After Remote Control, Here comes Universal Phone Control

The new addition to the chain of home automation. Pardon the unclear poor quality of this photo. The tablet is not exactly HD quality, but it's real cheap, and we got it at half its original price from COMEX. Headed back home to link it up with our switches and we got ourselves a universal control to control all the switches. This is just the beginning, because soon, we will be adding our curtains control, fan control, aircon control, projector control, and tv control, all into this tablet of ours, and we will be able to control the whole house with just this tablet!

Technical Note: This setting up could also be done on our own mobile phones too. However there is a small restriction. To be able to control all the devices, one must be connected to the same wifi as the broadlink rm pro. This means you would not be able to control the electronics from outside of home unless..... you have a bridge in between, which in my case, we are using this tablet. How this would work at my house now is that my phone which is connected to 4G, would send the signal to my tablet which is connected to my home wifi, so that my switches are toggled. This would remove the restriction of having to be connected to our house wifi.

Remote Control, the Key to Achieving Laziness

Throwback from a previous post when i introduced the Livolo switches. Just a recap, the switches i have gotten are not just touch panels, but are remote controllable. There are two types of remotes, with one being more advanced and can toggle up to 10 buttons and scenes but it's more expensive and I have no need for that because I will be integrating all into my phone soon and so i got the other remote, that is shown above. However, one is not enough for all the switches in the house so.....

I got a small army of it. The reason why i got so many of it is so that my phone would be able to control all the switches uniquely. You may just jump to the next picture if this technical stuffs bores you but I will just briefly share it.

Firstly, to control every switches from my phone requires my Broadlink RM Pro to learn the radio frequency (RF) code. There are programs out there that can decrypt and create RF code, but I felt that it is too complicated for now, and so, it it easier to just learn the RF code. When pairing the remote with the switch, an unique RF code is created. By learning this particular RF code, the Broadlink RM Pro is able to broadcast the code as if the remote is sending it. This also mean that i am unable to unpair the remote-switch, because that would render the learnt code useless. By not being able to unpair, I am not able to use one remote to create multiple codes, hence the need for me to get multiple remotes to create multiple codes for all the switches in the house. Positively, each button of the remote is able to pair with multiple switches, allowing me to switch on the living room lights and the kitchen lights together. However, i would not be able to control them separately unless there is another remote that is paired separately. Hope this provides some understanding.

I also tagged each remote so that i know which switches are controlled by them. Ideally, they will all be kept away next time because our phones would be able to control everything. However, i have left some of them lying around at designated spots to provide the ease of switching on some switches that are not found within reach. I am still looking out for a tablet at cheap prices so that it can act as the bridge for my home automation so that we could even control our house switches when we are not at home. Till then!

Side note, black is a color that allows dust to be clearly visible. This means more cleaning effort because it looked dirty very fast. Perhaps that is why pure Scandinavian theme is low maintenance but not our modified-white-become-black Scandinavian theme. However, the worst ought to be Industrial theme.