Home Hacking Projects for Geeks

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In my home theater (and very likely in yours), the simple act of watching

TV requires controlling several separate devices. I need to turn on the TV,

the cable box, and the receiver individually, and ensure that the correct

sources are selected. It was a pain, so I got a programmable universal remote

and mapped all the functions to it. Unfortunately, certain members of my

household couldn’t figure out how to switch modes with the remote. They

seem to have the idea that the Power button should turn everything on at

once, and they get frustrated when they try to change the channel on the

cable box but the TV changes its channel instead because the remote was

set to TV mode. And believe it or not, they can’t imagine that they’re doing

something wrong!

To help these hapless individuals, I tried a remote with the ability to learn

macros. This way I could program the Power button to turn on all the

necessary devices. Sadly, this failed as well, because the remote had to be

held in such a way that all the signals could reach the devices as it chugged

through the macro. My family would prefer to press the button, and then

immediately toss the remote on the couch next to them.

I then considered using a reasonably priced remote that transmits RF sig-

nals to a base station, which in turn retransmits IR signals to my home the-

ater components. This allowed me to p ...