[Swansea Hackspace] Minimal and bespoke TV remote control

Mon Jun 22 17:20:18 BST 2015

Apart from having some kind of dynamic dns on her end, this sounds like a project for the esp8266 running on arduino firmware.

No animals were harmed in the making of this email. However, several thousand electrons were severely inconvenienced.

<div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: Richard Morgan <richard.morgan at avocation.co.uk> </div><div>Date:22/06/2015  15:43  (GMT+00:00) </div><div>To: Swansea Hackspace <hackspace at swansea.hackspace.org.uk> </div><div>Cc:  </div><div>Subject: Re: [Swansea Hackspace] Minimal and bespoke TV remote control </div><div>
</div>Hi Gerrit,
Yep I can certainly relate to that image and the inspiration. 

It's so hard when you get a phone call from a frustrated family member only hours after you've been at her house and trying to verbally explain to an octogenarian how to make a simple sequence of keypresses on two remote controls is awfully hard - especially after 10 mins of dialogue you realise she's holding the spare cordless phone and not the TV remote at all!! 

Good luck with this worthwhile project.

Richard

P.S. I've also considered setting up an IR blaster transmitter in her house and an IR receiver in my house so that I could point the remote at the IR received in my house and have it transmit the signal to her house over the internet to the IR blaster there that would send the IR signal to her TV/Skybox....no idea if it's possible.

On 22 June 2015 at 14:51, Gerrit Niezen <gerrit.niezen at gmail.com> wrote:
Hi there,

Thanks for all the feedback!

Justin: 
- I saw an e-ink keyboard concept last week - still not sure if it’s vapourware or not: http://www.solidsmack.com/design/new-sonder-e-ink-keyboard-changes-hot-keys-as-you-change-digital-tools/ If I could get hold of the buttons they’re using for that keyboard it would be pretty cool!
- What button sets would you need?
- I haven’t heard of HDMI-CEC before, googled it and realised that it’s because I don’t have a “smart” TV and because every manufacturer has a different name for it (EasyLink, SimpLink, Aquos Link, Bravia Sync etc. etc.)

Ceri: I should’ve mentioned in my original post that I don’t want to use a touch screen, as I prefer physical buttons that can be pressed without having to look at the screen and give some haptic feedback so that you know when you pressed them. 

Richard: Images like this one were the inspiration for this project:

On 20 Jun 2015, at 13:36, Justin Mitchell <justin at discordia.org.uk> wrote:

A touch sensitive layer with an eink display would be great, it would only consume power when changing the layout, and you'd get complete freedom of what buttons you had.

As for me a useful universal remote would need quite diverse button sets, as fit example the surround amp has quite different controls to the sky box.

Much of the need for such a remote has been killed by the HDMI-CEC standards, but there still a few devices that don't behave

On 20 Jun 2015 12:41 pm, Ceri Clatworthy <ceri.clatworthy at gmail.com> wrote:

What about using the touchscreen from Nintendo DS. .or simmla. ..
No actual buttons a glossy picture underneath. . Over acrilic. .. So you can still have illumination. ..  siluett cutout (laser) 
Bit more code for touch screen.  But only 4 I/O.

Although does affect shape

On 20 Jun 2015 12:32, "Ceri Clatworthy" <ceri.clatworthy at gmail.com> wrote:

If you had a recent android phone.
Then there is an app to be a tv video dvd remote control. ...

Did I mention I like android 

On 19 Jun 2015 22:22, "Richard Morgan" <richard.morgan at avocation.co.uk> wrote:

A family member is elderly and struggles with the need to use the TV REMOTE to change the source and then the SKY REMOTE to manage the channels - having a single remote covering all her needs would be great.

I would be interested in using this.

Thanks Gerrit

On Fri, 19 Jun 2015 at 17:07 Emyr Morris <em at preseli.com> wrote:

great project! Love it

On 19 June 2015 at 16:58, Gerrit Niezen <gerrit.niezen at gmail.com> wrote:

The problem
I have three different remote controls that I use to control my TV, Tivo and NowTV, and I only use a few buttons on each one of these remotes. What I would like is a minimal, customisable remote control that can replace the other three for most tasks.

Existing solutions
Universal remotes are cheap but mostly crap and have too many buttons. The Logitech Harmony remotes seem the easiest to use, but they're in the £100 range and still have a lot of buttons.

My suggested solution
An open-source hardware remote where you can customise the buttons depending on your needs, for example by milling your own based on a button template. The remote should be easy to program, by pointing existing remotes at infrared receiver on the custom remote.

Possible improvements
- LEDs inside buttons that light up when they can be used (that is, http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/161666687066). For example, if I'm in TV mode, the "back" button isn't going to work, but the up/down buttons should light up so that I can change channels.
- Using bamboo for the enclosure - a piece of 50cm-wide bamboo can be halved to make a semi-circular shape that fits in your hand.

What I've done so far
- Got the infrared diode and receiver working on an Arduino
- Recorded infrared signals from my three different remotes and successfully sent them again
- Cut some bamboo to see if the shape will work
- Drew some crude pictures of what it will look like (attached)

Next steps
- Is anyone at Swansea Hackspace interested in helping me develop this further?
- Would anyone be interested in buying one of these if we make more than one?

Cheers,
Gerrit

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Kind regards,

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