IR Jammer Kit: a TV-B-Gone-B-Gone

You probably have heard of the TV-B-Gone. If you haven't, it's a small wireless gadget that will turn of any TV. Now, for people who hate the TV-B-Gone, or for people who hate it when someone changes the channel on a TV set in a public space, there's the IR Jammer Kit.

You know those people that just love to change the channel on the TV? Put an end to it with this, the IR Jammer Kit from the Maker Shed. Just press the button and you can render infrared remotes completely useless. Works with almost all IR controlled devices by corrupting IR data from the six commonly used transmission frequencies. Perfect for pranks and for showing the channel surfers who’s boss.

Alan Parekh (creator of the IR Jammer) and Mitch Altman (creator of the TV-B-Gone) should join merge companies and call the new business Sylvester McMonkey McBean Incorporated. IR Jammer Kit. $18.99 in Maker Shed

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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dragonfrog

Ooh, given previous reactions from Internet tough guys (who apparently see assault as an entirely appropriate and measured reaction to someone turning off a television) to the orginal TV-B-Gone, this thread should be fun…
- ptorrone
  
  yah, this should be interesting. usually someone threatens to “kick someone’s ass” if their public tv watching was interrupted in any way – even as a harmless prank. i always disagreed with the people who said tv makes us violent, turns out – the IDEA of turning it off just might :)
Bevatron Repairman

Awesome. I expect a TV-B-Gone-B-Gone-Bone and to turn into the Butter Battle Book in short order.
- Bevatron Repairman
  
  *TV-B-Gone-B-Gone-B-Gone
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  You can edit your comments.
tylerkaraszewski

“You probably have heard of the TV-B-Gone.”
Why would anyone think this? Is it common for people to have heard of this thing? I doubt it.
- Brainspore
  
  Is it common for people to have heard of this thing?
  
  If by “people” you mean “regular readers of this blog” then yes.
- Mark_Frauenfelder
  
  I was just baiting you, Tyler.
  - tylerkaraszewski
    
    People often insist I live user a rock as well. What gives?
CSBD

Does this operate on the same frequencies as car door key fobs? If not I bet it would not be hard to change it to work on them.

If so, I am thankful that I am not a woman heading to a car in a dark parking lot.
- Brainspore
  
  Car fobs use radio signals, not infared. That’s why you can unlock your car without taking the fob out of your pocket.
  - CSBD
    
    Ah, maybe im thinking of garage doors.
    - Brainspore
      
      Those use radio signals too. Otherwise you’d need a clear line-of-sight to an IR sensor mounted outside the garage door for the remote to work.
      
      You could f*** up a game of lazer-tag with one of these things though.
    - Mark_Frauenfelder
      
      Those ar RF, too.
http://jayarava.blogspot.com Jayarava

Not sure about the TV gizmo, but this new look for BB just reminds me of how shit those Apple Macs were. Job’s finest hour was the iPhone, but my screen is a fuck of a lot bigger than that, so please don’t go any further down this road.
- Brainspore
  
  Not sure about the TV gizmo, but this new look for BB just reminds me of how shit those Apple Macs were.
  
  Stated like a person who never had to type commands line-by-line in DOS.
- http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith
  
  how shit those Apple Macs were
  
  In 1984 the Macintosh was the only way to deliver computing to non technical people in the home. It was all down to the user interface and yes, they pushed the limits of the technology. Believe me, on the machines I used at the time you had to be conversant with machine code expressed in hexadecimal to get some things done. The mac was a revelation.
  - twency
    
    We had an Apple IIe, and later IIGS. IIRC from the main prompt you had to type “PR#5″ to boot from the disk drive attached to the controller card in slot 5, except if you were at a monitor prompt in which case you had to type “C500G”.
    
