Anywhere Remote - Tivo

Well recently I posted that I had purchased a 32″ LCD tv for my bedroom, and plan on hooking a mac mini to it to run my home automation, I haven’t bought the Mini yet, but I did have to work a little magic to get things how I wanted them. I ran all the wiring in the walls and placed a AC outlet in my walk in closet to power everything; I’m placing the computers and tivo and DVD in the closet so they are out of sight out of mind, well this brought up a problem of using the remote from the bedroom, I had a while back seen a remote repeater system on one of the Tivo websites I go to once and while ( http://www.weaknees.com/rf-remote-details.php ) .

I worked in the audio/video industry for 13 years before doing what I do now, I have played with many different remote systems, but this one was new to me, it consists of a RF receiver that I placed in the closet, this unit recieves the signal from the bedroom using a radio frequency instead of the standard IR (infra red) signal that most remotes use; its a simple install at that part, you plug it in the wall and place a little IR blaster so it can see the front of my Tivo, so far pretty normal for a remote repeater so far, but now is where the magic begins. For the RF transmitter part I have seen things you stick on the remote that pick up the IR signal and the retransmit it using RF, but this is kind of klunky having some box taped onthe front of your remote. This unti does something really cool, it is as simple as replacing one of the batteries in y our remote with their battery/transmitter combo, it fits either AA or AAA remotes (covers everything I have seen) and thats all there is to it, now your remote will work anywhere within 100′ of the receiver, amazing…. next I’ll get a nice universal remote to be able to run all of my units from one simple remote. Over at http://www.livingwithmac.com it has been recomended to use a Harmony remote so I will check into that. the “Anywhere Remote” device allows multiple IR blaster so it can control all of my devices, it also allows you to use more that one of the battery RF transmitters so multiple remotes can be transmited to the receiver.

I have been an electronics buff for my whole life, I have a degree in electronics, I have been an audio buff for may years and as I stated worked in the audio video industry for many years, this thing is somewhat a mystery to me how it works, the idea of IR to RF is no big deal, very simple, but how the magic battery gets the IR signal while being hidden away in the battery compartment is beyond me, I plan on looking up the patents to see if they list how it works, somehow the transmitter is getting the IR signal; it looks to be a solid unit that doesn’t have any kind of window or anything to let the IR signal in not to mention that the battery compartments on most remotes are fairly sealed of (light wise) from the IR sender in the remote, so I am to assume that it gets some type of modulation from the DC current that the batteries are supplying. I will post more on this as I get it figured out. For now all I can say is this is one of the slickest remote extender/repeaters I have ever seen.

I am still looking for a decent either RF or bluetooth or even IR keyboard that has a trackpad on it, something I can hook to both a media center PC and a Mac Mini that will be in the closet also (we all knew mac users are in the closet so i’ll put the mini in the closet too..lol..) I was tinking that I’ll have to use a IR wireless keyboard and place its receiver in the bedroom and wire it through a KVM to switch the keyboard between the PC and the Mac, this will allow me to use either computer on the 32″ display hanging on the wall, I have had the PC and my laptop hooked to this monitor and it look awesome, I can’t wait to get it all rolling.