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baby duck monge

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Feb 16, 2003
1,570
0
Memphis, TN
Not sure which forum to post this in, so I'll start here and see if it gets moved.

Here's the situation:

We have a gas fireplace in our living room/den area. The fireplace is built out from the wall, and the built out area is more or less hollow. Above the fireplace was a hole for a TV. Unfortunately, it was a big square hole, and doesn't work well with a widescreen TV. Additionally, our new TV is too big to fit in the hole even if we wanted to use it.

I have done demo on the hole and will be framing it out and putting wall board over it so the new TV can be mounted straight on the wall. I am intending to knock a new hole on the side of the built out area and add some shelving to hold components (cable box, Mac Mini, maybe a stereo receiver, etc.), but this will put them out of the line-of-sight for remote controls.

Can anyone direct me to what I would need to be able to change the sensor location for the components that use remote controls? I'm pretty sure there is some sort of radio transmitter that you can program to work with your remote controls, but I'm not sure I'm finding the right things online. If anyone has any experience with this or can direct me to a forum where they might know, I would certainly appreciate it.

If any of the above is unclear, please feel free to ask questions. And Mods, feel free to move this to whatever forum you deem appropriate.

Thanks!
 
Alright, here goes nothing...I'm not even sure if I read your post as you intended me too but here goes.

From what I understand, you want to be able to control ur boxes with the remotes but you will not be able to have the IR eyes visible. If this assumption is not correct then you can stop reading here...if so then continue...

This stuff that I will be linking to is really high quality and I'm sure there's other ways to do this..

First, I would get a connecting black that would have 4 emitters on it. You would connect the emitters to each of your boxes that require control from a remote. Then you will need an external IR receiver, this would be mounted in a place where the remotes could see the eye.

When you want to control something you would simply point the remote at the receiver and the signal would go to the connecting block which then acts like an IR Blaster and sends the signal to the devices.

Connecting block with emitters - http://xantech.com/InfraRed/InfraRed/IRReadyKits/IRDY4KIT/

IR Reciever - http://www.xantech.com/InfraRed/InfraRed/DLPCRTRcvrs/490W30/

This should work no problem.

Any questions just ask.

Tyler
 
Alright, here goes nothing...I'm not even sure if I read your post as you intended me too but here goes.

From what I understand, you want to be able to control ur boxes with the remotes but you will not be able to have the IR eyes visible. If this assumption is not correct then you can stop reading here...if so then continue...

This stuff that I will be linking to is really high quality and I'm sure there's other ways to do this..

First, I would get a connecting black that would have 4 emitters on it. You would connect the emitters to each of your boxes that require control from a remote. Then you will need an external IR receiver, this would be mounted in a place where the remotes could see the eye.

When you want to control something you would simply point the remote at the receiver and the signal would go to the connecting block which then acts like an IR Blaster and sends the signal to the devices.

Connecting block with emitters - http://xantech.com/InfraRed/InfraRed/IRReadyKits/IRDY4KIT/

IR Reciever - http://www.xantech.com/InfraRed/InfraRed/DLPCRTRcvrs/490W30/

This should work no problem.

Any questions just ask.

Tyler

That looks like exactly the sort of solution I'm looking for. You definitely understood my question (I was worried about that because I know I wasn't very clear). Now I just need to figure out if I want something as nice as the one you linked or if I can find something with fewer sensors. I will likely only need one, but having at least two would be nice for when we eventually sell the house (not everyone will be using a computer rather than a DVD player).

At least now I know what to look for.

If anyone else knows where to find some of these or has any experience working with them, I would love to hear it!
 
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