Broadlink RM2 compatibility (bridges 433 MHz and 315 MHz )

Hi Jimmy/Rudi,

Do you know if Becky’s cloud solution supports the Broadlink smart plugs? I was able to get the the RM Bridge web control panel to detect the RM Pro, but it won’t detect any of my Broadlink smart plugs.

Thanks!

Im not sure if it works with smart plug. But if the smartplug works with broadlink RM2 pro, I believe it will work with Becky’s solution.

Good luck

Hi Rudi,

Thank you so much for working on this project. I have a ST Hub and the RM Pro and im trying to get my devices setup and into the hub now. I was able to add my robotvac using your app so I know the ST hub and the device handler is working correctly!

Im now trying to add rollertrol shades into ST. I was able to get them working with the e-Control app so I know the RM Pro can communicate and control the shades.

I tried to add the commands using the RM Bridge app and it recorded the commands but when I try to test the commands I get the error “Error sending code: data error! length = 908, must be less then 900 bytes”. Im soo close yet so far! Is this 900 byte limit a smartthings limitation? Can you think of anyway to shave off 8 bytes?

Thanks in advance

Hi Rudi,

Thanks for making this work. Tell my thanks to beckyricha too. It works flawlessly.

Just wanted to share that I did fork code and Updated Device Name to Device Network ID. Its to make it independent of device name. I wanted to give some user friendly device name, which i can change in future without updating RM Bridge. Hence forked and updated code to use device network id.Now I need to give device network id with the name I configured on RM Bridge.

Another update made, now switch remember last state in smartthings.

My forked code is here

Thanks!

I have forked code to remember what position switch is in ST. Considering you are not changing state using remote. Atleast now ST position is being remember, see if thats what you wanted.

Hello,
I’ve just received my RM PRO and I’m happy with it… in the living room. The distance, and my concrete walls seems to big for it to handle my AC controls in the other rooms.
Any idea if I can buy some RM minis and put them in each room I need, and still keep the same iOS app ?
Or I will need to run the separately ?

Thanks !

cant you teach it new rf devices if its not on the list?

Yes. In the same app. Use the e-Control app, and add device.

Is there any plans to support dimming light levels in this Broadlink-RM-SmartThings-Alexa. I have some home easy dimming switches that I can set levels with via a AC plugin in event ghost, I tried to learn those codes via rm bridge but it didn’t work (only for on/off commands).

Thanks, for on/off it is great

It turns out looking at the learnt codes for the dim commands that the learnt code is too long, as it is giving me a error when testing the command through the manage codes on the website it says it must be less that 900 bytes. This may be that I have pressed the button for too long or the codes for dimming are a lot longer. I will investigate later, although using the econtrol app works fine learning the dimming commands (20%, 40% etc)

Based on what you found, it seems underlying limitation is with RM Bridge. You may check with RM Bridge App author if they can increase code length limit.

To those who asked me questions here, my apologies…this forum isn’t one I monitor regularly and your messages were not showing up in my email. I’m gonna go back and try to answer some of the ones I see…apologies it took so long.

@Jimmy_Soegiarto Glad you got it working with becky’s help. Not sure how much help I would have been debugging that remotely.

@Simon_lo Does the rm bridge app say they work with the smart plugs? If not then the code isn’t gonna work. Becky’s code just routes the commands to the rm bridge (or rm tasker app if you make the mistake of using that) app. I used these and they work fine for me: https://smile.amazon.com/Etekcity-Wireless-Electrical-Household-Appliances/dp/B00DQELHBS

@itsamti Thanks for letting me know. I can see where using a network id would be more useful…I recently renamed some devices because I moved them and so I had to setup rm bridge with entries to match where I could have just kept the same network id. The problem with tracking the switch in smarthings is it works if smarthings is the ONLY way you are changing them but I also occasionally use the remotes which would get them out of sync so I couldn’t rely on the information.

@Vincent.C You can have multiple rm pro’s…I have 3…one in each room with a tv…you just do the imports on the device you want to send the commands…or you can actually use the rm bridge’s import/export options to paste all your commands into a text file and edit them…so for example I recorded them on the one in my bedroom since it was convenient and then edited the file to change the macid for those entries to the one in my exercise room then imported them back in. (it overwrites existing entries and adds any new ones). I don’t use the ios or android app as I have alexa do all the toggling via voice.

@kralleo and @kickers56 provided the device is on a mhz it can transmit on (433mhz or 315mhz) you can always do a “custom” entry. In fact most of the time I did because the only buttons I wanted were on and off (that’s all her code is setup for mostly due to alexa…you can get around it by making multiple “devices” that dim to a certain percentage…ie record a command that dim’s to 50% and name a device “mydevice setdim 50” or whatever method you want to use. “dim” by itself may be a reserved word for alexa if you are using that.

@kickers56 As itsamti indicated, I would go to the rm bridge github and do a feature request to increase the limit and explain why.

I’ve read this entire discussion and want to check what I think was said:

  1. The newer Broadlink RM Pro is the current preferred model (newer 2nd gen + support for both IR & RF).

  2. Some people have a way to get their SmartThings hub to recognize the RM Pro and then recognize (or be configured for) specific IR/RF-controlled devices so the ST app can turn them on/off.

