TV-B-Gone is pure subversive fun. If you don’t know it, it was invented by Mitch Altman and it is a universal TV remote control with a single button, the power button. You can only switch TVs off. No longer dumb advertisements everywhere you go. Just switch them off. Extra portions of fun in a MediaMarkt.
Just another fine device, well suited for DIY.
The device seems to sell real well. You can get it everywhere. Some time ago, Mitch and Lady Ada teamed up to build an open source version of the TV-B-Gone. That means the circuit and the board layout can be downloaded and you can build your own TV-B-Gone, based on the published circuit.
How does it work?
The small microcontroller on the device has stored all shut down codes of the most known TV sets. If you hit the button it plays simply every shut down code it knows. The transistors are used to drive a stronger current through the IR-LEDs. The latest TV-B-Gone kit should have a range of about 50 meters.
Parts
- ATtiny85v-10-PU microcontroller, 8kB flash memory
- ceramic oscillator, 8MHz
- 4 x IR-LEDs, wavelength: 940nm
- 4 x transistors, 2N3904
- 4 x resistors, 47R
- resistor, 1k
- red LED
- button
- capacitor 0,1u
- capacitor 100u
- battery holder
A detailed list of parts can be found at Lady Ada’s TV-B-Gone page. The recommended Everlight IR-LEDs are a bit hard to find at where I live, so I replaced them with Siemens LD271 and they work perfectly.
Assembling
I built two version, a normal sized one and a smaller one. The normal sized one uses two AA batteries just like the original kit. The smaller one uses only a single AA cell but uses a DC-to-DC step-up-converter and runs on 5V. 5 volts are fine with the controller but may be a bit much for the IR-LEDs. Until now they are working fine.
Links
- TV-B-Gone, Mitch Altman’s site
- TV-B-Gone as kit, Lady Ada
- TV-B-Gone forum, also at Lady Ada’s site
- TV-B-Gone schematic
- Firmware including europeanTV codes
More at Flickr.
| www.flickr.com
|
Del.icio.us
Digg
9 responses so far ↓
1 Raymond // Feb 20, 2008 at 08:37
Is that a 555 Timer?
2 Alex // Feb 20, 2008 at 08:51
No, it’s an ATtiny85, a small microcontroller.
3 Kelvin’s Blog » TV-B-Gone clone // Feb 20, 2008 at 13:46
[...] TV-B-Gone Clones on Tinkerlog -Link [...]
4 Electronics-Lab.com Blog » Blog Archive » TV-B-Gone clone // Feb 20, 2008 at 20:12
[...] TV-B-Gone clone - [Link] [...]
5 Clones de TV-B-Gone at Gambiarra! // Mar 11, 2008 at 14:18
[...] projeto é comercial, mas surgiram clones por aÃ. Um deles, de autoria da Lady Ada, é discutido no Tinkerlog e é completamente open [...]
6 qwerty // Aug 8, 2008 at 16:04
Will a 555 work? I dont know how to program chips.
7 ericwertz // Aug 10, 2008 at 00:04
> Will a 555 work? I dont know how to program chips.
No, just like you can’t make a radio out of just an oscillator.
Timing is only part of the problem, you also need some control functions.
8 peps // Feb 24, 2009 at 19:06
is there a .sch file for your 2 IR-LEDs clone?
9 Alex // Feb 24, 2009 at 20:04
No, but you can take a look at the schematic on Lady Ada’s site and remove the superfluous parts. The 2 IR-LED version uses only two transistors.
Leave a Comment