Sam Trenholme's webpage
This article was posted to the Usenet group alt.hackers in 1995; any technical information is probably outdated.

AV HAck


Article: 7355 of alt.hackers
From: avax@tiac.net (Jay)
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
Subject: AV HAck
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 1995 20:54:14 LOCAL
Organization: The Internet Access Company
Lines: 35
Approved: Trumpet for Windows [Version 1.0 Rev B final beta #4]
Message-ID: avax.5.011CEF30@tiac.net
NNTP-Posting-Host: avax.tiac.net
Status: RO

Well here is my fisrt attempt to post a message on any news group.
It might as well be a hack.

OBhack:
	I wanted to add speech control to my condo.
So I bought a speach recognition card for my PC. Next I
purchased an IR remote with a serial interface. The interface
was intened to be used for updating the firmware
in the remote to keep it's library of codes current.

I wrote a program that will send the hex codes that emulate
strikingthe keys on the remote.

I had speech card TSR make command line calls to the the IR
program. It fired the remote which was pointed to a IR repeater
transmitter that converted to RF. The receiver (positioned in
a fashion that can see the TV and Stereo) converts back to IR and
triggers the appliance to cange channels or whatever.

I did the same thing only thru the printer port to send X-10
commands via a TC something or another adapter that plugs into
the AC outlet. Now I have control over lights, fans, etc..

The problem was that you had to wear the headset. So I tried
putting in an omni directional microphone to pick up the commands
spoken from anywhere in theroom. The problem was during normal
conversation that the computer would think it was getting commends
and would start turning lights on and off, changing tv stations,
etc...

So the speech card had an optional foot switch to enable
recognition. I bypassed the foot switch and replaced it
with a keycain remote (like car alarms use) to enable
recognition only when I wanted to issue a command.




Back to index