When the Coronavirus Pandemic hit and I started working from home, I started worrying about my elderly parents who could no longer babysit my niece and nephew on a regular basis, go to church, go to restaurants, meet with friends, etc..  They were getting lonely and were starting to feel the strain of their new-found isolation.  Since I had recently bought them a Wyze cam for Christmas and had one of my own, and had previously shared those feeds to help me monitor their security feed, I hacked together a sub-standard and annoying “portal” using the cameras and our respective iPads.  Theirs was in their family room and I set mine up in my office. For most of the year, I kept them company during the work day and it did wonders for their ability to cope with this new world.

The solution had all sorts of problems though. There was a significant audio delay, the connection would go down from time to time, the Wyze interface was difficult for my parents to use, I had to wear headphones to prevent echo feedback (since Wyze has no echo cancellation), and it seemed that the connection would get choppy whenever they pulled out their phones (seemed like an interference issue).  I’d bought them a WiFi Extender , but it didn’t seem to help.  During a particularly choppy conversation recently, I started googling for alternate solutions and I happened upon a github project called teleportme by PaperCutSoftware, which was a simple scheduled shell script on a pair of Mac Minis running FaceTime to establish a portal between 2 coastal offices above each office’s water coolers.  They were scheduled to establish a FaceTime call every morning and hang up after work.  I wouldn’t have thought of using FaceTime running for hours a day, but apparently it was possible and reliable – and you don’t need a cell provider account to use it, so I set out to see if I could do this using a pair of iPads.  Using tips from their setup, this is how I figured out how to do it. Continue reading →

UPDATE: A new version of this article was just published, as the procedure in this article no longer works using BroadLink’s new app…

The homebridge-broadlink-rm plugin for homebridge allows you to automate your devices which have an IR (infrared) remote by emitting those button codes from a Broadlink RM Mini3. You can add individual “buttons” that exist in the RM Mini’s iPhone app (e-Control), by adding the button’s hex code to homebridge’s configuration file (~/.homebridge/config.json).

The homebridge plugin provides a way to obtain these codes, one-at-a-time, by using the “Learn” button it adds to your Home app. You tap the Learn button, then point your remote at the RM Mini3 and hit the button you want to be able to control. The hex code can then be retrieved from the homebridge log file.

However, if you have numerous remotes with numerous buttons already programmed into the RM Mini3, and some remotes in a drawer, some without batteries, this can be a quite long and tedious process. I personally had 238 individual codes programmed into my RM Mini3 and some of my remotes took coin batteries that were dead and I had no replacements on hand. So I wanted a way to grab all of the codes at once without having to manually re-record all of the button presses. I worked out the process to do this last night, and googling this stuff was rather laborious, so I am posting what I learned here.

Here is my setup:

1. Broadlink RM Mini3
2. MacBook running:
   1. Catalina 10.15.6
   2. iExplorer
3. iPhone running iOS 13.6 with:
   1. e-Control app
4. Raspberry Pi B3 running:
   1. Homebridge

I will not be reviewing how to get homebridge or the Broadlink plugin working.

1. Connect your iPhone to your Mac using a USB/Lightning cable
2. Click the iPhone in a Finder window’s left pane (Note: iPhone Synching has moved from the old iTunes app to the Finder)
3. Click “Trust” on the Finder window to trust your iPhone
4. Unlock your iPhone and tap “Trust” when the dialog appears prompting you to trust your computer
5. Launch iExplorer (Click the “Demo” mode button). It may take some time for the app to process the data on your phone.
6. Click “Backup” and then “Backup Explorer” in the left pane
7. Expand the “Apps” selection
8. Drag the folder named “cn.com.broadlink.e-Control” to a location in the Finder (e.g. your desktop)
9. Download, install, and launch an app called DB Browser for SQLite
10. In the “cn.com.broadlink.e-Control” folder you saved on your computer, locate and drag the e-Control database file “cn.com.broadlink.e-Control/Documents/BroadLinkDeviceList.sqlite” onto the DB Browser for SQLite app
11. Click the “Execute SQL” tab
12. In the top left text area, paste the following SQL query (without the quotes): “select s.name, b.name, c.buttonID, c.codeID, hex(c.code) from broadlink_subir as s left join broadlink_button as b using(subirID) left join broadlink_code as c using(buttonID)“
13. Click in the resulting table in the pane below and copy its contents (e.g. command-a to select all and command-c to copy)
14. Paste the results into a text file (e.g. using Text Edit.app) or excel document
15. Use the hex codes in the last column to add accessories to your homebridge config file. (The columns are Remote name, Button Name, Button ID, Code ID, and Hex Code. Note, if you created any combo buttons that send a series of codes, there will be repeated hex codes and Button IDs.)

Here’s an example of what you will get:

TV Power 171 177 26003C00211A3E1A20000B97201A211A3E1A201A211A201A211A201A2037201A3F1A20000B962119211A3E1A211A201A201A211A201A2136211A3E1A20000D05000000000000000000000000
TV Source 172 178 26004E00211A3E1A211A201A211A201A2037201A211A3E1A211A20000B96211A3E1A201A211A201A211A2036211A201A3F1A201A20000B97201A3F19211A201A211A201A2037201A211A3E1A211A20000D0500000000000000000000

And here’s an example of an accessory entry in the config.json file:

            {
                "name":"TV",
                "type":"outlet",
                "data":{
                    "on":"26004e002119211a3e1a211a201a2119211a201a2136211a3e1a21000b96201a211a3e1a201a211a201a211a201a213621193f1a20000b96201a211a3e1a201a211a201a211a201a2136201a3f1a20000d0500000000000000000000",
                    "off":"26004e002119211a3e1a211a201a2119211a201a2136211a3e1a21000b96201a211a3e1a201a211a201a211a201a213621193f1a20000b96201a211a3e1a201a211a201a211a201a2136201a3f1a20000d0500000000000000000000"
                }
            },

You will have to restart homebridge after adding accessories so that the new controls show up in your Home app on your iPhone.

My wife and I each got new iPhones recently (exactly a month ago today). We had some difficulty getting our phones to make calls initially, but that’s another story, as is the story of the erroneous double charge for the Sprint upgrade/activation (both Apple and Sprint charged for the same activation and I’d been signed up without consent for the Sprint Complete protection plan!). I think in the past month, we’ve spent nearly 10 hours combined speaking to Sprint reps for all the issues, possibly more (and there’s probably a call yet to be had to address an incomplete refund for those erroneous charges).

But I digress, so let me jump straight into the how-to to reconnect your iPhone to the Airave 2.5… Continue reading →