fireplace remote control using RF

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi,
I have a fireplace with a 315MHz RF remote control and I'd like to control it from Arduino. I bought the RF receiver and transmitter from SparkFun (RF Link Receiver - 4800bps (315MHz) - WRL-10533 - SparkFun Electronics, ...) and I'm able to get a sequence of bytes when I press various buttons on the remote. Should I be able to simply replay/transmit the same sequence and have the fireplace respond? I guess I should just try, but wondering if anybody tried something similar.

I have two concerns:

  1. when I hold the buttons for a couple of seconds, I definitely see repetition in the signal, but there's also noise. Would the fireplace handle the noise somehow?
  2. the different buttons give me similar patterns (eg, the same bytes show up in all signals) so I'm wondering if I'm really capturing the relevant signal.

Is it possible that the way that the SparkFun receiver convers radio signal to bits is different that the fireplace would?

Also, the way the receiver aligns the bits into bytes is quite arbitrary, so I should treat it as a sequence of bits, not bytes.

Thanks!
Peter

2

Make sure you have the same modulation on your remote control and the components from SparkFun; OOK, ASK or FSK

bodikp:
Would the fireplace handle the noise somehow?

Yes, it will handle. The noise is there with or without your arduino.

bodikp:
the different buttons give me similar patterns (eg, the same bytes show up in all signals) so I'm wondering if I'm really capturing the relevant signal.

The signals should be different. If you look at it with a osciloscope you might not see any difference, but if you measure the time between each transition you'll see the differences.