IR Remote Control Jammer Makes You Lord Of The Livingroom

Bring communications jamming technology into your TV viewing experience by building this infrared LED driver circuit. You’re probably familiar with the TV-B-Gone, which let’s you turn off any television at the touch of a button. But what if you actually want to watch the program that’s currently on the screen when the person with remote-in-hand doesn’t? That’s where this little marvel comes in.

[KipKay’s] IR jammer uses a 555 timer to constantly transmit infrared traffic. The signals it’s sending out don’t correspond to commands the TV (or any other IR remote-controlled device) will respond to. But if the light intensity is strong enough, they will interfere with any signals coming in from a remote or even from a TV-B-Gone. [KipKay] wisely hides this circuit inside of another remote control so that the other couch potatoes you are thwarting won’t get wise to what’s happening. If they want to watch something else they’ll have to get up and walk over to the entertainment center to do something about it, and what’s the chance that’s going to happen?

Don’t miss [KipKay’s] infomercial-esque presentation of this gadget after the break.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW9p_JLYFUE&w=470]

13 thoughts on “IR Remote Control Jammer Makes You Lord Of The Livingroom

  1. It’s like the writers took an 8ft long stick and jabbed it at the TV-B-Gone altoids-tin-shaped bee hive. Out of content?

    BTW => misc hacks (1337)
    (1337)
    l337

    awesome.

  2. Sort of. Most of your modern sensors have some AGC built in, and in addition are actually able to reject a constant signal at their filtered frequency (standard frequencies are usually 38 and 56kHz). Still a terrific idea, but to work a lot better (jam at a longer range with the same power) you might consider using a 556 (two 555s in one chip) to stagger the output at a rate of about 1 ~ 1.5kHz. If you wanted to take it further, stagger that signal at about 20Hz with an additional 555 and your receiver will be throwing away too much garbage data to make any sense out of the real remote.

    Or use a cheap internal timed micro, but then you can’t compete in a 555 timer contest.

  3. That’s exactly what I need right now. I have a friend who keeps acting as a human dynamic compressor for the volume – he constantly adjusts the TV volume during movies. :P This will be perfect to stop it!

  4. @Desmond

    Yeah but I absolutely hate it when movies randomly get really loud during some scenes! I tend to ride the volume control as well, since I live in an apartment and don’t want to piss people off.

  5. Why not add some jammer code to the tv b gone? Seems like it would be a fun mod for the tv b gone owners, press the button for power off hold for half a second to enter jamming mode pres again to exit.

  6. What it should do though is be in a normal remote and when you press a button it temporarily switches off, that way you are REALLY in control since only your own remote works.

  7. Time spent by you to this together and craftily hide it: ~1 hour

    Time spent by someone determined to watch their favorite show instead of yours to get up and change the channel on the TV set: ~10 seconds

    Your face when that happens: priceless!

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