Infrared Remote Jammer

The Infrared Remote Jammer is a device that prevents the user of the regular remote from changing the channel on the tv. It mimics the IR LEDs that are in the remote for the TV.

Engineer

Matthew Bergman

Area of Interest

Cyber Security

School

Riverdale Country School

Grade

Rising 10th grader

Milestone

My first milestone is the completion of the prototype version of my project, the IR Remote Jammer. The prototype was built on a breadboard and I went through 3 different designs to build this successful circuit. The project uses a 555 timer to know when to send out the waves of infrared light to the tv, preventing the user of the tv from changing the channel. The original design and the second design used 2 diodes which was preventing the IR LED from firing, so they were replaced by a resistor. The finished prototype utilizes a bc547 transistor, resistors ranging from 5.6 ohms to 12k ohms, a 10nf capacitor, and a 10k variable resistor. The whole circuit is powered by a 9 volt battery.

The challenges that I faced was that I was unable to figure out why it was not working with the 2 diodes, so when it was not working it stumped not only myself but also the instructors. It took the help of the internet and the instructors to help me troubleshoot, but in the end it was fixed and now it works as it should. The project really helped to learn how breadboards and circuit works so now i have a good understanding of it all. The project also helped me to learn about wiring because there was a lot of problems with wiring.

TV-B-Gone

For my starter project I built the TV-B-GONE. The TV-B-Gone is a device that runs through about 230 lines of code to turn off or on any tv located in the Americas. It uses IR LEDs to mimic the LEDs in the usual TV’s remote. IR LEDs use smaller wavelengths than visible light so it is invisible to the naked eye. The IR LEDs on the TV-B-Gone have a wavelength of 940nm. There are two different types of LEDs on the device, white and blue IR LEDs. The blue ones emit a longer and more focused output versus the the white LEDs which have a wider and shorter range output. With the combination of the two, the TV-B-GONE can mess with any TV from a lot of angles. The next part of the TV-B-GONE is the resonator, which operates the timing mechanism that makes sure the lines of code go out with the right wavelength at the right intervals. The resonator in the TV-B-Gone is a 8.0 MHz resonator which is the best for the voltage and the temperature that the TV-B-Gone generates. After the resonator is the IR-Driver Transistors, which are transistors that can handle about 100 mA going through them. These transistors turn on, which turns on the LEDs and same goes for visa versa. They do need more current so the design requires PNP transistors to push current into the IR Driver resistors and to make the microcontroller pin stronger. The final part is the button, which resets the TV-B-Gone to start all of the lines of code again. After the lines of code have finished, the TV-B-Gone goes into a very low power mode where it is not firing the LEDs until the button is pressed again. The button controls the whole TV-B-Gone and is powered by 2 AA batteries. There is an option to have 3 AA batteries but it not included and it is not necessary.