For some time (actually several years), I’ve been looking for what I consider to be the ultimate universal remote control. So far I haven’t found any.
After some thinking, I came to the conclusion to try and make my own. After some research, I’ve decided to try and “transform” a iPod Touch into a universal remote control.
This is the main parts of the project:
iPod Touch
This part of the project is the software on my iPod that is going to control and send IR codes. For this I need to jailbreak a iPod Touch to get serial i/o access (if only Apple could allow developers serial access to access external devices).
For version 1.0 I’m thinking about these features:
- XML Parser
- Serial I/O
- A basic UI with some icons and sub-menus to control the devices. All this is to be read from a xml config file, including IR codes.
- Handshake code to talk to my microcontroller
- Code to send different IR codes to my microcontroller
- Battery status?
- A home made iPodserial cable
Microcontroller:
The microcontroller is going to consist of the following parts:
- AVR 8Bit Microcontroller with picoPower technology (I want max duration from my battery)
- A Serial port
- An IR Transmitter
- Battery
- Breadboard or something to assemble it all on
Microcontroller code
To begin with, this is going to be written in C if possible. First I want to make a “proof-of-concept” code to transmit some hardcoded IR codes to make sure I can get this to work. Afterwards the remaining code will be implemented. So the main part of the code will be:
- Serial interface
- IR Interface
- Main loop that listens on the serial interface. If it recieves a valid IR code (determined by SOM and EOM), it will send it out the IR transmitter, and then send back an ‘ok’ signal.
- Enter power-save mode after 20 seconds, with an interrupt on the serial interface to wake on data
- Handshake and possibly battery status code
If all this goes according to plan, I’m looking to add more functionality like:
- Bluetooth support (mainly to controll my PS3)
- WiFi support (to control lights and other stuff that uses WiFi)
- Menu editor
Unfortunately I don’t got too much spare time now, so to begin with I’m going to play around with the iPod/iPhone SDK and make some basic UI and stuff to see what I can do.
Well, I’ll keep you posted, but it’ll probably be a while until next update…
