My Remote's a Pain in the Hand

I am starting to hate my Samsung remote a lot more than before and being a TV addict I guess the design of a TV remote is worth sweating over. I have seen many Japanese/Chinese remotes using the NEC protocol and have a far better design when it comes to small TV's. I can see that the ordinary remotes have a limited functionality and hence dont require a lot of buttons. Now ,incase of Samsung LCD TV there are whole lot of options within the TV like HDMI ,Media Play, Media Controls...etc. So, many buttons are properly spaced and have been placed on the remote control. However, the ergonomics of the device haven't been studied extensively. I believe that its time to move ahead and try and evolve a new interface for interacting with the TV.

I hence plan of making a gesture based remote control which may be used to control the menu options by a simple flick of your hand. Remote control isn't the costliest part of your home entertainment system and I plan on keeping it that way.This device will be made affordable by using a basic design and adding complexity(simplicity on the user side) through the software part of the implementation. Once done, the user simply has to use his palm gestures over this device to control hi TV. I am so excited just by the very basic implementation (or I am just sick of my remote)




Now the following are the steps that are to be taken in the same order to get to the final product.STEP 1: The first step involves taking four IR pairs and connecting them to ADC channels of a micro controller. The output values of the ADC are to be plotted against time to observe the variation of ADC o/p values as the hand passes over the sensors in different directions at different orientations. The results are to be sent a PC via serial port and the output data plotted appropriately (use MATLAB or PYTHON)


STEP 2: Now once this is done, we need to make decisions on the kind of gestures to be mapped to different remote functions (Usability Matters....Be very observant here...Don't injure the user with acrobatic hand movements).The gestures are to be stored in the form of one dimensional arrays which then become the templates against which gesture motions of the users hand are compared to decide on the IR commands to be sent.
 




STEP 3: Code to implement various IR communication protocols for the various devices to be controlled. This also involves building the actual circuit with the uC. The setting up of Clocks....etc. We may also go for a GUI to setup the various options of the uC via  a serial port or CREATE A WAY TO SETUP THESE THINGS VIA A USB-MAKING MY DEVICE USB COMPLIANT (WORTH A LOOK AS ITS BEEN A WHILE THAT I STARTED SOMETHING POWERFUL).STEP 4: Using machine learning concepts to optimize the user experience, the device should be taught to adapt to the users usage. Trying to avoid false alarms is the key to this design.

Not exactly like this but on similar lines.

Forbes magazine on Piracy

You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You

Rest of the article can be found here

Once you are done reading,observe this change in all the blogs in India. Their URL has been changed from blogname.blogspot.com to blogname.blogspot.in. And just today, I happen to read in the newspapers that Google came down to terms with the Indian Govt on the issue of content restriction. "The domestic domain names help better control over access to information that the govt finds inappropriate",the newspaper said. While the article from Forbes was about piracy and the one you are reading is about content access control on the internet, these do suggest some massive changes occurring due to internet revolution.


 Has the world started to become totalitarian (trying to control everything and regulate their access) ? That seems to be the case and the whole world may some day look a lot like china is today. I do agree that piracy and too much freedom is a bad thing, but again ,they are like a rash on your back-You can't see it unless you want to and you can't get rid of it unless you stubbornly wish to.

Optical Illusion

HOW WAS THIS IMAGE CREATED

The image asked use to move our head sided to side to see the illusion. It worked. But, the other way I found to observe the illusion was to look at it with you head tilted to the side.It worked.But,how come ? Do let me know by commenting on this post. How was the image created.

How to weigh a million dollars with your mind

Compose Professional Music in Minutes

A lot of people have an extreme craving for music. Some go to the extent of making it a profession. But not all have a chance to do so. For all those who haven't got enough time, here's a wonderful software to compose professional music in minutes, 

MAGIX MUSIC MAKER. No experience required in notes or beats or any other alien terms. All you need to have is a good taste for music. MAGIX is a wonderful tool capable of creating professional music without much learning required. Yet, those who want to get serious with composing after a while (which I am sure most of you will ), the software offers piano roll to edit notes and allows to add a whole lot of plugins. I downloaded this back in 2009 and found it to be an amazing piece of software to work with not much of learning required. It is as simple as dragging and dropping and can get as complex as that required by a professional composer. On the whole, it is must for you music enthusiasts who are eager to create beautiful music. Do comment and/or +1 this post if you like it. Share your other online needs and other amazing things online- here . Will look into them asap.

Download MAGIX MUSIC MAKER here