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Problem

I am unable to receive the signals sent with a KaKu APA3-1500R remote with a RF receiver connected to a Raspberry Pi 3.

Hardware

-RF Receiver (in Dutch)
-KaKu APA3-1500R (in Dutch)

Additional info

  • The receiver works correctly. This I know because I also have a transmitter and am able to transmit/receive signals correctly.
  • The KaKu system works correctly. I am able to control the KaKu switch with the supplied remote.
  • Using libraries like pilight or rpi-rf I am able to send and receive codes from a RF transmitter to the RF receiver. However, both libraries are unable to pick up the signal sent with the KaKu remote. This is especially surprising as the KaKu system in question is in the list with compatible devices of the pilight library.

Question

How should I proceed to solve this problem? Perhaps there is a way to read the "raw" values received by the RF receiver, without specifying any protocol?

Community
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MuadDev
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  • That is a truly terrible receiver. Primitive designs such as that often generate noise until quieted by a signal, and may have a self-quench timing which is incompatible with the data rate of remote control systems. You should likely first characterize your transmitter, either using an RTL-SDR dongle, or by transformer coupling the variation in its power supply current (or even the output of a simple diode RF power detector) into your computer soundcard to record the envelope of the transmission and thus determine the timing and coding. – Chris Stratton Feb 11 '18 at 22:00
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    Thanks for your response, but it is probably not the receiver that is the problem. Using this guide i have been able to actually read the signal that my remote sends using the receiver. It plainly reads the output of the receiver, which indicates that there might be a problem with the used protocols.. I have not yet been able to send the signal with my transmitter, but now I at least know the sequence I need to send. Once I manage to actually successfully send the signal I will report back here. – MuadDev Feb 25 '18 at 18:06

1 Answers1

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Finally I managed to record and successfully playback the rf signals using this git repo.

MuadDev
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    Can you clarify what the underlying issue was? To make this a bit less of a link-only answer, and help people in the future decide if this will help them too... – Sean Houlihane Mar 01 '18 at 11:12
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    Unfortunately I have no idea what the underlying issue was. My best guess is that all the other libraries do not support the protocol of the remote I have, even though they explicitly state that they do. Or perhaps they require a single correct signal whereas the linked library listens for repeated (corrupted) signals and uses them to reconstruct the original correct signal. But it is anyone's guess really. I suggest to leave the answer up as simply recording and playing the rf signal might be a solution for more people struggling with the more mainstream packages normally used for this – MuadDev Mar 02 '18 at 11:08