RTL_433 is an open source project hosted on GitHub. While the name implies it only handles devices on the 433MHz band, it also supports devices on 868 MHz, 315 MHz, 345 MHz, and 915 MHz bands. Not only are there presets to decode popular devices, there are instructions to write decoding profiles for unsupported devices.

Once installed, you can customize your /etc/rtl_433.conf to output to MQTT by adding:

output mqtt://localhost:1883,user=user,pass=password,retain=0

Customizing the hostname, port, username, and password for your MQTT broker. RTL_433 outputs event json and state json. So…you can monitor events as they happen or the state of individual devices.

I was surprised at how many devices I was able to pick up that weren’t mine, and ultimately filtered out devices by removing protocols from the rtl_433.conf file. I’m picking up not only my Acurite weather sensor, but other people’s temperature sensors, TPMS(tire pressure monitoring sensors), and more. I can feed my sensors(not the ones I accidentally pick up), into WeeWX(my weather system), and Home Assistant(my home automation system).