The Ultimate Universal Remote Control

TheMayor writes: "CNN.com has a story about how researchers at Maya Designs, Inc. and Carnegie-Mellon are trying to come up with a remote control that controls everything in your house. From the TV to the blender, these guys want to make an all-in-one piece to turn everything on and off. Now I wonder if I could remotely flush my toliet?"

The ideal geek remote control on a shoestring.

[Rude Turnip]

There are four remotes in my living room: TV, VCR, cable box and DVD player. Most functions are handled by the cable box remote, which has some universal remote functions. However, there are still some device-specific functions that require each remote control to be present. For the technology-oriented individual, more buttons is clearly more of a status symbol than one. So what's the ideal solution?

**Turn all your remote controls into a huge remote keyboard!**

All you have to do is get a short piece of plywood or balsa wood and velcro the remotes to each, placed tightly together. The end product will be more than a remote control, it will be an audio/video command console!

Re:Security Nightmare.

[Anonymous Coward]

Security nightmare? Why? Every cheap cordless phone can be highjacked to make free phone calls. But it happens to no one. When you pay with your credit card on your cordless phone, anyone in your neighborhood can steal your number. Yet do you see a red warning on your credit card "do not read your number on a cordless phone"? And you're worried about some neighbor flushing your toilet remotely?

ConnectedTV integrates a tv guide with the remote

[ConnectedTV]

ConnectedTV [connected.tv] for the Palm takes the universal remote control idea a few steps further, combining a personalized television guide with an automatic universal remote control. So you never have to press in channel numbers: instead you just touch the name of the show you want to watch, and ConnectedTV sends the numbers to change the channel.

"Touch Tuning" with ConnectedTV is like speed dialing with the remote: you can forget all those channel numbers, and easily operate ConnectedTV with one hand. ConnectedTV features "pie menus [piemenu.com]," which enable you to quickly and reliably select several different commands from one button by stroking in different directions.

ConnectedTV is indispensable if you have hundreds of digital cable or satellite channels, because you can filter out the channels and shows you don't like, and mark your favorites so they're easy to find whenever they're on.

[e-mail] [mailto]

High intesity

[Mulletproof]

I know they sell high intensity IR LEDs similar to the ultra blue/white ones. I wonder if you could just wire em into a regular univeral remote and let it rip?

Re:The one remote control I'd *really* like to see

[ShooterNeo]

That happened in a Tom Clancy book... This guy was sitting in his apartment and suddenly the T.V. started changing channels....

Little did he know it was due to the infrared laser guiding the hellfire into his window...