Automate RF 433 MHz Dooya motor control

[zebmina]

I have been following @petewill's posts with great interest (although a total noob!).

I have a few roller blind motors purchased in China (well, 21 grouped into 10 zones)

I retro-fitted the motors into my existing roller blinds and programmed them with a 15-channel remote I received from the motor manufacturer. As far as I could determine, a "standard" Dooya DC2702 remote works perfectly with these motors.

I would like to integrate these blinds with my home automation (Vera), but am confused about what I need to do. If it turns out that integrating with Vera is not possible, but a standalone web app can be created to do this, that would be fine with me.

Principally, the instructions I have seen online suggest I need to have access to both the transmitter and receiver components. The receiver bit is not possible to get to since it's in the motor assembly.

It seems to me (in my uneducated way) that any RF 433MHz transmitter/receiver pair should be fine to integrate, as long as the transmitter is able to send the correct codes to the receivers. Since there are potentially other RF devices floating around, I assume the transmitter must send a specific code that a receiver can identify (I guess like pairing Bluetooth). I hope my analogy is accurate.

Being a total noob, I would really like it if an expert could lay out the steps I need to follow. I can do any additional research, but am confused by the large number of potential options available, and am clearly not in a position to figure out which of these options makes sense for my situation.

Basically the steps I am hoping to clarify in my head are:

1. Identify the components I need to use, i.e., an RF trans/receiver pair
2. Arduino (possibly 2?)
3. Any other components like resistors/capacitors etc.
4. A typical circuit schematic that I can breadboard (initially before I create a more permanent thing)
5. Any software libraries I need to have
6. Sample code (I have programming background in C/Java/Python)

I read in one of Pete's threads that he used a sound card with a LINE connector and Audacity. I have an old computer lying around that probably has a sound card in it already (probably with a LINE-IN) that I could use - assuming that Audacity will work on an ancient computer circa 1998! -- Are there alternatives to this?

Any suggestions and guidance that I could use would be greatly appreciated.

I apologize for the rather long list of items I am confused about, and hope you folks have some patience with me as I learn more about this. On the plus side, I think I am a quick study.

Regards.

[zebmina]

After a bunch of fiddling around, I got an Uno+nRF24L01 to talk to a Nano+nRF24L01 without any lossy data. I did not use any capacitors across the Vcc/Gnd pins on either.

My next step is to use @petewill's approach to include an RF433 transmitter to the Nano side.

I'm not 100% sure if this is the correct approach, but seems logical to me.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

[electrik]

I am wondering if mysensors is the way to go to automate these blinds. Rflink, for example, supports this brand and could be connected to your home control system to control these motors.
http://www.rflink.nl/blog2/devlist

[Yveaux]

@electrik mysensors uses its own protocol, so won't be able to 'talk' to your device. You might be able to use a mysensors node as a bridge, but you would have to develop the code by yourself.
As you indicate, existing solutions like rflink are likely a lot easier to get running.

[Ivanli]

Do you send full code and video demos after you finish your project?

[zebmina]

@electrik My apologies - I have been otherwise occupied

Your RFLink project sounds interesting. My objective is to decode Dooya DC2702 transmissions and use that with a Vera controller. Since I already have that, it makes sense for me to use that.

Basically, I had a bunch of roller blinds I used manually - chain pull. Raising/lowering 21 blinds became onerous so I decided to put motors inside. I did not want to mess up my walls so decided to use rechargeable battery motors, and found a set of AliExpress that were not too expensive (I did need to do some surgery on the existing brackets/housing, but not too bad. For the last year or so I have remote-controlled blinds! SO my next step of course is to control them using my Vera controller. And that's where I am stuck because I cannot decode the RF signals...

[zebmina]

@Ivanli I assume this was directed at me? If so, yes, I will gladly post all my results, working code, video etc. Unfortunately I have this major stumbling block that I am unable to figure out the RF codes (I am using a 15-channel Dooya DC2702 transmitter; the receiver is unfortunately not accessible since it's in the roller motor housing). Not sure if I am using Audacity incorrectly, whether I have too much noise, but my Chinese RF433 receiver seems not to pick up any signal from the DC2702, even if I am within a few centimeters from the receiver). The sniffer circuit I used is: https://www.codrey.com/electronic-circuits/433mhz-rf-sniffer/. I also tried using @petewill's circuit. Neither seems to want to record.

[Brad Bozarth]

@zebmina I am about to purchase ~30 433mhz controlled blinds that are normally controlled with a 15 channel remote - I think these are made by several Chinese manufacturers but all use Dooya style remote control. The manual says you must pair each blind to its own channel, and then there is an "all" control. How do you have 10 "zones"? Do 10 remotes each output a different signal, so you can have 10 "all" groups? Or can you pair multiple motors to one channel using one remote?

[Michiel van der Wulp]

I have two Dooya motors DT82TN with a DC2760 remote control, which is 433MHz.
After a lot of investigations and experiments, I got them working with Domoticz (running on a Raspberry Pi), using the following:

• A Broadlink RM2 (RM Pro+) which supports 433MHz. The official Broadlink app is cloudbased and can "learn" the codes to operate the Dooya, but I abandoned this since I want integration with my domotica system, not just another app on my phone.

• The software at https://github.com/mjg59/python-broadlink works with Broadlink devices, but does not integrate well with the RM2. So, I only use this for my thermostat, not for the Dooya curtains.

• The "official" Domoticz plugin described at https://www.domoticz.com/wiki/Plugins/BroadlinkRM2.html is an old version, that is not supported any more - as stated at the top of the page.

• The "zak45" Domoticz plugin that works is described at https://www.domoticz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=33223#p251517 to be downloaded at zak45's Nextcloud drive: https://synnas.publicvm.com:4430/s/Czn9r8G8QwrZ7ji

• This latter plugin is not easy to use, and has special added webpages to Domoticz. It is however able to use the RM2 to "learn" IR and RF codes from the UI of Domoticz. However, there is a bug due to which the learning of RF codes does not work from the UI.

• I was able to use the command line on the RaspberryPi with the above given plugins to detect Broadlink devices. And this way, I could also learn the 4 RF codes I needed for my 2 curtains: open/close for each. This gave me the code as some numbers, which I stored in a text file.

• Since the IR learning works, I used this to learn 4 commands, and then looked where these codes were stored on the Raspberry, and replaced them with the RF codes. This was easy.

• Just a tip: I used Dolphin with fish://raspberrypi/ to browse and edit the files on the Raspberry from my desktop PC.