I have a Zigbee blinds motor which came with this remote control (see pic).
The UP, DOWN, LEFT AND RIGHT buttons are not used by the blinds, but they do activate the LED on the remote when pressed, so they are connected and programmed for something.
I was hoping to use those buttons to trigger other devices on my network.
I have used a 433MHz sniffer and it didn’t pick anything up.
Does anyone know what protocol it uses?
Thanks,
Andy
Hi, thanks for your reply, but I don’t think the remote control is Zigbee. I believe it is RF, but not 433MHZ.
The same remote control is supplied with the BT and WiFi versions of the blinds motor.
Thanks
Could be 868/900 MHz, could be 2.4Ghz with a proprietary protocol. You could try to sniff around these bands, but not finding something obvious doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything there. Especially in the higher frequency bands the pulses can be so short you won’t notice them. They could also use DSSS or another spread spectrum modulation that makes it almost impossible to sniff manually (it looks like noise).
If you’re lucky it’s Bluetooth LE.
If no one else knows about this particular model, next step would be opening it up and checking what RF chip it uses, the shape of the antenna and the values of the impedance matching caps. That will give you a good hint about the frequency it’s on. Beyond that, especially if it’s a proprietary protocol, you’re in full reverse engineering land.
Thanks for your reply Alex.
I have used a BLE sniffer just looking for traffic, but no results.
There is a chip inside that I believe to be an ST chip as there is a SWIM programming pin, but I cannot identify the chip as it has had the numbers scraped off, but what I believe to be the transceiver chip has the following number: n906 248
However, I am unable to find a datasheet or any other information on this chip.
Thanks,
Andy
It is rf433, I have 3 of them downstairs in one room paired to two curtains and one blind I don’t get any cross talk, but you don’t select a channel, so I’m not sure what channel they use
To find the frequency out I looked up the regulatory certificates of the 3 devices my remotes (now only 2 remotes ) control. This showed me what frequency they were tested for rf433. It was interesting to see the detail they go into when testing
A pressing pattern is used on the ring you mention if you need to initiate pairing, to whatever rf433 receiver you want to use it on. Maybe that pairing sets the channel?
I did try to find you the instructions, but the piece of paper was only a 3cm square. English on one side, Chinese on the other. Usually they are pre-paired and no seller I could find had any extra paperwork, or any useful knowledge
Be careful though I screwed one of my remotes taking the battery out and fumbling it, resulting in a breef electric contact (at the battery).
It put the remote into another mode, where it won’t pair with any of my devices. The LED also flashed differently in reply to a pairing request. Possibly waiting for factory programming.