Today, we’ll make a radio remote control from a smartphone for controlling an electric cornice or blinds. We will need:
- – Radio module RF-Blinds.
- – An adapter from USB-type-A to the type of USB that you have on your phone (or tablet).
- – Android smartphone or tablet.
- – Devices that we will control. I have a motor for the AKKO AM82TV-1.2 / 14 electric curtain rod and radio for blinds and blinds supporting the function of turning lamellas Modulis SOMFY Centralis Indoor RTS VB. This relay is usually used to control motors over a radio channel which is not radio controlled. Instead of such a motor, I connected a lamp. So more clearly.
We connect the radio module through the adapter to the phone.
We need an application to control the radio module through a virtual serial port.
We go to the Play Store.
In the search we type usb serial. We see the list of programs:
To control the radio module, several of them are suitable. The most convenient seemed to me the program Serial USB Terminal. Download, install, run:
Now we need to configure the program. Go to the settings menu and set the exchange speed to 115,200:
By default, the settings are set to display one row of “Macro buttons” buttons:
If this is not enough, the number of rows can be increased, for example, to five:
You can specify characters at the end of a line. By default, the line ends with two characters – “CR + LF”. You can leave it as it is, but RF-Blinds will respond to the second character as the end of another line. And, since it is empty, after the command it will give OK for the first line and right thereafter, after that ERROR as a reaction to the second, empty line. This will not affect anything. But the output of the “ERROR” message can be avoided by ending the line with just one “CR” or “LF” character.
On this, the connection setup can be considered complete. Go to the main screen and connect:
I note that I pre-linked the RF-Blinds radio module to the radio relay and electric cornice motor and this process is not described here. The pairing commands are the same for each protocol. It may depend a little on whether you are tying the first console, or the next ones. But the translation of executive devices (electric curtain motors, blinds with radio control and radio relay control support) for each device is different and is described in the documentation for a specific device. RF-Blinds to Akko AM82TV-1.2 / 14 and the Somfy Centralis Indoor RTS VB radio relay can be viewed here.
In the input line, enter the command:
smf_down 1
The list of RF-Blinds radio commands can be found here.
The somfy radio relay should react by short-term inclusion. Actually everything works. But each time, entering text commands on the phone is not convenient. Assign the necessary commands to the macro buttons. To edit the label on the button and set the macro you need to hold the button down for a couple of seconds. A menu for editing opens:
To control one channel of the radio relay and one eaves, I assigned macros to five buttons:
Check – everything works. In the end, it looks like this:
In general, you can use. What is missing is the ability to design your widget – appearance. Then, from a tablet, or smartphone that no one is already using, it would be possible to make a touch control panel by placing it in a convenient place. And by the way, you can connect to such a panel with a phone via WiFi, or bluetooth.
You can also add that not only the radio module, but also the USB-RS485 adapter can be connected to a smartphone or tablet in the same way. In this case, the control will be a couple of wires and we will become attached. But the capabilities of the RS485 protocol are greater than radio control. You can not only send commands, but also query the status of devices. It’s a good start to start creating your own “Smart Home”.
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