The makershed.com website sells the TV-B-Gon, which apparently is a microcontroller that emulates many remote controls by putting out the many IR codes for turning a TV off.\u00a0 I could take it into a restaurant and turn off the nearby TV so that we can eat without having to scream at each other.\u00a0 This is a great idea, if you can get away with it, and not have someone discover how you are doing it.<\/p>\n
I thought about it and came up with a plausible way of hiding it.\u00a0 I would try to get the circuit board to be as slim as possible, less than 8 millimeters, but it can be long, 50 to 100 mm or more. The actual size of the board would be determined by the following item.<\/p>\n
I would try to obtain a replica of Harry Potter’s wizard’s wand.\u00a0 If I could not, then I might try to make one out of a thick twig from a tree, or a piece of wood such as a dowel.\u00a0 Then I would hollow out the dowel on one end, deep enough to hold the circuit board and some button cells.\u00a0 I would also put a reed switch inside as the of\/off switch.\u00a0 I would have to use a magnetic ring to turn it on.<\/p>\n
I have thought about the use of button cells, and how well they would work and how long they would last.\u00a0 IR LEDs take a lot of current, so the button cells might not be able to supply enough current.\u00a0\u00a0 I think a good solution is to connect 1 or more 1 Farad supercapacitors across the button cells.\u00a0 As the current exceeds the cells’ capabilities, the 1 F caps would discharge and supply the high peak current needed to keep the circuit running.\u00a0 Then when it’s off, the button cells would charge up the 1 F caps and it would be ready to go again.<\/p>\n
I went online and checked the prices of replica Wizard wands.\u00a0 The ones I saw were in the price range or $30 to $50, and were deemed to be replicas of Harry Potter characters.\u00a0 I really don’t need to have a real replica, I just need it to look like a real wizard’s wand.\u00a0 I may try to find a picture of a wand, and go from there and make my own.<\/p>\n
While\u00a0 I was searching I came across this wand<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 It’s a Kymera remote control wand, with thirteen gestures.\u00a0 It can learn 13 different controls by pointing it at a remote control.\u00a0 It sells for $75 on Amazon.\u00a0 I really didn’t want to spend that much, and besides I don’t think it could learn the sequence from the TV-B-Gon.<\/p>\n I found a wand that lights up and makes noise for $4.88, which is very inexpensive and it probably has a place for batteries and a LED and circuit board.\u00a0 At that low price, I think I’m going to buy two so I can tear one apart and find out how it’s made and see if I can change it to something like the TV-B-Gon.\u00a0 Then I found another one that looks the same, and it’s only $2.95.\u00a0\u00a0 I may try one of each.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The makershed.com website sells the TV-B-Gon, which apparently is a microcontroller that emulates many remote controls by putting out the many IR codes for turning a TV off.\u00a0 I could take it into a restaurant and turn off the nearby TV so that we can eat without having to scream at each other.\u00a0 This is <\/p>\n (Read More…)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-optics-and-light","category-other-off-topic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8919"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8938,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8919\/revisions\/8938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}