Home Hacking Projects for Geeks

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Part II: Home Entertainment

16. Click the Learn Event button to associate a remote button with the

command.

17. Click the button on your remote that you want to associate with the

command. (The Play button is an obvious choice.)

18. To prevent multiple signals from being processed, select the Event

String entry below the Play command and enter an antirepeat wait time

of 500 milliseconds.

19. Test the command with your remote.

You can use the same technique to process the remaining functions like

Stop, Rewind, Pause, and so on. Because Girder uses a binary file format

for its configurations, a listing cannot be included in this book; however,

you can download a command group from the web site at http://www.

homehacking.com.

Wrapping Up

Controlling your PC via an infrared remote allows you to seamlessly inte-

grate PC functions with everyday life. Music and video applications are a

great start. Tell the other people in your household that anything they can

imagine is probably configurable, and be open to their suggestions about

improving whatever you come up with. Sometimes what makes perfect

sense to a geek can be utterly meaningless to “regular” people.

Extensions

Now that you have a remote-controlled PC, there’s virtually no limit to

what you can do. If you have a home theater PC (see the project Building an

HTPC) and an X10 computer ...