Status
Concept
What is this?
A strong programmable IR blaster that fits in the Framework Expansion Slot.
Who needs IrDa when you can turn off all the TVs in your vicinity instead?
Why This Post
I’m gauging interest. If there are some other interested minds out there, I will set up a prototype and collect your feedback before doing a small run of devices.
Links
The original TV-B-Gone Kit: GitHub - adafruit/TV-B-Gone-kit: *Pew* *Pew* TV's are toast!
If it will be programmable then are you targeting more than just a tv-b-gone?
Would be nice to have some options other than just tv-b-gone. Like sending mute codes or a series of volume down codes. Would make it much more useful for places where a tv turning off entirely would be likely to be noticed quickly.
@MJ1 I see it from a hardware point of view, there’s already some perfectly good CPUs in the laptop. No need to duplicate that. Just need to provide a low-level interface to send codes.
Another great application for this is controlling home theater components. Ideally in conjunction with a mainboard used as a home theater PC in one of those nifty 3D-printed cases.
In some places no one is even actively watching the TVs. Yet staff may still feel like it has to be on and blaring. The tv exists, so it has to be.
Ever been in a waiting room with a migraine? And staff couldn’t think outside their box if their life depended on it.
I am deaf with only one partially functioning ear and a hearing aid. I can neither identify directions of sound nor can I filter out unwanted sound. Background noise is amplified with everything else, which makes it extremely difficult for me to concentrate and in some cases makes me physically sick. You might enjoy having the tv or music on at dangerous levels but I do not, and I need to protect myself and my own ability to function.
That is still messing with other pepoles stuff, as justified as it may feel to you.
From a technological point I find it a neat idea and should be relatively easily doable but enabling pepole to use it on stuff they don’t own feels a bit iffy.
You try being profoundly deaf in a crowed area and see how you like it then.
I can totally believe that you don’t like it, I don’t like it all that much either.
@Adrian_Joachim I appreciate your concern. This tech will always be judged by how it’s used. Similar how a laptop can both help or hurt other people, based solely on the user of the laptop being benign or black hat hacker.
This said, blasting IR codes etc. is easily blocked with a piece of tape on the receiver of the TV. In case a TV is turned off, it’s easily reversed by sending the same code again.
As for this thread, I’d like to leave it at that and focus on the tech here.
I’ll begin prototyping. I will update here once some progress is ready to show.
years ago laptops used to have built in IR ports that could be used for file transfers. It was slow as hell, (IIRC 1.2mbps if you were lucky and both machines had ports capable of that, most were slower). but I have a pretty hilarious memory of a kid walking in on my then gf and I in the common room and trying to figure out how we were transferring files apparently though the (coincidentally) intertwined power leads on our laptops. He was actually tracing the cables trying to figure it out.
IR data transfer is actually still used today and there are some quite high bandwidth systems around. It’s pretty niche though like auditorium systems and stuff (transmitting audio in different languages to earpieces and such).
And I guess if you stretch the definition far enough some fiber optic connections use ir and are extremely high bandwidth.
A programmable ir blaster like we used to have in phones would be neat, just should not be used on stuff you don’t own. Gotta admit I had some fun when I first got my s4 with the ir blaster XD.
My later gf was blind and this is probably the sort of thing she used for audio description (for people who don’t know, this is basically a spoken word description of what is taking place on screen) at the cinema. I can’t go to the cinema due to the previously mentioned noise issue so I never went with her.
I don’t count fibre optics, only free air. I am aware that fibre optic communication generally uses IR though.
I seem to remember having a HP IPAQ that had an IR port and a ‘universal remote’ program. it never worked.
Might be, most of those systems are rf though, the optical one is still pretty nice but quite neat. There is also lifi, though that seems to be a bit dead on arrival.
The one in the S4 worked very well XD
this was a long time before S anything 
Thankfully my neighbours are not a problem, my home is the one place I’m safe. The issue is in public spaces.
Not sure where @Peter_Schofield you live, but at least in my country the usage of such a device is highly illegal.
I am sorry for your issues, but I don’t think invading other peoples lives is the correct response to your issue.
I’m sorry but what does “highly illegal” mean?
Are there enforcers that shoot you on sight?
There may be levels between legal and shoot on sight, not legal advice though XD.
I think there are questions here both of functional scope and of suitability of the expansion card form factor.
For a TV-B-Gone-like device, with a single or handful of actions (even if each involves sending many different codes), it seems like the expansion card form factor offers only disadvantages over a small handheld device. If the LEDs are in the card, then they’d either:
A more general IrDA card, on the other hand (perhaps with particularly strong transmission), would provide something beyond a TV-B-Gone, and would make more sense for the form factor.
@CGE First of all, thank you for your truly constructive feedback, I welcome it.
You do point out an important fact. While built into the laptop, it could be much more useful as a general IrDa port. Do you happen to know the relevant specs?
As for the IR blaster capability: Adding a small battery as well as a button would make it useful standalone as well as when it’s built in to the laptop.