A $3 radio and six jumper wires turn a laptop into a 433 MHz scanner
433MHz TUI scanner: using a FT232H connected to a CC1101
Gate remotes send on 433 MHz, and a cheap AliExpress copy remote couldn't learn them, so the author wired a CC1101 radio module to an FT232H USB board with six jumper wires and drove it from Python via pyftdi — no microcontroller to flash, nothing to solder. The terminal scanner sweeps the band, shows RSSI bars, a waterfall and peak hold, and decodes the copy remote's fixed EV1527 codes. It only receives, never transmits.
The usual way is an ESP32 running ESPHome, which means building and flashing firmware every time you change something.
- cj00
I did something similar for my parents remote controlled blinds. I used a Flipper Zero to record the signal sent from the remote and an ESP32 + transmitter to replay the commands at sunrise and sunset.
- peterabbitcook
Neat project. A few years ago I tried and failed to get a junkyard Toyota security ECU from a ‘96 4Runner to work for remote lock/unlock in my ‘94 Land Cruiser with an eBay key fob. I might revisit it with this approach - cheap and easy RF analysis software/hardware would have eliminated a lot of guess work … though if memory serves I think the real headache was decoding wire colors in the security harness, which were not all explicitly labeled in the manual for “security” reasons.
What approach are you going to take to try and determine the cryptographic key of your device? Is there some way to hack and “root” your gate opener controller?
- ROOFLES
Nice another vibe coded project and matching AI written blog. This is all getting very tiresome.
There much easier ways to generally poke around RF