TV-B-Gone clones

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.