The heart of this project is based upon receiving and decoding an RC5 data stream. So, I guess the first question to ask is: "what does an RC5 data stream look like?" A second one might be: "how does it work?" and a final one would be: "how can I decode it?". These are all questions I had to ask of myself before I could come up with a working design, and hence this section shall answer those questions.

• What does RC5 look like?

Firstly, to find out what an RC5 data-stream looks like, you can employ one of two techniques. Either you can try to find some written reference to an RC5 data-stream, or you can try to measure one. I did both. For written references, google is your friend. You will find that I am not the first Electronics hobbyist to try to decode an RC5 data-stream - far from it in fact. Plenty of other Engineers/hobbyists have done this before! That said, I haven't yet found anyone else who has designed a solution using the C language so if C is your poison you've probably come to the right place.

If you do take the time to trawl google results you'll probably do well to find a diagram better than this one: