SmartmoteSmartmote

What your television remote should have been

SmartmoteSmartmote

• The Smartmote is a smart, browser-based remote control app for the television set top box.

• The app includes features not found on standard hardware remotes and provides a more intuitive way to interact with your television.

• It utilizes a Raspberry Pi (http://www.raspberrypi.org) with an Infrared circuit connected to it.

• The Raspberry Pi hosts a web app which controls the IR module using LIRC (Linux Infrared Remote Control)

• The app provides a web based front end to control the IR component.

• The remote app can be accessed by anyone on the same network as the Raspberry Pi.

FeaturesFeatures

1. Standard Remote1. Standard Remote

• Remote page comes with all standard buttons found on the regular remote

• Numbers, Mute, Volume keys, Channel Up/Down keys, Ok, Back, etc.

2. Channels List2. Channels List

• This page has a list of all available channels

• Clicking on the channel logo immediately changes the channel

• Each channel entry displays the channel logo, channel number and the name

3. Channel Type Filter3. Channel Type Filter

• This page lets you filter out channels based on their categories

• Categories like Sports, News (Eng/Hindi), Entertainment, Movies, Music, Sceince, etc.

• Upon selecting a set of categories, onl channels belonging to that category are displayed

• Useful when wanting to watch a specific type of program like news or movies.

4. Channel Search4. Channel Search

• This page lets you search for a specific channel by name

• Only channels with the search string in the name show up

5. Favorite Channels5. Favorite Channels

• Each channel entry has an option to set it as a favorite channel

• Upon setting a channel as favorite, it becomes available on this page

• Useful when watching a set of channels frequently

6. Recent Channels6. Recent Channels

• The app also shows a list of the 5 recently watched channels at the top for quick access

• This is useful when watching multiple programs on different channels at the same time

• For example, while watching the news in between a cricket match

• The regular remote only provides a single back/previous channel button, whereas here we get a list of 5 previously watched channels

7. Program guide7. Program guide

• Each channel has an option to load a list of scheduled programs

• This list is fetched from an open API (http://indian-television-guide.appspot.com/) and cached for future use

• Programs for the next 24 hours are fetched each time

BackendBackend

Raspberry PiRaspberry Pi

Raspberry PiRaspberry Pi

• The Raspberry Pi is a low cost, power efficient, credit-card sized computer

• It consists of a CPU, GPU, RAM and a few ports like Stereo audio, Composite video, HDMI, LAN, USB, etc.

• It also has some GPIO – General Purpose Input/Output pins

• This project makes use of these GPIO pins to interact with an IR module

Raspberry Pi SetupRaspberry Pi Setup

• The Raspberry Pi uses a lite version of Debian as it’s OS

• In addition, it has an Apache web server, PHP and MySQL servers

• It also has the LIRC (Linux Infrared Remote Control) package to deal with encoding and decoding of the IR signals

• Connected to the GPIO pins is a circuit with a pair of IR LEDs (Infrared Light Emitting Diodes)

• LIRC is then used to control signals sent to this circuit to trigger the IR LEDs as needed

IR Module setup - SchematicIR Module setup - Schematic

IR Module setup - ActualIR Module setup - Actual

LIRC SetupLIRC Setup

• Using an IR Receiver, all the key codes of the actual remote were fed into the Raspberry Pi

• These are then used by the LIRC config file to map a remote key name to the corresponding signal pattern

• Then using standard LIRC commands, signals for each remote button can be sent to the circuit through the GPIO pins

Web AppWeb App

• The web app is built using PHP and MySQL for the backend, and HTML, CSS and Javascript (jQuery) for the front end.

• The List of channels, categories and program guide are stored in a MySQL Database.

• The app can then be accessed on any browser, connected to the same network as the Raspberry Pi

• The front end has been primarily designed to be used on a mobile phone, as it’s intended to be used as a browser based mobile app

• Clicking on keys, sends the key code to the backend PHP app which in turn calls the LIRC commands for that keycode, which triggers the IR circuit to send the corresponding signal

Future EnhancementsFuture Enhancements

• The same approach can be taken to incorporate other IR devices at home, like the television itself, music system, media players like DVD players, air conditioners and other home appliances that use an IR based remote control

• Some possible use cases:– Switching on the AC on the way back home so that the house is

cool by the time one reaches home– Using DVR (Digital Video Recorder) to record programs while

away from home

Thank YouThank You