    Ah yes, here’s a discussion: http://lateblt.tripod.com/bit93.txt
    
    Ain’t the internet wonderful?
    - Jonathan Badger
      
      Only if you didn’t just reboot the machine, as intended. Apple ]['s were designed to boot the disk in the first drive when restarted. All that PR #5 (more usually PR #6 if I recall as 6 was the standard slot, not 5), was really unnecessary. Been using Apple ]['s since 1981.
    - http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith
      
      I started out with a little 6502 system with a video modulator. Then we had a CP/M system and around that time my dad’s friend bought his macintosh. We went to his place to remonstrate with him. We told him that the GUI is a toy. The screen is too small. There will never be any software for it. But I noticed that the screen and keyboard took exactly the amount of space needed and nothing else. There was plenty of room for normal work on this guy’s desk. To delete text you used the mouse. The keyboard was easier to use because it had fewer keys. The tiny screen with the low rez GUI was the way of the future and looking back Apple really messed up in the 1990s because they had a killer system in 1984.
Childe Roland

This could mean that I have to watch more Fox News, because that’s what’s on in a lot of public spaces around here and what I always ask to have changed. NO NO NO.
- unit_1421
  
  Well, keeping asking. Responding to aggression with passive aggression is still aggression, which makes one no better than the other side.
EvilSpirit

Low-tech equipment for remotely turning off a TV is fairly readily available in the United States. It’s just that said TV will never operate again, and you can’t get the equipment past airport security anyway.
- dragonfrog
  
  They make you amputate your fingers before you fly now? Geezo.
xenphilos

Anyone else wishes these two sides go for a full-on arms race?
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_G7SMCZJ7XB2D6JY7DOUCBMXOJM andy

“It’s a Trace-Buster-Buster-Buster!”
- thebelgianpanda
  
  Came for this (horrible movie, some funny lines) and left happy.
Jim Thomason

Couldn’t the response just as easily have been to stick a piece of electrical tape over the IR sensor on the TV?

I’m reminded of the apocryphal story about the space race – the US discovered that pens don’t work in zero g. So they spent a few hundre million developing those pressurized space pens that wrote in zero g, upside down, under water, while on fire, blah blah blah. The Russians, when presented with the problem, used a pencil.
- Moriarty
  
  Ah, but the tape over the sensor approach requires that you have direct access to the TV yourself, and prevents you from changing the channel, either. Your own remote+jammer means that you can control the TV and no one else can.
- mkultra
  
  Apocryphal is right… the real story is more interesting, in its way: http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp
- unit_1421
  
  It was ONE million, offered as a prize to the winning designer.
Charlie B

You just can’t teach a Sneetch, Mark.

Speaking as a long-time advocate of the wonderous TV-B-Gone, I heartily endorse this gadget. Let the battle begin!
kyoorius

yea, we saw this coming about a year ago..

http://hackedgadgets.com/2010/11/11/ir-jammer-version-2-no-remote-controls-are-safe/
vonbobo

Actually, the jammer is going to work more effectively for the person with the TV b gone.

The TV owner must stop the jammer momentarily while they change channels or volume or whatever, leaving a window open for the tvbgone thing to step in and shut off the TV. Then you have this silly cat and mouse game that’s got to be irritating for everyone invovled, (except for the tvbgone jerk of course).

But if the tvbgone jerk also had a jammer (best if built into the actual tvbgone itself) they can then shut down the TV and immediately jam any other incoming signal to turn it back on. I guess the tv owner would then have to cover the TV’s IR receiver with tape and adjust manually.

So after all of that, I guess my only opinion is that this whole thing is dumb.
slillibri

Can I assume that the proponents of the TV-B-Gone would also be receptive to my carrying around a high-power portable cell phone jammer? Same reasoning applies, your annoying polyphonic ringtones are disrupting my dinner.
- mccrum
  
  I’m actually cool with that too. I’ll bring the TV B Gone, you bring the phone jammer and we can meet somewhere and actually talk over dinner. Winning!
Fart History Major

I’m currently working on TV-B-Explode
Roy Trumbull

As a teen I sent away for a pocket FM. In those days such things used hearing aid tubes about the size of a lotion sample. Transistors were off into the future. The thing lacked an IF strip and was super-regenerative in nature and could it radiate! I discovered that accidentally. Later at a Hi-Fi show (pre-stereo) I fuzzed FM receivers into garbage just by tuning a knob in my pocket.