Toolie, is my Apple remote. The buttons were barely working. I can rebuild it. I have the technology. I can make it better than it was. Microcontroller driven... web enabled... with a Flash UI.

I hadn't had my new sleek Apple Remote for more than a few months... and now the buttons were going all wonky. With young children around (I love them dearly) things end up outside, in the toilet, or in applesauce... oh well. Hey! Maybe I can fix it... or maybe...

Let's see what this thing is made of.

Yep. We have corrosion on the contacts. I cleaned that off... but realized that given my clumsy disassembly it wasn't going back into the original packaging.

I probed the contacts and paths; found the ground plane and decided to jack into the control surfaces. Woo hoo!

The finished product... meh. A lifeless chipy-thingy.

The remote was powered by a single 3v lithium cell. Hmm... my Netduino can supply that and then I could use the digital pins to simulate a button press and release! MUWHAHAHA!

Getting and sending native commands to / from a lump of hardware can be pretty painful... or you can sidestep the issue and walk through the front door (leverage existing hardware like this remote).

Where am I going with this?

I'm working on some home automation and one of the things that I want to do is to incorporate media center control into the system. I have a Mac Mini hooked up to my TV and this little rig allows me to integrate systems to my hearts content: temperature, garage door, web cam, power usage, and now TV control.

Yeah... I'm saving up for a tablet. Unless someone at Adobe wants to send me one... so I can blind them with sheer awesomeness!

[ source: FlexTASTIC Soft Remote - VS.NET Project ]

[ source: FlexTASTIC Soft Remote - Flex MXML File ]