Use cheap RF 433mz remotes for home control

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I’ve had pretty good success repurposing cheap rf remotes for smart home control. Thought I’d share.

https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20220126215649&SearchText=433mz+remote+control

My Sonoff RF Bridge flashed with ESPhome learns and listens for the RF codes and triggers whatever you want.

I’ve even printed some little desktop stands/mounts for them.

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Labels are a bit rustic but they do the job. I generally have them programed as up, down or toggle.

I find them to be pretty reliable. The Sonoff receives the signals lighting fast.

Edit: Moved from a Sonoff to a DIY solution.

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They are fantastic.

I have thought for a while that we need a compilation thread of all the messiest home made HA projects, you know with wires all over the place and components hanging precariously, the sort of “Heath Robinson meets Rube Goldberg” thread. (Not that your buttons are in any way bad, just delightfully home made).

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Pro tip - with whiteout pens you both maximise the crappiness of your icon while ensuring it’s long life:)

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Ironically this 2016 video was one of the earliest HA demo/howto’s I saw.

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Oh yeah I remember that dude. I think he was one of the first youtubers I watch too. RF is pretty old tech:)

It’s kind of fallen by the wayside (mainly because of state tracking I guess), but I think it still has it’s place.

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I use quite a lot of them too. But I have never put labels on them :slight_smile:

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Now you have a challenge to make them better than @Mahko_Mahko’s

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Gotta dig deep and connect with your inner child artist self;)

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This is timely for me, because I’m trying to figure out how to do the same thing. I’ve flashed my Sonoff and I’m getting codes via advanced_sniffing for some buttons and bucket_sniffing for another. Here are some examples of the output:

[12:09:14][I][rf_bridge:077]: Received RFBridge Advanced Code: length=0x04 protocol=0x00 code=0x3F3201
[12:09:18][I][rf_bridge:077]: Received RFBridge Advanced Code: length=0x04 protocol=0x00 code=0x7FF141
[12:10:52][I][rf_bridge:100]: Received RFBridge Bucket: AA B1 04 01B8 0118 00AA 01EA 381A09 55

It is entirely unclear to me as to how to make an automation trigger from these codes. Can someone post an example please?

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Hey I’m pretty sure there are quite a few examples around if you dig around the forum.

But in summary, you create a binary sensor which listens for the signal in your ESPHome config like this.

Then you use that as an automation trigger (either in Home Assistant or perhaps directly in ESPHome).

I’m not familiar with the advanced or bucket sniffing approaches though and don’t know if they differ.

Not sure if these docs help.

I did the hardware hack.

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This got me a little further, I can trigger on advanced codes that appear, but not on raw, otherwise only detectible via bucket sniffing.

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Did you try this one for raw? Not sure if it would work.

The remote reciever has an on_raw trigger. Not sure if that works with the sonoff?