Sure it dosen't exist but why not? I feel that my phone would be 100% complete if it were to just have an IR sensor on it and an app that could make good use out of it.
There could be tabs at the top for different rooms of the house your in, or different houses (ect) you visit with tv's and other equipment you control with a remote. Then other tabs could select if its for a the sat box, dvd, blu ray ect. Setup could be easy too because the codes could be all stored on your device or online and searched out without needing the user manual for the tv/dvd player.
I know there are other things (work arounds) people are either doing, or coming out that connect through wifi or blu tooth and connect either to the player directly or to a device that is mounted in sight of the IR sensors on the tv, but to me that is just a work around, and possibly an expensive one. A simple IR sensor on our phones shouldnt cost a whole lot. And then you could take it anywhere, and use it on any tv, and screw with everyone at the sports bar!
What are your thoughts? And who do we need to pester to get a phone like this to come out? Im sure if htc and motorola and all of the other manufactures started getting 100's of requests hopefully one would release a phone, and if one does it the rest of them would follow.
If you think about it more people would use IR than blu tooth. I know most people just leave theirs turned off. I do use mine often, but most of my firends never turn it on. But EVERYONE changes the channel and watches TV.
I think IRDA is considered old tech. My first winmo phone had an IR port and yes, I had a TV remote app for it. I agree it would be useful to have kept this feature on modern devices as there is still a use for it in this kind of scenario.
Have any solution to remote the TV with current HTC devices ? Any software or apps ?
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I'm sure apple will market it as a feature of the Iphone 4 provided that you tape a remote control on the freely included iphone cover.
On topic: It would be nice, and not knowing much about IR-sensors I can't imagine them taking room/ being really expensive, but I guess demand hasn't been enough for the manufacturers to prioritize it.
It's just a theory of mine, but I have a major hunch that you could synthesize infrared remote control signals on most Android phones with little more hardware than a 1/8" stereo jack, an infrared LED from Radio Shack, and an appropriate current-limiting resistor.
How? 99.9% of consumer electronic IR remotes use PWM to modulate a 30KHz-42KHz signal onto an infrared LED. The audio hardware in an Android phone can go up to 48KHz. All you'd have to do to synthesize the signal is pass the desired infrared waveform to the DAC as if it were audio, and let the amp & LED do the rest. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether you're driving a speaker or illuminating a LED -- all the phone knows is that it's pulsing current onto a pin and changing it up to 48,000 times per second.
There are basically three possible snags:
1) Current draw. There's a limit to how much current you can draw from a DAC before damage is a possibility. You might have to settle for a fairly wimpy LED.
2) Inability to capture/sample. I'm pretty confident you could drive a signal on the stereo jack capable of modulating an infrared LED well enough to be useful. I'm not as confident that stock Android hardware could really pull it off in the other direction. At least, not without a rooted phone and custom kernel. The limiting factor isn't so much the hardware, it's Android itself. Outputting a signal is trivial, because it's basically "load (into ram), point (the DMA controller at it), and trigger (the DMA)". Sample and capture is a LOT harder to bitbang in a multitasking environment where userspace apps can be interrupted without warning at any time, and probably wouldn't work at all if you tried to rely on a hardware codec for the capture.
3) It's not inconceivable that remote control signals are copyrightable (at least, in the aggregate, the way they'd be for a universal remote control). I'm sure it's a patent minefield. A guerrilla online project suitable for MAKE magazine would probably fly below the radar. An app in Android Market would almost certainly be crushed by injunctions within a matter of days by everyone from Sony to companies that sell universal remotes.
Note that I'm explicitly NOT talking about IrDA here... just emulating the remote controls used by consumer electronics gear. IrDA is an entirely different beast. IMHO, IrDA would be impossible to bitbang on an Android phone unless it's rooted and running a custom kernel, and even then probably wouldn't work acceptably (if you gave it enough CPU cycles to work well, the lag it introduced to everything else would drive you to abandon it within a matter of days).
Last edited by Bitbang3r; July 29th, 2010 at 10:34 PM.
^^^^ Yes, I have had the idea that this needs to be a feature on android phones and I did a search to see if anything was in the works. I came across this vid and I loved it. The only problem is it requires additional hardware. I want the phone to be self contained. That app could surely be ported to use an IR sensor installed on the phone.
When I was little I had a watch that had a calculator and a tv remote on it. I think it cost me about $30.
I would be willing to pay an extra $30 for a phone that can change the channels.
Right now I want to know how many people would like this, and I would like to know if anyone has any suggestions on how we can get the phone companies to consider making this. For each of the major phone companies we need to either call or email a number or address (or even send real letters) to them. But we need it to be one that actually gets read and does not end up in the trash.
What are some good contacts for some of the major phone companies? Ones that real people read. Im sure this is a feature many people would actually use so we need to load up their email, po box, and phone lines with requests for a tv remote phone.
^^^^ Yes, I have had the idea that this needs to be a feature on android phones and I did a search to see if anything was in the works. I came across this vid and I loved it. The only problem is it requires additional hardware. I want the phone to be self contained. That app could surely be ported to use an IR sensor installed on the phone.
When I was little I had a watch that had a calculator and a tv remote on it. I think it cost me about $30.
I would be willing to pay an extra $30 for a phone that can change the channels.
Right now I want to know how many people would like this, and I would like to know if anyone has any suggestions on how we can get the phone companies to consider making this. For each of the major phone companies we need to either call or email a number or address (or even send real letters) to them. But we need it to be one that actually gets read and does not end up in the trash.
What are some good contacts for some of the major phone companies? Ones that real people read. Im sure this is a feature many people would actually use so we need to load up their email, po box, and phone lines with requests for a tv remote phone.
Ok where do I to annoy someone with my request for this to be included in the HTC DESIRE TV would sound cool
New HTC phone works as an IR TV remote
would sound cool
