
Pop the case and see if it has an ESP chip inside.
There is no esp-chip inside. Here are some pictures of the inside:
The first photo is the “button and capacitive touch” side, the second and third photo are the back of the board (where the battery, CR2032, is located).
Edit:
added photos of the receiver module:
Looks like the LT8910SSC is the wifi chip they’re using.
It is probably from the same garden variety as MiLight (also uses LT8900/PL1167 chipset) with a different encryption scheme.
Unfortunately, it is likely quite difficult to add support for the dozens of such protocols if not wide-spread or someone has not yet started analyzing it.
See, for example, RE for MiLight
Likely easier just to build your own RGBW controller at that point.