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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."
For only the cost of a PocketPC, iPod, and Griffin IR gadget you too can iPod your Slashdot! To be fair, you might not have to pay the $17 for the IR gadget from Griffen... You could just buy a kit from Radio Shack and DIY for $5 less!
This isn't a "cool hack" or even "news for nerds". This is incredibly lame, backwards, and expensive. Why bother to use all these devices when you could just use a $10 or less Universal Remote from Walmart with a lot less futzing?
A cool hack would be controlling your iPod via a $10 universal remote from Walmart.
It's a pad of paper. To turn it into a remote control, all you need is the pad of paper (of course) and a remote control.
However,
Now maybe my family won't fight for the remote so much, especially when I tell them that one wrong move turns it into a $300+ paperweight!
That would cause all kinds of fun at your local sports bar.
sulli
RTFJ.
Hey, that's cool. And with this, you can turn your iPod into a car.
I guess "cool hack" is in the eyes of the beholder. To me, this sounds like a kludge (the Pocket PC, gadget and iPod). And all for what? That tired old, barely useful remote control "hack."
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
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.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
I'm not interested in the whole PocketPC process, but the fact that you can do it is awesome.
Slap together an IR "microphone" and do it yourself if you don't like their process. I don't plan on rushing out to buy a PocketPC to try this, but that it can be done is worth noting.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
1. Buy iPod.
2. But $10 universal remote from WalMart.
3. Use corner of universal remote to push iPod buttons and rotate volume dealy-widget.
So much more cool and high tech than using your primitve old finger.
--- Ban humanity.
Is that you can, apparently, just hook up an infrared transceiver to a standard 3.5mm earphone/microphone plug..
So really, you only need the infrared-tranceiver-plug and some software to record sound. You sample the "sound" that comes from the tranceiver, then plug it into lineout and play back..
Of course, you can also hook up a microphone to your TVs tranceiver, and just play the recorded sounds out loud. Kind of like an old school "clicker" remote control that worked by audio. In fact, you could probably, with enough training, learn how to shriek directly in television-ese!
Captain crunch would approve.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
The remote control perpetually wins the category of "most dropped electronic device in a typical home." Good way to scratch the iPod.
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
A) Connect Pocket PC
B) Connect Other Device
C) Figure Out How to Connect IPOD
D) Write Slashdot Article
It's a neat hack, but it's a neat hack that doesn't require an iPod or a Pocket PC... just a Griffin IR transceiver (or a handmade one, though you're unlikely to be able to make one as cheap and compact) and something to record and play back the 'sound' of the IR.
...
Put the control signals in your ringtone, and turn your TV on by calling your cellphone. Use custom ringtones and call from different phones to change the channel, adjust the volume,
This isn't a "cool hack" or even "news for nerds". This is incredibly lame, backwards, and expensive.
I think someone here doesn't understand what a 'cool hack' is. One of the things that can define a 'cool hack' is going the long way around to make a peice of technology do something that it wasn't originally intended to do, i.e.: installing linux on a dreamcast or connecting a cuecat to amazon.com.
Price never enters into it.
Technoli
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?
It's really quite intuitive.
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.
I think someone here doesn't understand what a 'cool hack' is. One of the things that can define a 'cool hack' is going the long way around to make a peice of technology do something that it wasn't originally intended to do, i.e.: installing linux on a dreamcast or connecting a cuecat to amazon.com.
Installing Linux on a Dreamcast or connecting a CueCat to Amazon.com to link your personal collections (books, DVDs, whatever) is far more exciting than using existing pieces of technology to do something.
This is a piece of PocketPC software that is talking to a Griffin IR gadget which the iPod is controlling. Woofuckinghoo.
It is certainly not "cool" by any stretch of the imagination. All they did was use existing technology through several different hoops to get a simple task accomplished. I can't even fathom how you could place it in the same realm as the CueCat hacks or Linux running on hardware X.
If you take a $10 item, and modify it to replace a $1000 item, that's probably a good hack.
If you take a $1000 item, and modify it to replace a $10 item, that's not a good hack. That's just stupidity.
It takes no cleverness to waste money.
There is much pleasure in useless information.There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
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.
You know what would be REALLY cool? Turn my remote into an iPod. Now there's a mod I could get into.
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.
Does anyone else find it kind of comical that Apple, the company that revolutionized "easy computing", simple interfaces, simple industrial design, etc has become a geek's haven for hacking? OS X with their BSD underpinnings gives the UNIX geeks so much to play with. Newton diehards are hacking the crap out of it to keep it "alive". People are hacking iPods in so many different ways. All this for a company that takes pride in their "we make computing easy for you". I wonder what will be hacked next. Guesses anyone?
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
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.
Reminds me of a Dale Gribble quote from King of the Hill:
"If you want, I can show you how to make a bomb out of a roll of toilet paper and a stick of dynamite."
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...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
just teach a frog to sing "stairway to heaven" and take that to the sports bar.
the problem is getting a brace of crickets to play guitars for realism.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Ok that's cool but when are you going to turn an universal remote controller in an iPod? THAT would impress me!
Jesus fucking christ, people. You're like a bunch of five-year-olds. Huhuhuhuh... let's read the misleading summary and make fun of it!
The hack is to record the IR pulses as sound files and play them back with an IR LED connected to the iPod's headphone port. It's a really smart and cool idea but I guess you guys wouldn't know one of those if it bit you on your collective ass.
The reason the article calls for a Pocket PC is because it can read ifrared signals and pass those to the headphone jack for output. If you just piped the IR port on a computer to the sound out device, you'd have the same solution, minus the Pocket PC. This is NOT like the stupid-ass iPod to iPod transfer "hack" from a while ago. This is an actual neat concept that I'd wish you'd stop shitting all over with your ignorance.
Thank you.
The most expensive universal remotes seem to cost $250 - and I bet they work a lot better than this
There are a number of remotes (well, the manufacturers refer to them as Home Automation Control Systems) costing WAAAAAY more than that. A friend of mine dumped $5,000 on Crestron automation.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
I figured out a way to turn an Airport Extreme station into a dirt hauling and delivery system! You'll also need a dump truck, some super glue, and a back hoe!
My next project involves making a blow torch into a toaster. Also required are an X-Y plotter, some hardware cloth, and a surveyor's transit.
I'd like to tell more, but I have to go to the can. Normally, I'd use toilet paper, but I figured out this thing with a power drill and a corn cob...
You could use just about any device that can record and play back a sound wave to do this. I think now they mass-produce chips that let you record a short soundclip and play it back. You could use one of these (or any mp3 player, or even casette player, etc) to imitate a sequence of button-presses from multiple remotes. This could be useful for someone who just wants to watch a DVD rather than juggleing remotes so he can get to the correct screen.