Sunday, January 30, 2011

Android TV Remote - Failure one

, I decided my phone should also act like a TV remote. The first problem with that is the missing hardware. It doesn't have an IR emitter. After a brief search, I decided that Android Phone - IR Emitter integration didn't exist, and I proceeded to begin building my own.

 My first attempt was to buy a 20$ universal remote from radio shack and attempt to wire up the buttons so that I could invoke them digitally. I took apart the remote and discovered that it was essentially a single board with an IR emitter at the front. I glued wires to the button contacts and glued the wires to the board with hot melt glue so that the fragile wire-glue connections would not break.

I connected the wires to a breadboard and could push the buttons electronically with the digital out from an arduino. I could then hook the arduino up to a webservice and I would have the first iteration of a working android/web phone remote.

 But! Then I saw this product from Global-Cache GC-100. It allows serial, IR, and other devices to be hooked up to an ethernet network and accessed remotely. So, although wiring up a TV remote to an arduino was fun, challenging, and a useful trick to have in my arsenal, it also wasn't better than the existing commercial solution. I have abandoned this avenue of attack and ordered a GC-100.