TV-B-Gone experiments - Part 1

Prolog

For those who don’t know, TV-B-Gone is a device that makes TVs… well, to be gone… (As in Boris-The-Bullet-Dodger). It was invented by Mitch - Altman, and is sold as a ready (but limited in flexibility) unit, as well as a soldering/programming kit from Limor aka LadyAda.

I bought my TV-B-Gone kit version 1.1 from LadyAda some time back, but only recently with help from VadimBo, we got it soldered and (re)programmed.

Just to give you an idea what can be done (but not actually advised though ) - check “Confessions: The Meanest Thing Gizmodo Did at CES”

To the point

The downsides of the version 1.1 are:

• there are mainly NA codes only supported in firmware 1.1 and 1.1b
• there are only around 40+ codes supported in firmware 1.1 and 1.1b

So, I backported from tvbgone firmware 1.2 (Caitsith corrected WORLDcodes.c #ifdef version) into firmware 1.1b the following:

• removed NAcodes, which are UNcompressed version of limited codes table
• added WORLDcodes, which are compressed/optimized version of extended codes table
• modified main() to use compressed codes table routines
• modified Makefile to use EU/NA/both tables

Downloads

[More:]

• Sources and .hex of firmware 1.1b for tvbgone containing backport of WORLDcodes from 1.2
• .hex of the original shipped “factory” version of tvbgone 1.1 from LadyAda (in case you want to restore original)

Tools used

To accomplish the above task of compilation and firmware flashing, I have used:

• WinAVR with avr-gcc toolchain - compilation of the tvbgone firmware
• AVR studio with Atmel AVR STK500 kit board (kindly provided by VadimBo) - flashing the compiled firmware .hex file

Possible TODOs

• have the code tables partitioned/indexed by geo-area/vendor/frequency/etc
• access the indexes either thru dial-click on the button
• alternative to dial-clicks, an LCD with 5 navigation+menu button to select the partition of codes to “fire”
• add external memory to hold large tables (ATmega16+SDcard link1, ATmega16+SDcard link2)
• find a way to deal with devices which require the switch-off button to be hold several fractions of a second (i.e. multiple time the same code transmitted)

Related links/projects

• Mitch Altman’s ready-to-use tvbgone
• LadyAda’s tvbgone DYI kit
• Florin’s Super tvbgone
• Small footprint tvbgone
• Caitsith’s tvbgone generation3

Tags: tvbgone, tv-b-gone, super tvbgone, caitsith tvbgone, mitch altman, limor, ladyada, tvbgone firmware, worldcodes tvbgone 1.1, tvgbone.hex