We use control of chaos to encode information into the oscillations of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction. An arbitrary binary message is encoded by forcing the chaotic oscillations to follow a specified trajectory. The information manipulating control requires only small perturbations to vary the binary message. In this paper we extend our recent theoretical work [Bollt and Dolnik, Phys. Rev. E 64, 1196 (1990)] by introducing a new and simplified encoding technique which can be utilized in the presence of experimental noise. We numerically and theoretically study several practical aspects of controlling symbol dynamics including: modeling noisy time-series, learning underlying symbol dynamics, and evaluation of derivatives for control by observing system responses to an intelligent and deliberate sequence of input parameter variations. All of the modeling techniques incorporated here are ultimately designed to learn and control symbol dynamics of experimental data known only as an observed time-series; the simulation assumes no global model. We find that noise affects reliability of encoding information and may cause coding errors. But, if the level of noise is confined to relatively small values, which are achievable in experiments, the control mechanism is robust to the noise. Thus we can still produce a desired symbolic code. However, scarce errors in encoding may occur due to rare but large fluctuations. These errors may be corrected during the decoding process by a variation of the filtering technique suggested by Rosa et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 1247 (1997)]. (c) 1998 American Institute of Physics.