Excuse me if I am totally stupid for thinking of this, but I have a new product in mind. Did a quick search to see if this already existed, couldn't find anything.

Idea is for a 3.5mm rf to ir adapter. So, basically you would be able to plug this adapter in to the ir port in the back of most devices and use a rf remote to control everything. Would eliminate the need for ir extenders in a lot of smaller applications.

The adapter would look like a mini router antenna.

I imagine I would also have to think up a way to pair everything up in order to not cause interference with other rf devices in the area or potentially neighbors using the same system.

Thoughts?

How are you going to power it? What about equipment that does not have a Jack? I guess you just use a 3.5mm female to female coupler. Will 6 or 8 of them cost less than a base station?

Ok, now what remote will they work with? :)

What if you have identical devices in one system?

[Link: universalremote.com]

Well that would come down to pairing with individual channels but once again, it wouldn't be for any more than 1 room per remote. Think hang and bang where all the equipment is going inside a cabinet under the tv. It seems that this product would warrant the design of a new urc as well to compliment.

The image I have in my head for the pairing interface is a box that looks similar to a normal (cheapo) ir extender unit where you have 6 or 8 ports on that little box and then a usb coming out of that to pair and program on the cpu.

As far as power, still thinking about that one.

The end-all goal is of course to remove as many devices or wires from the finished setup as possible.

Great idea but the questions above are just the tip of the iceberg.

Powering the device is important because of additional costs/ complexity but not a deal breaker. You have power for the TV or AVR so you have power to plug it in.

IR jacks are a waste of your time because 1% of devices have them. I would shoot for a short IR emitter pig tail instead. While we are at it what about Serial/IP control? Might as well deal with this now.

The primary concern will be range on the remote. With a processor or base station you can control the range by locations the base station or its antenna or "gateways" (for processors). If your device could be wi-fi or have extremely good RF range it would be cool. At the end of the day I don't think it an be produced for less than a base station or "room box" (Crestron). Even if you got it "perfect" you would find yourself needing a relay and bam you're right back to needing a base station or processor.

But man wouldn't that be cool? Pop a tiny device on each piece of equipment and have your remote "auto discover" everything!

Well then basically it seems like I would want a iOS/Android app that controls small wifi-based ir emitters (you have to excuse me because serial/ip are above my head right now, ...soon). But in my mind that definitely would make it more expensive than a base station deal.

The whole concept, regardless of implications, is to not have a slew of little wires running to every component to have to deal with.

The inspiration comes from this tiny little usb adapter that I use with my mouse right now. If I could slide one of those into each device or have some way to use the usbs on the devices to run a emitter, I think that's a more reasonable idea. But the again, not everything has a usb port.

Take for instance a diy home theater. AVR-check. BD-check. Sat-check. PS3/Xbox-check. Doesn't sound unreasonable.

Some background on me since I am new here: Typical trunk slammer right now who thinks he knows more than he does, but is always trying to learn more. The best ir system I have dealt with personally is (and don't laugh)

You mean something like this?

[Link: oncontrols.com]

Yes, something LIKE that, but ideally it would be powered by the component itself.

Instead of having your Sat box, that oncontrol receiver, the emitter, the power for the receiver, and the other 2 ports having more wires that have to be routed neatly, just have 1 local adapter per component that is powered by usb(or something) that has a short pigtail to the ir sensor (like stamp said).

not only are there devices without a USB but there are also devices that have a USB but the USB is not always powered (i.e. the PS3s USB is not powered when the PS3 is off) so even if the device has USB it might not be enough. Also the USB might not be where you want it (i.e. if the IR port is in the back and the USB is in the front then you will end up with those ugly snaking cables you are trying to eliminate.

The problem in the minds of everyone posting here is that this product would require the CE manufacturers to participate in a standard and that's just never going to happen. Even I they would all just out an IR jack on the back of the component I would be happy.

In the next decade (I hope) most products will have an Ethernet jack (or wifi) on it allowing us to only have a single control cable/method. Then we would just use Network gear and any tablet and (hopefully) remote that we want. We still need a programmable app of some sort to manage the various codes for devices and create macros.

There are a number of issues with USB power.
Most non computer USB connections are more data than power centric, this means that they are the lowest power output possible (cheaper) and may not provide enough current to run IR.

The On Control products listed above are Global Cache items (great stuff).

So Brent, if i'm not mistaken, the first product (for example) on that page can be controlled by iRule?

BF
you need to spend your brain storming time less on what you think is needed and more on what is already available. You have a long way to go if you have not heard of the above mentioned solutions. No one uses IR repeater systems. We all use IR for control because it is not impacted (most fo the time) by firmware updates (IP), sleep states (IP/USB).

IR
RS232
IP (from the best manufacturers is a big win)

Do you use a control system yet?

One less power adapter is not a problem we are really invested in trying to solve...I mean, in the giant scope of things, it's a power adapter.

As Stamp said above, IP for data and control over a single wire would be cool. HDMI is promising this too with CEC control but I won't hold my breath. Stuff like the OnControls seems like a great product since it natively picks up IP devices on the network and you just need the modules to hit any IP stuff. Then you control from any tablet device. It's a minimum hardware solution, and if it works as well as it seems to from the other thread, it'll be a neat solution. I'm going to grab one to play with.