  3. But the workaround that has been found is of no use to iOS/iPhone users, only Android device users. (I’m not clear on whether the issue is getting the ST hub to recognize the Broadlink RM Pro itself or just the downstream appliances that it is configured to control via IR/RF.) Is there any hope of enabling iOS users? If not, what’s the snag?

Craig

Lets clarify a bit. An android device is required to run the actual rm bridge app. Think of it as a tiny web server…it receives the commands sent via the hub and transmits them to the actual broadlink device which does not speak “http” on it’s own…any old android phone or tablet for the most part will do. That device will permanently stay at home on the same wifi as the broadlink while you carry your normal ios device. Other than that ST treats it as a normal on/off device so the normal ios ST app shouldn’t care one way or the other and can still turn things on and off. I regularly used the free app “Roger” which comes in android and IOS versions to talk to alexa when I am away from the house and tell it to turn off all the lights…or turn on the front door light…etc. It’s possible one of the many ways to run android apps such as via chrome os or similar MIGHT be sufficient but I don’t know of anyone that’s tested that.

As for the name…yeah the newer “Broadlink RM Pro” is preferred. The older “RM2” (yeah it’s backwards) only does IR and sells for around the SAME price.

That’s clearer.

So the Android RM Bridge workaround requires a reliable always-on wifi-capable Android device of some kind (e.g., not just a jailbroken Amazon TV stick which would power off when the TV is off; nor a buggy android TV box that hangs or reboots from time to time nor Android simulator on a remotely-awakened PC since those would at best reboot without the bridge app when back up).

And the end-devices seen through the ST app (on Android or iOS device) would only enable on-off toggling (nothing like HDTV source input selection or channel changing), is that right?

FWIW, an Android workaround seems too much of a bother for me though probably fine for 85% of the world.

Is the obstacle that ST’s device handler platform isn’t able to (or can’t be tricked to) send packets that aren’t http: arguments of the type Broadlink requires?

If a bridge is required only because there’s no other way to avoid or do that http-to-Broadlink conversion step, is it theoretically possible to put most of the intelligence into a device handler & SmartApp and then make bridge scripts for different platforms each consisting of only a few lines of code that just pass translated packets? E.g., besides Android maybe Linux bridge (like for an always-on hardwired Synology NAS), a Windows script, and a javascript bridge, etc.

Thanks for the discussion.

Craig

Well…my amazon fire tv stick is “always on” so it would work for ME…don’t get power from the tv…run a separate lead and you’re done. Get a different rom on your android tv box (I have 2 and an older android tv “stick”) and it should run stable if that’s the route you want to go. Even if the device reboots randomly as long as it auto loads the app on startup which is the default behavior(if not you could always use a free app like “autorun” to specify apps to run on startup but it autostarts on MINE) you’d only miss any commands sent during the window where it was rebooting. The limiting factor on on/off is alexa more than smartthings…you can get around it by making custom “devices” for instance… I have 3 “devices” named “TV Input 1”, “TV Input 2” and “TV Input 3”…turning the associated one “on” enables that input. Turning on “Living Room Receiver Mute” enables mute and vice versa. This is mentioned in Becky’s tutorials on how to set things up. Another I have is “turning on the garage door” to open it…channel changing is more tricky as you’d have to “alexa turn on TV Channel XXX” for each channel you like…or you could optionally say “Turn SYFY Channel on”…you get the idea. RM Bridge is written by some german developers. The source I believe can be downloaded…if you want to make it available on other platforms there’s no specific reason it HAS to be android but I’m unaware of any bridge type apps available for other platforms. You can look at http://rm-bridge.fun2code.de/ to see the web page that actually manages recording codes, editing them…import/export etc. You can even download THAT web source and drop it into just about any web server if you choose to run it locally. It interacts with the rm bridge as well so it may give you a secondary source of code to watch the interactions between the rm bridge and the web “gui”. I actually have it running on my freenas server AND my router so I can record codes even if the internet is down.

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Ahhh, I didn’t realize the AFire Stick was powered independently – that sounds pretty reasonable, then, although I guess it requires a jailbreak or sideloading.

And selecting a source and picking channels probably is reasonable via separate “on” instructions for those since there’d only be a couple of possible sources and the number of channels one might want to bother setting up for automation via ST is probably only a couple or a few.

It sounds like the reason for using the Android RM Bridge is that it already exists and saves the hard work of reinventing the wheel in a ST device driver. It sounds like we don’t know whether or not it’d be possible to port it into a ST device handler, right?

FWIW, I’m not into writing code in or based on unfamiliar programming languages, so that’s not an option for me.

Mine is not rooted and the app doesn’t require it…just runs a server on a random port…has to be higher than 1024 if you don’t have root but other than that…

NO you can’t just create a smartthings driver for it…the broadlink doesn’t communicate via http at all…period…that’s the whole point of needing the rm bridge app. All the current ST driver is doing is sending a formatted on or off command with mac id and device name to the bridge which does the actual work. You could send the same command via a web browser and it would work the same way.

The people who designed the rm bridge app reverse engineered an undocumented protocol from a chinese device…it not a simple thing a bunch of folks are gonna just toss together.

does Broadlink work with Amazon eho ?

Echo works with smartthings. You need to install RM Bridge on any android.
Please read complete thread. You will get fair idea.