Main Content

ILumos Remote Control

The iLumos range of smart light switch and dimmers work very nicely. They install easily into UK as they don’t require a neutral connection which is often not present in UK lighting switch points.
They use 433MHz transmissions from their remote controls as well as having the touch sensitive controls on their face plate. If one wants to control them from an App or to use voice control like Alexa then the recommended method is to use a Broadlink RM controller which can transmit either IR or 433MHz rf messages. As the protocol is not built in then one has to train the Broadlink product to learn the remote control signals. It is difficult to do this training and even when apparently successful it does not produce a reliable result. I think this is due to the fact that the iLumos protocol is quite difficult to distinguish from normal background 433MHz noise and so the trained signal that the Broadlink reproduces is not a good representation of what is required.
This instructable is how to make a reliable controller. To do this the rf messages from the remote controls were captured and analysed so that they could be properly reproduced in a 433Mhz transmitter.
Details of the protocol and format of these messages is included in the documentation but it is not necessary to understand this in order to build and use this replacement controller.
The controller uses a ESP8266 wifi microcontroller in the form of a module (ESP-12F). THis can receive web commands and convert them into the message format required and then send them via a simple low cost 433Mhz transmitter module. A lot of it is based on a previous IR controller that can send out codes to IR devices like TVs etc. The IR functionality has been retained so that the same controller can be used for both iLumos and a range of IR devices. It is also possible to add on other 433Mhz devices like plug in sockets by just adding in configuration text files via the web interface.”

Link to article