Ok, let's discard LIRC and its HW: we don't need them anymore!!

[Luca C. <cas...@li...>]

Ok guys,
I'm here to announce an IMPOSSIBLE discovery!
To clone your remote control, you don't need neither LIRC nor any complex
HW: just buy a couple of IR transmitting LED, and you have done!

No kidding.

Try this:

Pick an headphone cable; cut its ending; 
connect an IR led to one channel;
put your remote in front of the led;
start recording with Audacity (mono, 38000 Hz);
press the desired button on remote;
stop recording.

Nou you have the waveform of your button: zoom A LOT to see it (it's just
some milliseconds long).
If it does not look like a square wave, repeat the sample, connecting the
LED to the other channel (don't know why...).

Once you see a bit-like sequence, you're at half of the street. ;-)

Now the funny thing:
create a second mono track with;
generate a 38 KHz carrier with Audacity in it.

Now you have the carrier below, and your sample above.

Select with mouse the "silence part" in your signal, but DRAG MOUSE DOWN to
the carrier track; drag to cover the whole silent part of the signal;
select "silence" button or corresponding menu item: silence will be placed
both on carrier and signal (which ALREADY had silence there);
repeat for all silence segments of the signal.

Now we ALMOST have what we need.

Now:
Create another mono empty track;
copy to new track the whole new signal just created;
select the whole new track;
choose "invert" from menu/effects;
select the track above the new one;
from its menu, select STEREO (to join the two tracks you created).
create a new Audacity instance, and copy into it the just obtained stereo
track;
save the stero track as WAV file.

Ok, that's it, now you have the needed waveform!


Final part:
Connect your headphone cable to audio OUTPUT;
Remove the IR led you used before for sampling;
Connect an IR led between right and left channel (don't care GND);
Connect another IR led between right and left channel, BUT the opposite way
(again, don't care GND).

Ok, you have completed your remote cloning! ;-)

Just keep the two led close one to the other, point them to your device,
click play and enjoy your new 1$ remote!

This ir-led-couple should work fine even if connected to a cellphone
capable of playing wave file through headphones.


BTW, I was kidding: don't discard LIRC, it's very useful to control your
PC; it's useless only to clone remotes.

Bye,
Luca