Hope you are all coping with the current virus situation… I’m finding that working with electronic projects is an effective way to stay off the streets!
I’d like to learn how to use a 433MHz garage door remote to control a Raspberry Pi and/or an Arduino. If I could do a project where you simply turn an LED on/off with the press of a remote button, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to use this for other applications.
I’ve been trying to do this with a nRF905 transceiver module. Despite the module being readily available in stores, tutorials on how to use it are not easy to come by. I’ve spent a lot of time online trying to find information with not much success.
What little I’ve found shows how to use the nRF905 communicating with another nRF905, but nothing about receiving a signal from a garage remote.
This particular module uses the SPI method of communication.
Is the nRF905 able to receive a garage remote signal, or is there an alternative receiver I should consider using (hopefully something a little less complicated with better library support).
Has anybody reading this done a project using wireless remote controls, and if so can you point me in the right directions for tutorials on how to do it?
Any advice I can get would be greatly appreciated.
Newer garage style remotes usually have some security features on top of them, so the transmitted signal can’t just be recorded/retransmitted to operate the device. These features include frequency hopping, and rolling codes. A new code is transmitted for every key press.
You could try to hack that, or if you really want the garage remotes, why not buy a replacement garage receiver, and use the output of that as input to your controller. This is usually in the form of a set of NO/NC contacts. Additional transmitter/key fobs would also be easily obtainable.
Search the www for something like “replacement garage remote receiver” should find some useful links.
Thanks for your reply. I’ve finally had a chance to get back to you.
My goal initially was to press a button on a garage remote and have it do something simple like
light up an LED on a prototype board. Then I was going to use the remote for activating the start sequence on the sport timer that I made for a dog sport called ‘Flyball’.
To get the idea, here’s a pic of my project just before I fitted shade covers on the lights:-
Going into the details of the project would be going off topic.
I had another thought about how to get remote control on this project… what if I could ‘hack’ a wireless doorbell system? The button is the transmitter and the bell is already set up as the receiver of that transmitter.
All I would have to do is supply power to the receiver (correct voltage of course) and divert the signal connection to one of the Raspberry Pi GPIO set up for input (voltage divided if necessary).
Hardware stores had some wireless doorbell systems that claim to have a range of 75 meters on the cheaper models.
Would something like the 433MHz RF link kit work for my purpose?
The transmitter would need to be put into its own little box with batteries, a button and maybe a LED to light up when the button is pressed. The receiver could simply go inside the existing project and be connected directly to a GPIO.
I think using a nRF905 transceiver and ‘hacking’ a garage remote would be over-engineering a solution to my problem.
I agree with Robin57159. I’ve had success with recording and sending complex FM 433 MHz stuff but know it won’t work with secured devices. It would be so easy to break in with a static code.
I took the garage remote I bought back to Bunnings for a refund, no problem there. While I was there I purchased a HPM wireless doorbell for $11.20.
When I took the speaker unit apart, the receiver looks a lot like the ones that are available at the electronics stores. It didn’t take too long to figure out which pins were GND, VCC, signal1, signal2, another GND and an antenna.
Because the speaker/receiver unit runs off 3 Volts, I could connect it up to the Raspberry Pi no worries.
For the test run I elected to run the receiver with the 2 AA batteries. I connected to GPIO 21 as my input pin of choice and connected the ground of the speaker/receiver unit to a Pi GND pin.
I use GPIOZERO to control the GPIO pins, and all I had to do was use the ‘Button’ code. The only trick I found was that by default pull_up is set to ‘True’, and the starter kept going off. A simple bit of code:-
remote = io.Button(21, pull_up = False)
Problem fixed. I know how to start my flyball timer using a remote control (a door bell button).
All I need to do now is carefully extract the receiver from the speaker unit and wire it in to run off the 12 volt battery which runs the rest of my timing rig.
This may seem as an easy cop out option as opposed to learning how to use the nRF905, but at least it’s cheap. Hope this is helpful to anyone else wanting a wireless radio remote control for their project.
I’ll definitely put it on my to-do list. I’ve had so much help from other people on electronics forums, it’d be nice to be able to give something back.
Hopefully I can have something put together by the weekend.
