Hacking My Ceiling Fan Radio Signal With a $15 USB TV Tuner (RTL2832U)

Armed with just a USB TV Tuner, I decode the RF commands that my ceiling fan remote sends so that I can incorporate it into my "smart home" system.


Part 2:    • Abusing Raspberry Pi GPIO pins as a radio ...  
I demo using a stock Raspberry Pi 3B to transmit these radio commands.



I got my RTL2832U tuner off eBay, which is usually the cheapest place to get them: https://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53...


Just make sure to find a buyer in your country if you don't want to wait for shipping from China. Mine was actually purchased in 2016 but they haven't changed much since then.



If you're interested in getting one of these USB SDRs yourself, know that even with the same RTL2832U chip, they incorporate different tuners with different frequency ranges. My tuner, shown in the video, has the Rafael Micro R820T which is also the most common one you'll find. You can find more details about the different tuners here: https://wiki.radioreference.com/index...


Links to the software used:


Spektrum: https://github.com/pavels/spektrum
Universal Radio Hacker: https://github.com/jopohl/urh


There's a ton of software out there that can use the RTL-SDR, these are just the two that I used to accomplish this task.

Background music:
Puzzle Jukebox - Parallel Lofi Chill   / parallel-lofi-chill  
Hybrid V - Shibuya Station   / shibuya-station-royalty-free-music  

Some of the links in my video descriptions may get me referral compensation which help support my channel.