Hack a Day » home theater

Control your home theater from anywhere in the world

Mike Nathan — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 12:03:23 +0000

Using IR repeaters for larger home theater setups is not uncommon, but they usually are quite simple. A series of IR receivers are placed throughout a home, all wired to repeat the signals in a central closet where all of the AV equipment is located. [Bill] constructed a solution that works much like a standard IR repeater setup, however his requires no receivers, and it can be used anywhere in the world, provided you have Internet access.

His project, called Ether IR, is an Internet-enabled IR repeater. It consists of an Ethernet-connected module with an IR LED mounted on it, capable of controlling your AV equipment. The board is hooked up to your LAN, and relays commands to your home theater via a simple web page. The equipment can then be controlled from any Internet-connected device, such as a mobile phone or tablet PC.

The entire project is open-source, so [Bill] has included schematics, instructions, and a bill of materials so that you can construct your own. The only issue at this point is the software portion of the project. The software is free, but the distribution method is in question – once things are sorted out, he will ensure that you can obtain the software for your Either-IR from him or directly from the Ethernet chip’s manufacturer.

Filed under: home entertainment hacks, home hacks

DIY Slingbox

Will O'Brien — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:44:00 +0000

[David] took some interesting steps to put together his own Slingbox-ish setup. He used a Mac mini running Quicktime Broadcaster to capture the stream from a Firewire video camera which his cable/satellite receiver is plugged into. You’ll have to use an OS X machine, but that’s not too difficult these days. Broadcaster is about the simplest way to capture from Firewire and stream. We’re using it in our own office to multicast the signal from a Canadian satellite box.

Projector hacks roundup

Will O'Brien — Fri, 23 May 2008 06:50:00 +0000

Projectors have long been a favorite toy of hardware hackers. From reactive displays to cheap home theater, there are plenty of reasons to play with photons. Seeing some cheap projector repair put us in the mood to cover some of our favorite projector projects – check em out after the break.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention [Johnny Lee]‘s interactive whiteboard right off the bat. His software uses a LED light pen and a wiimote to detect the users actions. If you’re looking for the code, hit the second project on this page. Oh, and don’t forget his automatic projector calibration project.

LumenLab projectors are just the thing for the true DIYer. Take a standard desktop or laptop LCD, strip the casing, add some optics and a decent light source (Metal Halide works great) and you’ve got your own projector. They can produce HD quality or be built as cheaply as possible. We wrote up our own build a while back for engadget.

If you’re considering building your own, you should look into some of the nicer custom projector controller projects, like the P-Brain.

We’ve seen a few DIY screens. The blackout cloth version, the tyvek/PVC version and the mix your own paint version and the DIY electric version.

Cheap projector repair

Will O'Brien — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:00:00 +0000

[Ryan] sent in this writeup on some DIY projector repair. The write-up is a little hard to follow, but maybe it’ll inspire some future projector landfill saves. [Dissident] replaced the light bulb and ballast in an older DLP projector with some salvaged MR-16 hardware from an even older over head projector. The main trick required was to bridge the trigger leads that tell the projector that the bulb is on and working.

DIY Home Theater Preamplifier

Will O'Brien — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 06:38:00 +0000

[Dane] built this excellent home theater pre-amplifier. He used [Mark Hennesy]‘s pre-amp design to start with, and added selectable XLR, RCA, SPDIF and even USB audio inputs. Discrete inputs from his DVD player provide surround input, and an analog matrix creates 7.1 surround from the 5.1 input. The design is very elegant, and even uses a VFD display that appears blue with some filters. I usually just buy my HT gear, but projects like this make me seriously consider re-building my entire HT from scratch.

Movie screen mask controller

Will O'Brien — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 21:22:00 +0000

I was looking for some ideas for one of my little projects, and I ran across this screen mask controller that [Danny] was working on a while back. The roller drops a mask down, and an optical encoder lets the controller know the position of the mask. The final version is supposed to support ethernet, but I couldn’t find any updates on the project.

DIY colorimeter

Will O'Brien — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 06:11:00 +0000

[brian] tipped me to this excellent colormeter project for calibrating your home theater/HD/etc It was designed specifically for the HCFR Colormeter software project. The project page is in english, but the probe writeup is in french. The fish well help you understand it while you resist the taunts avoid the flying cows. The device has at least one color sensor (a second is optional as well as an IR led or two for computer hardware controls) and connects to your computer via USB. The brain is a PIC 18F2550 (the fish calls it a PEAK) – no in circuit programming, you’ll need a programmer to build it.