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Turn your phone into an universal remote control

Pubblicato da jumpjack su 10 Giugno 2008

This short tutorial shows how to turn almost any cellphone into an universal IR remote control.

CHECK GoogleCode page for downloads and updates

Old post (with detailed instructions about how to build hardware)

How I did it (and credits)

Why it should work also on non-stereo cellphones (but it does not?!?) (see also excel file)

Other uses for old phones
Available patents (not mine):
Infrared generator from audio signal source
IR receiver using IR transmitting diode

Requirements:

- a cellphone with stereo audio output (audio left , audio right , ground) or symmetrical audio output (audio+, audio-)

- 2 IR leds

- a wired headset compatible with the phone

- a PC with audio card

- an audio recording software on PC

- an audio editing software for PC or an audio sinthesyzer software for PC

This project does not depend on O.S. used: you just need ANY computer capable of recording audio and create audio files from scratch. Linux, Windows, MacOSX or whatelse makes NO difference.

Please look at this post to know how to:
- build an IR receiver for the PC
- sample a remote control
- (create a WAV file using Audacity program) (not strictly needed: this article describe an alternate method).

Once you sampled all needed buttons of your remote, it’s just a matter of building a proper WAV file for each one of them. If you don’t want to use Audacity to do it manually, you can use SOX program: it creates pieces of “raw” audio file, which joined together build up the final WAV file.

Here you find example scripts (for DOS/Windows environment) which build a WAV file based on binary description of the remote signal. You have to setup the unizeri.bat file to have it matching the sampled signal. Then call create.bat specifying as parameter the “creator file” (unizeri-raw, or unizeri-tv,… ), the final WAV file (testbutton) and the number of additional times you want the command is repeated (at least ONE occurrence will be alway created):

create unizeri-raw testbutton 4

(no extensions required for filenames) (NOTE: script must be run inside SOX folder).

This will result in a tesbutton.wav file which, played on a phone (or on PC, or on any audio capable device), equipped with audio-to-IR converter, to control your device.

The audio-to-IR converter:

It is just a couple of LEDs connected in oppopsite ways to “audio output left” and “audio output right” (for normal phones) or to “audio+” and “ground” (for phones with symetrical audio output like nokia 6680). In symetricl ouptu, Left- and Right- must be connected together (see below).

Audio-to-IR converter:

Connections for nokia 6680:

(10 Ohm resistor not strictly needed)

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Study about physics/optical phoenomena involved in this project:

Excel file - how to play a 38000 Hz “sound” through a 20000Hz-capable audio device

Big image summarizing Excel data

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Forums about Ledrem:

Italian:

Nokioteca

PLC Forum

PC Tuner

HW upgrade

Planetmobile

English:

IP-mart.com

Hackint0sh

Pubblicato su Infrarossi, Sviluppo, Symbian, hardware | 2 Commenti »

What can you do with an old cellphone?

Pubblicato da jumpjack su 7 Giugno 2008

An old nokia series 60 phone (like nokia 6600 or 6680) costs around 50$. But it has:

- bluetooth support

- infrared support

- fotocamera

- video remote surveillance

- internet access

- SMS support

- USB support

- Python support (pys60)

Mix all these things together, and you could obtain:

1) 3d foto/video (*)

2) touchscreen (wiimote-like)

3) remote video surveillance

4) Add an IR led to your recipe, and you obtain an SMS-controlled remote-control.

5) Add a bluetooth GPS receiver and you have a GPS antitheft.

…any more ideas?

It’s just a matter of writing proper software!

(*) To make 3d photo of moving subjects, or 3d video, you need two separate but synchronized cameras. Bluetooth conection should allow such a synchronization, in such a way that when you shoot a photo on one phone, at the same time it’s shot on the other phone.

Pubblicato su GPS, Infrarossi, Symbian, hardware, intuizioni | Non ci sono Commenti »

World’s cheapest remote control replicator: just 1$ !

Pubblicato da jumpjack su 20 Maggio 2008

===>> New updated post

DOWNLOAD Windows software

You won’t need anymore complex circuits & complex software to sample commands from your remote control and to replicate them; all you need is just two standard IR led, which you can afford for about 0.50 $ each, or maybe you can extract from a couple of old remotes.

This method was tested with a VIA AC’97 audio card; please report if you have any success with different cards.

What you need:

- 1 spare headphone cable (0$ if you already have it, 10$ if you need a new one)

- 2 IR led (0$ if you have a couple of old remote controls, 1$ if you need to buy them)

- audio recorder software, e.g. Audacity, opensource and multiplatform (Windows/Linux)

What to do:

1) Build the receiver

2) Sample the remote control

3) Edit the resulting waveforms

4) Build the emitter

5) “Replay” the waveforms:

a - Plug the emitter into HEADPHONE output of your audio card

b - Position the two leds just in front of your device

c - Press PLAY in Audacity: your device should react to the command you previously sampled.

NOTES:

1 - For unknown reason, playing the resulting signal in Audacity works fine to control my device; but if I save the signal into a WAV file and reload it in Audacity, playing it results in… nothing! Any explanation for this?!? FIXED: it was due to wrong carrier frequency of rebuilt signal, which must be HALF of the needed carrier frequency! (19 KHz for 38 KHz, 18 KHz for 36 KHz…)

2 - You can’t save the signal in OGG or MP3 format, because this format distort the original signal

Please report results of your experiments! Good or bad, please just report and share! ;-)

References and credits at bottom of this page:
http://www.planetmobile.it/jumpjack/LedRem/
Available patents (not mine):
Infrared generator from audio signal source
IR receiver using IR transmitting diode

Pubblicato su Infrarossi, hardware | Contrassegnato da tag: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Commenti »