What's changed with v1.1

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X
 
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What's changed with v1.1

Post by X »

I just noticed on the adafruit website that v1.1 now has twice the power with a range up to 150 feet. What has changed and can our v1.0 devices be modified to boost the range?

adafruit
 
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Post by adafruit »

ah yes, the firmware and hardware have changed. basically we originally wanted to have double clicking as a possible input but in the end didnt use it. the button now connects directly to /reset. that allows 2 pins to be used for driving the transistors. ive updated the website with the new schematic and pcb files

Seanernet
 
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Post by Seanernet »

First off, thank you for making the new schematic and firmware available. It's great customer support to provide us with new revisions. Secondly, I'm now curious, if we can use two pins to get more power, would it be possible to use 4 pins to drive each transistor individually, and if not with the attiny85, with a different chip? I know, it almost seems ridiculous asking for more range, but when you try to aim a Tv-B-Gone thru a car windshield and a business window, it significantly reduces the signal, so much so that I have yet to be successful. Although, one glass window in a Mall works just fine. Also, I've noticed that 3mm ir leds have significantly reduced range over their 5mm sidekicks, approximately 15 feet according to my tests, would the new version drive them double as well?

As always, Thanks in advance,
Sean

magician13134
 
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Post by magician13134 »

Great! I remember reading something about some programmer problems in version 1.0, were those fixed?

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Post by adafruit »

Seanernet wrote:First off, thank you for making the new schematic and firmware available. It's great customer support to provide us with new revisions. Secondly, I'm now curious, if we can use two pins to get more power, would it be possible to use 4 pins to drive each transistor individually, and if not with the attiny85, with a different chip? I know, it almost seems ridiculous asking for more range, but when you try to aim a Tv-B-Gone thru a car windshield and a business window, it significantly reduces the signal, so much so that I have yet to be successful. Although, one glass window in a Mall works just fine. Also, I've noticed that 3mm ir leds have significantly reduced range over their 5mm sidekicks, approximately 15 feet according to my tests, would the new version drive them double as well?

As always, Thanks in advance,
Sean
yes, but youd have to port the code which may not be trivial, especially without a scope

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Post by adafruit »

magician13134 wrote:Great! I remember reading something about some programmer problems in version 1.0, were those fixed?
not really, if you want to program the kit you should just use larger base resistors.

maltman23
 
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Post by maltman23 »

Seanernet wrote:I know, it almost seems ridiculous asking for more range...
And why not be ridiculous? I'm now working on a version of TV-B-Gone that will work at 100 meters: TV-B-Gone Pro. :) It has 6 emitters, and each has its own transistor driver, and it runs off of 9v. Field-testing with this has been very fun!

Mitch.

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darus67
 
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Post by darus67 »

Its been mentioned before, but how about a laser?

You'd have to mate it with a scope or binoculars for an accurate aiming
mechanism but you'd have all the range you could ask for.

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caitsith2
 
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Post by caitsith2 »

The only problem with an IR laser, is that you can do some serious permanent eye damage, and not know you were causing that eye damage. As such, an IR laser TV-B-Gone would not be safe thing to have around.

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Post by Seanernet »

maltman23 wrote:
Seanernet wrote:I know, it almost seems ridiculous asking for more range...
And why not be ridiculous? I'm now working on a version of TV-B-Gone that will work at 100 meters: TV-B-Gone Pro. :) It has 6 emitters, and each has its own transistor driver, and it runs off of 9v. Field-testing with this has been very fun!

Mitch.
If you are looking for beta testers, let me know, I'd love to get my hands on that schematic.

Sean

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Post by maltman23 »

Seanernet wrote:If you are looking for beta testers, let me know, I'd love to get my hands on that schematic.
Sean
I've got plenty of beta testers. :) But here's the schematic:

page 1 of 2:
http://tvbgone.com/mfaire/tvbgone/TVBGonePro1bof2.jpg

page 2 of 2:
http://tvbgone.com/mfaire/tvbgone/TVBGonePro2bof2.jpg

Ready-made TV-B-Gone Pro units should be available in February, and I'm taking presale orders for them now to help fund the project:
http://www.tvbgone.com/cfe_tvbg_buy.tvbgpro.php

Mitch.

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Post by Seanernet »

Mitch,

Thanks for sharing your schematics. I look forward to building this unit and prepurchasing one of yours as well. Can you tell me the part number for the IC and would you be willing to share the firmware as well. I don't have any idea why I'm so interested in building all three revisions of this circuit, but I can tell you it's a lot of fun. I just wish I could come up with an idea that would work hands free that would be effective. I been tossing several ballcap ideas around in my head, but I haven't made anything yet. Thought about putting 4 leds in the brim of the hat behind the fabric, but the average fabric reduces the signal strength to about 5 feet. Perhaps a thinner fabric would work. Though about putting 3mm leds in the holes in the top of the ballcap, sticking out looks funny and flush would be for directional use only, also the 3mm leds I've tried are only good for about 15ft, I imagine that the smd ir's that I bought will be even weaker. Craftsman makes a 4 led had where the four 5mm leds stick out of the front, looks ridiculous, but would work perfect for this application.

