Turn your iPod into a Universal Remote

no_demons writes "Some clever souls over at engadget.com have posted an excellent tutorial in turning your iPod into a IR remote control. You also need a Pocket PC, an IR gadget from Griffin and a bit of patience, but hey, it's still a cool hack."

Comments

Griffin actually produced this for this purpose

[adzoox]

Griffin demoed the PodMate at the 2002 MacWorld Expo. They were controlling a Sony TV and Stereo at their booth with one of these devices. Apple asked them not to develop it further for some reason.

They scrapped the plans and then made it part of their Griffin Mobile division - selling it for the iPaq originally.

DMCA

[bkruiser]

If you publish your IR commands are you violating DMCA? Who will be the first to have a catalogue of IR .mp3 files sued by Matsushita/Sony/JVC for DMCA violation? On the otherhand it could be another way for those companys to make money... charge a dollar per command?

iPod as the "Java Ring" ?

[Ars-Fartsica]

Lots of interesting angles coming out for exploiting a wearable, portable data store. Seems like this was the proposition of the Java Ring, but that assumed too much bandwidth. People still need to carry their data with them until bigger pipes are easily available.

Would be interested to see someone float a thin client based on using the iPod as the user identification/storage component. Lots of ideas come to mind once you assume the iPod is ubiquotous.

The PocketPC is a one time thing

[gotr00t]

Really, all you technically need to _buy_ is the griffin remote thingy, nothing else. The pocketPC is only a one time thing from which you record the signals of the remote. If you had read the whole article, you would find that you could have done this using a computer as well.

There are better things to hack

[John Jorsett]

I can't imagine the combination of boredom and wealth that would lead me to want to do this to an iPod. If you want something useful to hack, reverse engineer a Garmin GPS receiver so that I can modify one to calculate and show the coordinates of the target of a laser range finder. I'd rather use an existing piece of equipment like that instead of having to design and build my own.

IR - Audio

[Jadsky]

This project describes the most interesting part of this hack... converting the IR into a waveform in the first place. That Griffin gadget is fascinating.

The article talks about how you read off the IR codes in the first place, and convert them into usable waveforms. It uses C# targetted for PocketPC. I found the underpinnings of this hack far more interesting than the hack itself.

Hmm

[autopr0n]

Actually, it seems like it works by recording IR signals as audio, and then re-broadcasting by playing the sounds. Actually that's kind of interesting.

But, it would work with any Mp3 player, so it's a little annoying that they focused on the iPod exclusively, when any digital audio player would work.

It would also be a HUGE pain in the ass to actualy use, especialy if you've already got a pocket PC that could do all that already without all the work...