a blog by Peter Leonard
I was at Pumping Station One, a Chicago hackerspace, last night to build a small Arduino-based device. Though the Arduino chipset can be reprogrammed to do a variety of things (blink lights, spin motors, make beeps), this particular device will eventually turn into a home-built TV-B-Gone, a gadget invented by Mitch Altman to emit “OFF” codes in as many infrared control languages as possible. Here, Mitch holds up a version of the device midway through its construction:
Though of course the remotes that come with televisions don’t contain anything like sophisticated Arduino-based circuitry, all they have to do is work with one particular model. TV-B-Gone devices need to be updated to reflect an ever-changing mix of IR codes, plus possibly do other things like lower volume. Thus the re-programmable microcomputer inside:
