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Universal Control Device for TV and Computer — Bachelor semester project:

Description:

As most TV sets accept input from a computer, it will be useful to have one device that controls both TV and computer at the same time. To achieve this, we can add five keys on a TV remote control which will act as a chording keyboard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard). Or, more easily, build a device containing these keys, which slides over the TV remote control.

The main steps will involve:

- designing the sliding input-device. The software to do this can be Solidworks (more “professional”) or Trimble Sketchup from Google (which is free, easy to use and the tutorials are very easy to follow). It will contain five or six keys and a small joystick (or trackpad). A 3D printer will be used to actually build the device.
- the input-device will communicate to the computer via Bluetooth. A microcontroller will be programmed to monitor the input from the keys and joystick and send the desired commands to the computer. So far we have an application working for the keys, and it has to be completed with the joystick part.
- explore the possibility of using WiFi instead of Bluetooth.

Laboratory: LCM
Supervisor:
Adrian Tarniceriu, tel: 37504, office INR 033, adrian.tarniceriu@epfl.ch
Professor:
Bixio Rimoldi, tel: 32679, office INR 111, bixio.rimoldi@epfl.ch