In case you’re going to visit your local shopping mall on 1st of April, this one is for you: In our mall, there are walls stuffed over and over with large-sized flat panel TV screens running all day long, even if no customers are present. Kids feel magically attracted to these walls and I always had a hard time to drag my daughter away from them. To zap them would be an option, but this requires to have hands on the right remote …
… so here it is! TV-B-Gone, invented by Mitch Altman. There are a few instructions on the net how to build a TV-B-Gone clone on a stripboard. You can also purchase a kit containing all parts including a PCB from Lady Ada. However, I wanted to practice some soldering …
The schematics and firmware are open source and can be downloaded from here. Lady Ada’s version makes use of an ATtiny85V-10P micro controller. I used an ATtiny85-20PU which works as well.
The challenge was to select parts with the right specs, so here’s a complete list of what’s required:
- 1 x Transistor 2N2907A
- 4 x Transistor 2N3904
- 1 x 3 mm standard LED VF 2.2 – 2.5 V, IF 20 mA
- 2 x SFH4550 high power infrared LED, narrow emission angle 3°
- 2 x LD274-3 infrared LED, 10°
- 1 x pushbutton
- CST 8.00 ceramic resonator
- 1 x 220 uF capacitor
- 1 x 100 nF capacitor
- 2 x 10 kΩ resistor 1/4 Watt
- 2 x 1 kΩ resistor 1/4 Watt
- 1 x AA battery holder (for 2 alkaline or 3 rechargable NiMH batteries)
- 1 x perma-proto board approx 40 x 55 mm
- DC power plug (optional)
Thanks to the power IRs, the range of the device is quite impressive and reaches across the street about 10 to 15 meters with freshly charged NiMH batteries. So you don’t get caught. If you want to see it in action, you can watch a couple of prank videos on YouTube … 😎