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I bought a Sony Android TV recently, and am not very satisfied with the remote. IR being IR, there are delays between a button-press and the relevant action on the screen.
On the other hand, the Sony remote app for Android is much more responsive, but using an app on a smartphone (unlock, find and start app, look at screen to click correct button) is a lot more cumbersome than using a physical remote (pick remote, feel and find button, press).
Now basic universal remotes are quite cheap, and I thought it shouldn't be too hard hack a regular infrared remote to divert the signals being sent to the IR transmitter, to an Arduino instead, where I could read the incoming signals, and then send them out over wifi like the Android app does. If the prototype works, I could switch to an Arduino Nano or Pro Mini to make the resulting remote a lot more compact, with potentially its own Lithium battery (assuming 2 AA cells are no longer sufficient).
So my questions are:
- Is the Arduino a good choice for such a project, or do I need a more powerful board, like say the Raspberry Pi?
- Would this be easier/simpler using Bluetooth?
- Has this been done before?
- Am I missing important pieces in my design (other than a Wifi module)
- Am I on the right track?
Apologies if this is the wrong forum for such a question.
Rajesh J Advani
Posted 2017-10-27T09:03:13.563
Reputation: 101
4I assure you, any delays between button press and action are not down to the use of IR. It travels at the same speed as normal visible light. – Finbarr – 2017-10-27T09:07:28.083
1I'd suggest using an ESP8266 module. You can program it using arduino IDE and it will handle the wifi part as well. Of course, you still need to figure out the protocols and messages that are being sent by the android app. – Whiskeyjack – 2017-10-27T09:07:35.420
You make things very hard for yourself by going through Bluetooth and/or Wifi as these are data only protocols meaning bits-in bits-out. This all adds overlay and even if you could make it work (which I doubt) will add even more delay. – Bimpelrekkie – 2017-10-27T09:08:55.320
IR being IR, the transmission delays are pretty damn short. If there's a delay, its not in the IR transmit/receive link. Wifi is far slower than straight IR. Something else is seriously messed up if IR is slow. – JRE – 2017-10-27T09:51:55.323
My experience with any IR TV remote (or for any other device) ever, has always been there there is a delay of at least 200-300ms between pressing a button and the TV doing something with it. A bluetooth keyboard is always instant. I agree that both sets of waves operate at the speed of light, but the experience is never the same. – Rajesh J Advani – 2017-10-27T14:10:42.640
I don’t know for sure, but I doubt that the Android app just sends the same bit pattern as IR over WiFi. More likely it uses an entirely different command protocol. Unless you have access to the WiFi application protocol or can sniff and reverse engineer it, your project is pretty much impossible. – DoxyLover – 2017-10-27T18:19:55.860
Thankfully, the source code for creating an Android app is open source. https://github.com/NineWorlds/google-tv-remote But these comments have made me doubt whether I have the problem correctly identified.
– Rajesh J Advani – 2017-10-29T05:07:32.613