Bad reception

While fixing the transmission on CUL, I discovered that changing the data-rate settings on the CC1101-chip changed the behavior on the reception side as well. I don’t quite understand why, since I do not use any of the built in decoding features. But it awakened my hope of getting the reception to work. So I tried increasing the data rate setting to 10KBaud. The result was that it could now decode the fast pulses of the NexaL-protocol, but no other, slower protocol now worked. The signals of them now were drowned in noise instead. Deep sigh. I will have to release without support for reception.

CUL on MAC

The work with the CUL transmitter progresses. The Pronto Encoder now supports both the one time burst sequence and the repeated burst sequence of the Pronto Code, which are often used by IR protocols.
We have now also tested the CUL-support on MAC (Both a MAC Book Pro and a MacMini) and verified that it works.

Sending IR with CUL

I finally had a positive breakthrough with the CUL-stick. It has been working fine for sending to all supported protocols on the 433MHz band for controlling switches. But this band is also used for IR-extension devices such as the PowerMid, which is used to transmit IR remote control signals via radio. If I could tap in to their protocol, the CUL-stick could also be used as a generic IR-transmitter via a PowerMid! And now I finally got that to work. By modulating the mark pulses with 40KHz, the signal is received by the PowerMid receiver and sent as IR signals! This makes the CUL stick kind of a Swiss army knife of home control – both light switches and any IR remote controlled device can be managed!