Abusing Raspberry Pi GPIO pins as a radio transmitter to control my ceiling fan

In Part 1, we covered capturing and decoding the remote control's signal using

In Part 2, we take use a Raspberry Pi's GPIO pin as an antenna to transmit our
own signals to the ceiling fan.

The ceiling fan / light combo I have is Minka Aire brand. I think most of the
different ones on the market work pretty similarly.

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Parts:

rpitx lists the Raspberry Pi 4 as having "beta" support. (I used a Raspberry Pi 3B.)

I found my low-pass filter on eBay (overseas shipping). Digikey has low-pass
filters that would also work, but not as cheap. This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

Note that these all have SMA connectors, not RP-SMA (which look very similar).

Also note that eBay listings come and go, so double-check that you get
compatible parts. The antenna does not need to be exact - the one I got is
listed for 315 MHz and works just fine.

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Background music:

Aerosol Of My Love by Kevin MacLeod

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Some links may be affiliate links.

[thekaratekid]

This was incredibly interesting. Definitely subscribed.

[evocatiproductions]

This was amazing! This may be what I need to finally have a way to remotely control my ceiling fan.

I bought an old house from the 70s back in 2007, and its where I still currently live. In my master bedroom is the only ceiling fan in my house that did not come with its remote control. This ceiling fan is a knock off brand ceiling fan, but I have ordered dozens of different ceiling fan remotes for ceiling fans that looked like mine through google searches, and every single one of these remotes did not work with my ceiling fan. The ceiling in my room is also really high, so even though I am 6 Feet tall, I still have to get up on the top of my step ladder in order to pull the chains to change the fan speed, and the chain for light is broken, so I just installed a different light in my room.

I kind of gave up after the 12th time I ordered a remote and it failed to work. I already have a bunch of Broadlink devices in my house that I use to capture remote signals, so I can control RF and IR Devices over WiFi using this device, but I have never been able to figure out how to capture the signals my Ceiling fan needs to transmit the correct RF commands to it to change the fan speed or turn on or off the light or fan in it.

Do you know of a way to capture the codes needed without having the remote to the ceiling fan by chance?

Either way, Awesome Video man! I hope this brings in the subscriber base you deserve, I am subscribed now, and I actually found this through a Toms Hardware article that referenced your video, so hopefully that will direct more traffic your way!

[jawidwardak]

Dude, thanks for this awesome video. I wish there would be more content like this.

[hindenberg]

So much useful and interesting info packed into 5 minutes. Thank you!

[WuffRobotica]

Awesome. I had tried to broadcast fm radio with a pi 0, but this is an even better usecase and the software seems to have improved since then as well!

[structure]

Fantastic series of videos. I somehow managed to make this work for my Home Depot "Britton" fan controllers... made my Sunday! Thank you!!!

[cjhoyle]

Fantastic tutorial! This was exactly what I was looking for. I was able to follow your instructions to control an old Radio Shack wireless remote switch using my Raspberry Pi. Believe it or not, without any kind of antenna plugged into the pin, it actually works within a range of up to 2 meters! I'm planning on using this technique to control the fan speed on my humidifier, but first I had to order the optional remote for it so I can eavesdrop on the signals it sends. Thanks for the video!

[tracelandreth]

"Holy sh**, it worked!" I died XD

[repzo]

Very cool video, straight to the point with a lot of information in a short time ! Liked & subbed

[KenanArik]

Awesome - thanks for the great explanation and detail! Subscribed! Looking forward to your next projects :)

[kdausu]

Amazing! Exactly what I was looking for.

[bitterrotten]

If anyone is having trouble getting this to work with their fan, pay attention to the pause interval and move the repeat number up to at least 3. These issues tripped me up.

[MrRoma]

I just stopped to watch your video as getting into the Raspy world, and I was amazed. Can I ask if possible to provide the Flask code? Anyway, either way keep up with the work I am hooked now, lol

[yeetyeet]

Amazing explanations, love these kinds of videos

[Thealiw]

Wow! Fantastic! Have you been able to integrate it into Home Assistant as you mentioned on 4:25 ?

[alexiswiniger]

Really inspiring, thank you for this one. :)

I would love to learn more about the "web app" you quickly made to test the setup.

All the best

[jakeb]

Just watched previous video and this one. Very neat and impressive!

[MrPacMan]

This is exactly what I need to control my motorized projector... I'm in IT but can't totally write program language, but I can kind of understand and can definitely copy and paste 😅... I hope to also have it tied into Google Assistant

[honzaled]

Awesome video, just discovered your channel through the Valorant video, you definitely deserve more views and subscribers!
By the way, could you consider making the HA integration open-source? I have a Bluetooth controller light that also has a RF remote and I think that RF control would be more consistent that Bluetooth

[wolframzirngibl]

Sorry for stating, that any effort to filter out "harmonics" must fail when made this way. The wires for connecting Pi and Filter will radiate probably as much still unfiltered signal than attached antenna will radiate filtered signal - if not more than the antenna.