Laptop IR Port As A Learning Remote?

JWhitlock asks: "My wife recently purchased a Handspring Visor. There is a program that turns your Palm-based handheld into a learning remote control, which seems like a cool (and possibly useful) application, since I have at least four remotes, and digital cable's navigation system is nearly worthless. One problem - she won't let me install it. She's under the illusion that her toy is just for productivity, or that I'll steal it if I play with it too much. In any case, I do have a laptop with an Infrared port to play with, but there appears to be no software out there that uses it. Is this because it's not technically feasible, or has no one else thought of it?"

Sure it's possible

[XneznJuber]

So long as the port is IRDA it's *possible*. I don't know of any software that does it... i guess the logic there would be that even many large remote controls would be less obtrusive than a laptop.

By the way, I've tried a couple different remote control programs on my Visor Deluxe, and I've found that the range is very limited. There is however a reasonably priced springboard module that is just a hardware souped up version of OmniRemote

IRDA Ports

[Why Should I]

The software side of these things is pretty cool. It's basically like an infrared recorder that you use to record certain functions on and then associate them with certain buttons. They have some really cool skins too.

I did find one problem however.

The range on these things is shocking, plus the IRDA ports usually put out a direct beam (for use with other IRDA ports within a line of sight of the port). most conventional remotes put out disperesed beams (say 30 or 40 degrees) which are a lot more intense than the IRDA ports of the handhelds.

Like I said the software side is pretty cool, but the range limitations pretty much render the handhelds PCs being used as remote controls redundant.

it may be *possible*, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an IrDA port on my own laptop, and was looking for the same thing myself. I found plenty of software to turn my PC into a *receiver*, but nothing that would let me transmit.

I did some further checking, and from what I could gather while technically it may be within the realm of the IrDA port to emit IR signals to devices, it's difficult if not impossible for the software side to match the various signals. (think plugging a phone directly into the tx/rx lines of a serial port.. while in theory you could mangle the software enough to modulate signals, it just isn't really feasable -- NO, im not talking about winmodems)

I did find one or two hacks that claimed to work (by stuffing characters out the IrDA port in some weird mode), but required DOS. I run Win2K on my laptop, and wasn't about to reinstall OSes just for the sake of a remote controller.

There ARE projects out there that will plug into a serial port, and do exactly what you want. Range can get upwards of 60 feet with one of those suckers, and if you're handy I'm sure it'd be easier to make it even longer. They require soldiering and hacking it together yourself, though.

Check google for "infrared remote controls"

How about the reverse?

[lythander]

Are there programs (and adapters for non-laptops) that let you use a remote control to send commands to your computer? Say to control audio or video playback. Please don't tell me about wireless keyboards or mice -- I'm talking standard remotes.

4 automation, maybe. 4 remote replacement, nope.

[Kris_J]

Unless you're considering a major home automation solution, using anything other than the purpose-built remotes that came with your devices is a waste of time. I've used several different learning and universal remote controls and they all lack the ability to do some key feature that the original remote is needed for. They're toys that don't even make it from christmas to new year's.

Check this software out

[dcigary]

I downloaded this a few years ago and played around with it. It does work on Win98 (what I had loaded on the laptop) regardless of what they say.

http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA005810/remocon/re mocone.htm

From what I remember, it "worked"....sorta. Remember that a laptop simply doesn't have the IR output power that your handheld remote has. I would have to put the laptop right next to the TV to get it to work, which, of course, defeats the purpose of a remote control... :)

If you're interested in a consumer-type product that will learn all your remotes and is sorta like a HandSpring device, check out:

http://www.pronto.philips.com/

A buddy of mine has one of these and it's actually pretty slick!

Re:How about the reverse?

[Llama Keeper]

I have a "um" "cough" "cough" Packard Bell "cringe" wireless remote control that plugs into a serial port (came with a TV card) that a friend and I hacked to work with my dedicated MP3 box. I am not sure where the thing actually came from except it was with an exceptionally crappy TV card.

Different Frequencies

[mini me]

From what I understand IrDA runs at a different frequency then a remote control uses and not every IrDA port can run at the frequencies you'd want.

I've tried two different laptops with no success, one would pick up a remote signal but all of the signals were the same no matter what button was pressed and I've had no luck with my new laptop (but I haven't tried real hard). Another option you could look into is building your own IR port, I've seen the specs around the net and all it does is connect to your serial port.

I think this is a good idea and it would be nice the other way to what the poster suggested. If you could send a remote signal to your computer you could control your mp3 player, or even anything else.

Reminds me...

[cr0sh]

Back in 1992 I was poor, and I wanted to set up a way to control my VCR (in the living room) from my bedroom in the back of my apartment. Lacking the funds to buy a remote extender, I built a cheesy circuit composed of a matched IR NPN phototransistor/LED pair from RatShack, a resistor (1K? Can't remember), a 9 volt battery and some speaker wire.

Basically, the positive terminal of the battery was hooked to the resistor, then the resistor to the collector of the IR transistor, the emmitter to one side of one end of the speaker wire, the other side to ground. The LED was connected to the other end.

What I had then was a circuit that given the input on one side, would "flash" the LED on the other side at the same rate. It didn't work very well - I had to place the remote nearly against the phototransistor, and the LED next to the TV's detector.

However, something similar could be built for a laptop, and housed inside a 25 pin D-Sub connector for the parallel port. Both the phototransistor and the LED would have to be housed in the connector, facing out - with a baffle between them. Code could then be written to allow polling of the port, to "sample" the IR data stream from the remote, analyse it, and store it. More code could be used to "play back" the samples through the LED to activate the TV or whatnot.

There are kits out there just for this, but rolling your own should be a lot cheaper, and maybe more fun.

Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!

