IR remote extender?

fattakin

Member
I'm about to build some kind of screen for my TV unit as its difficult to prevent by 13 month old baby from powering off and on the box.

Id like something that completely prevents him from access and will probably be made from some wood and nice fabric. But this will prevent me from using the remote. Can i get some kind of extender that will connect to the Hummy and I can run via the back of the unit to the underside of the TV?
 
Any ordinary AV extender will do it (such as those in Tesco under the Technica brand). You don't need to connect the main video feed, the IR controller back-channel is all you need.
 
Won a Marmitek on ebay for £10 so not bad.

I build a wooden frame and covered it with Fabric and used 5 magnetic catches to make this cover for the TV unit. Seems effective as the baby has ignored it completely since it went on :) Im no joiner but happy with how its turned out.

20120304210719.jpg




Thinking about airflow, should probably drill some airholes in the back? Does anyone use their Humax in an closed area?
 
Ventilation would be well advised. Even a few watts in an enclosed volume will raise the temperature significantly. Fans are only effective if the air they are moving is cool.
 
So the day the IR extender arrived, my wife accidentally pressed the change channel button on the remote while the screen was on, and it changed!!!! Fricking thing worked through the 2 layers of fabric.!!

£10 wasted. That was a costly assumption. Might as well put the ir extender back on ebay!
 
I've noticed that my HD-FOX responds to the remote even when the signal could only have bounced off at least two walls first (and the colour of the wall has nothing to do with it - it depends how reflective the wall is to IR) - and yet it is somehow far less sensitive to the "turn on" command.

Does it respond reliably though?
 
Yeah I drilled a series of holes along the back - about 15 and 5 along the side with the biggest drill bit I had - Around a centimetre. Should do the trick.
 
Someone once advised me in a similar situation to try and arrange it as two rows of holes - one as high as possible and one as low as possible so that the hot air is forced out the top row and draws fresher air in at the bottom. They reckoned that would create a circulation effect more than just having lots of holes scattered about. Don't know if that helps now but anyway....
 
Absolutely right. You need to set up a convection flow, so the hot air needs somewhere to escape from the top, and cool air needs somewhere to be drawn in at the bottom. No good having shelves block the passage between them either, and if the flow can be arranged to snake around the whole volume (but always in an upwards or sideways direction) in a single path (no short-cuts) so much the better.
 
Cool, I drilled holes at the bottom so no biggie to do a row at the top. There is a shelf in the middle so i'll maybe just put 3 rows of holes in so that the xbox wont feel left out. The cover will be off when xbox is in use as the wired turtle beach headphones live next to it and for the heat it generates.
 
Back
Top