Controlling a ceiling fan and light with an Arduino
In this article I will describe how a wireless ceiling fan/light can be controlled by an Arduino. I will also describe the communication protocol used by the remote control to control the ceiling fan. How the remote control works The remote control is typically mounted on the wall and has several buttons that can be used to adjust the brightness of the light and the speed of the fan, as well as a set of switches that can be used to identify the remote control. When the user presses one of the buttons, a microcontroller inside the remote control generates a stream of ones and zeros based on the setting of the switches and the button pressed. For example, the code to toggle the state of the light is 1111111111111110000011010 . Each one is then encoded as a short pulse, and each zero is encoded as a long pulse. This waveform is then output to the RF oscillator. When the output signal is high, the RF oscillator is oscillating at around 304 MHz, and when the signal is low, the oscil