hi, I recently started a new project where I would like to automate my room air conditioner without having to use the remote control but by sending an infrared pulse with the appropriate diode via Arduino, I therefore went to recover the various values that the original remote control transmits to the device however I cannot decode them as they are often different despite pressing the same keys, has anyone had similar problems doing similar projects?
Air conditioner remote signals are always a pain in the... led. I still wonder why, but they aren't made to send a code corresponding to the button you press, no, it'd be too easy! So they send some large blocks of information instead (the few times I tried to figure that out I got a headache and quit). In a few words, e.g. when you press the START button, the code isn't just a "start" command, it includes some other variables (sometimes even the temperature, air direction, etc). And if you press START again to switch it off, it sends "stop".
That's why, for instance, if you have your conditioner off and press START once masking the IR LED to prevent the device to receive that code, and then open it up and press START again, the device won't turn on. Because the code it has got is a "stop"!!!
So, if you want to handle such things you must first forget the "human remote IR remotes" and enter in the wild "air conditioners IR", then search for detailed information about the specific device IR remote you have and see how the IR data packets are made.
Or arm yourself with great patience and decode this information by hand (hoping that the encoding is one of those provided by the IRremote library, otherwise you need to buy an IR analyzer like the good AnalysIR -I bought it some time ago to help me decode MySky/SkyQ codes).
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oh wow thanks for the fast reply, i will definitely try what you just told me, but I was wondering if it was possible to send the raw form of the IR signal that the remote control sends to the device, which I scanned previously with Arduino, could something like this work?
I suppose you could do it, but you must know the signal carrier frequency first (the most common one is 38 kHz, but with conditioners you never know what they had in their broken minds...) then use a compatible IR receiver, I mean the ones made for that carrier frequency, e.g. TSOP 31238, TSOP 4838 and so on (the last two digits are the internal frequency filter, 38 kHz in those examples).
So the first step is collecting some (basic) information about your remote signals, I'd start from the remote part number and googling a bit to search for some hints.
Then, you could capture all data as raw code using one of the IRremote example sketches, something named like IRrecvDump (I did it years ago...), but between the examples could (should) be a few air conditioner makers like Daikin, Kelvinator etc.
Remember it'd be normal receiving different codes for the same button, but AFAIK they should switch between two different sets: if the codes you see appear to change randomly it could be a matter of wrong signal carrier (e.g. you capture with a 38 kHz TSOP while the remote uses 51 kHz...).
BTW, which Arduino board and air conditioner remote we're talking about?
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