boing.world is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
A gateway into the global open conversation in the fediverse, for Boing folks and anyone they know. If you're friends with someone here, or the event, or were at the fabled old place, come join us.

Administered by:

Server stats:

4
active users

I have installed some new lights, and they each come with an identical-looking but apparently differently encoded remote controls. The remotes control only one lamp each.

Not infra-red as I had assumed until just now it seems. Signal hasno trouble passing through walls. Surprising.

Anyone know if there's a way to capture the signals from those remotes and install some USB device on my computer that can repeat them?

I figured there would be when I assumed they were infra-red remotes, coz surely a infra-red flasher/recorder is easy, but now I suspect it's probably some encoded encrypted wifi-band signal or something that there's no hope of intercepting.

Adam Dalliance
Public

The life-span of these lamps seems likely to be limited by the life-span of these remote controls then too.

Presumably a replacement control can't be found if they're all uniquely encoded and not backupable.

Adam Dalliance
Public

Seems likely their reply was either passed through ChatGPT to translate or else just answered by AI robots.

They asked for model-numbers, so maybe not all hope is lost.

Stewart Sims
Public

@pre would also be interested to know how these work! At risk being a reply-guy via unrelated comments: Just in case you didn't know that ceiling *may* contain (fairly small amounts of) asbestos. It's worth being a bit careful if you need to drill into or disturb it.

Adam Dalliance
Public

@stew_sims The plaster definitely crumbled a bit but I used existing screw holes.

Which didn't quite have the right width so they're held in with one screw instead of two but hey ho, matches the rest of the slapdash house.

Stewart Sims
Public

@pre Well it looks good anyway 😄 Even if it is asbestos-containing you can drill it and repair small sections with appropriate PPE and clean-up if need be. HSE have some guidance. But main thing is just to be aware of the risk and not go sanding lots of it!
We have it in every ceiling here (plus numerous other places).

Adam Dalliance
Public

@stew_sims They definitely cleaned some up outside on the estate shortly after I moved in.

It's a fair call really.

Andrew Feeney
Public

@pre This is a tangent, but should the phrase be “backupable” or “backable up”? 🤔

Adam Dalliance
Public

@andrewfeeney I like backupable but I nearly hyphenated it.

Andrew Feeney
Public

@pre It has to be backupable, because the verb has become unhyphenated. “To backup”. But then people still separate it. “Did you back it up?”

Unchained Threnody
Quiet public

@pre A remote operated dual button pressing unit would simultaneously be absurd and brilliant

Vasile Vilvoiu
Public

@pre If they work without direct line of sight then it’s radio controlled. You could have a look inside the remotes and figure out the transmitter IC, which should give you a hint re the modulation used. After that, the least friction path is to get a HackRF and duplicate the signal from software. Mind you, all this is not trivial.

Adam Dalliance
Public

@rimio Yeah, that sounds beyond me. Fair chance I'd just break the remote trying to take it apart.