HP48G

[arete]

Range is usually poor. The HP48G (and GX, and possibly others) is a calculator made by HP which should cost less than $100 now. It was $125 or so, new, in 1995... It has an IR port. They can talk to each other a few feet away. Shareware program to run your TV. Serial connection costs $20 (the cable) can run as an X,Y, or Zmodem server...

anyway it worked to something like 5', and someone I knew built a lense setup that made it more reasonable... 15 or 20 or so. As I recall.

Of course, it's been a week, no one's going to read this.

Re:Check this software out

[barfy]

Ok, you had me going... but... This is FOUR HUNDRED FREAKIN dollars... I can buy 2 handspring visors for the price of one of these, and I get MORE than a remote, I get a backup...

RE: Philips Pronto

[dcigary]

Yes, true, they are expensive. (That's why I don't own one yet!)

Apparently early next year Philips is going to release a new version that has twice the memory for half the cost. Should be interesting to see what it does to the price of this model. They're also going to release a color version of the remote as well.

Linux Infrared Remote Control

[cerulean]

I remebered that a friend of mine had ported [jtan.com] this thing to Windows:

LIRC- Linux Infrared Remote Control [lirc.org]

"LIRC is a package that allows you to decode and send infra-red signals of many (but not all) commonly used remote controls. "

According to the FAQ [lirc.org], there is a driver for laptop IrDA ports in the CVS for the project.

Generally, no.

[RomulusNR]

I remember wanting to do the exact same thing with my ThinkPad about a year or two ago (wow, that thing is that old???)

I did a fair amount of Google research and downloaded a few apps, none of which worked. I also did a Deja search, and learned that basically, with the exception of certain hardware (like HP Vectras I believe), PC IR ports are not suitable for emulating remote controls because the timing of the IR signals are very rigid, since your laptop's IR port is meant to function as a serial port, which has a certain (albeit selectable) frequency. OTOH remote controls can transmit at any frequency they want.

Initially I tried to perform the emulation in a poor-man's way: I set the IR port to act as COM2, then used Terminal (I think it was Terminal, pulled off an old WFW3.11 dist), and set Terminal to listen to COM2. Then I grabbed my RCA remote, set it right in front of the laptop IR port, and started hitting buttons.

Well, that made characters display in the Terminal window, so the laptop's port saw *something*, which was promising, But I also noticed that the characters displayed were not quite consistent. Which means to me, either there is IR interference coming from somewhere, or that the frequencies are out of sync just enough that I'm missing parts of the signal. Alas, I gave up after my attempts to copy the characters and paste them back into the COM2 terminal, with the IR port six inches from my VCR's LED window, caused nothing to happen.

I had much better success with some of the apps for the Palm; I have a Palm IIIe and I forget what the app was called but it was from a Japanese source. Unfortunately the range of the Palm's IR port is less than even that of my ThinkPad, and after all Palm's IR is only meant for ease of communication between two very mobile devices which are temporarily and willfully near each other (one benefit being, I guess, that the guy on the other end of the subway can't possibly hack your Palm). One (shareware) app I found did mention that the distributor built and sold IR booster devices which connected to the HotSync port and had its own AA power source, giving it a range similar to remote devices. Honestly I don't know why Palm's IR port is compatible with remote controls and laptops' aren't; perhaps either the Palm's port is more flexibly controllable, or the Palm uses the same IR technology as remote controls because it's cheaper.

As it is, the only use I can envision for the Palm's factory IR capabilities in remote control is to replace your VCRPlus+... which costs about a fifth as much as your Palm and is obsolete anyway.

Re:4 automation, maybe. 4 remote replacement, nope

[plover]

Actually, OneForAll makes some very nice replacements that have almost complete functionality. See http://www.hifi-remote.com/ofa/ [hifi-remote.com] for some really good info, and lots of codes to make them do what you need.

And for remote purposes, I've been a mostly happy user of Pacific NeoTek's OmniRemote [pacificneotek.com] on both a Palm Professional and a Handspring Visor Deluxe (the 2MB Handsprings are now available at Target for $149, btw, not a bad price for a universal remote.)

However, to answer your original question, I've not found ANY IrDA software for the PC that will operate a remote, and I've been looking for a long time... Most everybody needs you to add a chunk of external hardware on a serial (or parallel) port.

John

Re:Linux Infrared Remote Control

[SEWilco]

There are serial IR interfaces which do operate in the remote-control frequencies, and LIRC can work with them (at least some of them). Or you can build your own interface.

Completely different hardware AFAIK

[flikx]

There's a good explaination as to why the laptop IR ports have much less range.. much higher frequency. (I.E. Higher frequency == lower range, and vice-versa). Don't some laptop IR ports push data through as high as 2 Mbits / sec? I know that most hardware looks like a normal serial port when the kernel detects it, meaning that it can at least do 56k... wouldn't remote controll designers design their hardware to operate at lower frequencies in order to get better range?

I never thought instructions to change the channel required 2+ Mbs.. either way, while it may be a cool idea for a fleeting moment, I don't see any good reasons for this sort of thing.


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Re:Sure it's possible

[JWhitlock]

The OmniRemote Springboard Module [pacificneotek.com] seems like the best bet - you get a remote-like IR signal (wide, correct timing, etc), and the ease and programability of a Visor. The more I think about it, this is probably what I really want.

At first, when I saw the module option, I thought "Didn't those go out with the GameBoy?". Well, for one, it appears the GameBoy is still around, and two, this kind of new hardware functionality seems to be a real benefit.

Of course, I'm waiting for the day where everything is seemlessly connected, where I can set up TiVo over a mobile phone to tape a show, then start it up with the Visor when I get home. Oh, and while I'm at it, why not throw away the keys, and unlock the front door with a remote [thinkgeek.com].

Now if only there was a way to excercise by remote...