In case it isn't quite obvious to most people, realize that most places of business these days have video cameras and if you turn off the tvs so many times as to be a nuisance, the leds light up like spotlights on those cameras (if you point it in the general direction of the camera) and depending on the circumstances, criminal charges could be filed. Thankfully, video cameras won't pick up reflected ir waves.

Sean

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caitsith2
 
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Post by caitsith2 »

I looked up the IC part in question. The part is a Zilog Crimzon with a 16KB rom. This is the type of part that is pretty much in mask rom form, with no way to read out that rom (other than decapping the chip.) Any user programmable versions of these chips, appear to be all OTP.

The zilog crimzon series is very specialized for application specific and universal remote construction.

----

On another note, I merged in the code compression and stealth/persistent stealth mode with the v1.1 board firmware code.

I did manage to add stealth/persistent stealth into the v1.1 board firmware code. THe trick is to use a variable in code, that will NOT be initialized on reset.
static int KeepTrack __attribute__ ((section (".noinit")));

Activating persistent stealth on the Version 1.1 board did have to change, to pushing the button 11 times, rather than holding the button for 5 seconds, with KeepTrack counting the number of button presses since reset. Once the code transmission starts, KeepTrack is reset to 0.

The updated code can be downloaded from here
(Also includes precompiled binaries for both Version 1.0 and Version 1.1 boards, and for both North America (55 codes, Mitch Altman's database conversion), and Europe (106 codes, Kevin Zimmerman's (AKA opussom) extraction from a European TVBGone).

maltman23
 
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Post by maltman23 »

The Zilog part is, indeed, a mask ROM part. It's the one used in the TV-B-Gone keychains. This was the most economical way to manufacture them. The firmware I used is very similar to the firmware for the TV-B-Gone Kit, but in Zilog assembly language.

If you want to build a TV-B-Gone Pro, you can take a stock TV-B-Gone keychain PCB and add on sheet 2 of the schematic I linked to. Or, you can use the ATtiny85v (with the TV-B-Gone Kit firmware) and add sheet 2 of the schematic to it. Make sense?

Funny you should mention putting TV-B-Gone in a hat, Seanernet, since I just put a TV-B-Gone Kit in a hat and have been field-testing it for the last week. It is tons of fun! I glued the Kit under the visor of a baseball cap (after covering it with 1" wide heat-shrink tubing), with the IR emitters pointing straight ahead. I put an extra activator switch on top of the button on top of the baseball cap. I glued the battery pack under the top of the cap (so it sits on top of my head). Now, all I have to do is look at a TV to turn it off (and press the button on top of the hat).

Even though you can see the IR emitters under the visor if you know they're there, so far only one person has seen them and wondered what they were (after wearing it solid for a week of field-testing).

I have found that IR light goes through most clothing fairly well. It does diffuse the IR light, but I'm surprised how well it works. So, covering the IR emitters with an airy piece of black cloth is an option if you really want to be stealth.

But I have found that you really don't need to be all that stealth. People just don't look around when a TV turns off. Even at sports bars. People are very ready to blame the TV technology (if they notice the TV turn off at all, which is pretty rare outside of sports bars).

BTW, I have asked several lawyers, and all of them have said that it is not illegal to turn off TVs. Even if the TV is not yours.

Also, so many people wear blinking lights around town now-a-days, that a video camera picking up blinking lights won't mean anything to anyone who would care to watch the footage from a video surveillance camera (and that would certainly be a boring job!).

Thanks, BANNED, for the firmware! And thanks for Kevin Timmerman for all the EU codes! I was going to have to create all of them before going to Berlin for the Chaos Computer Congress, and now I don't have to. (yay!)

Mitch.
[/i]

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caitsith2
 
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Post by caitsith2 »

I did note one slight oddball thing when kevin zimmerman did log the codes. Some of them showed up with a carrier frequency of zero. (These are codes 39, 41, 49, 62, 63, 68, 69, 88, 101, 104, 105, all counting from code 0.)

I did revise Kevin Zimmerman's compressor slightly, to search for duplicate timing tables, so as to only have the timing table written once in the firmware, rather than multiple times, wasting space. (Note, the NA code base was hand optimized after his initial compressor output, although I did manage to find a couple more myself too.)

Code: Select all

Example:
// Code 004 -- Toshiba, Apex
const uint16_t toshibaTimes[] PROGMEM = {
	58, 57,
	58, 173,
	926, 230,
	924, 464,
	58, 4054,
	58, 9880,
	58, 0,
};
This Timing table pair is used by Code 4 (Toshiba), Code 14 (Viewsonic, Acer), Code 15 (Bush, NET-TV), Code 34, (Hitachi), Code 35, (NEC).
That effectively represents a savings of (112 bytes over having the code written 5 times.)


If you can solve the European Zero carriar frequency issue for the above listed codes, I will gladly update the firmware, and recompile.

-------

There is 2.15KB to spare for codes, in the European firmware, and 5.04KBs in the North america firmware.

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