Did I mention I was a geek?

Okay, so a little break from what I just posted and what I have in the works for my next post to talk about something I'm quite passionate about; electronics (And with that 90% of the people who read this leave). Hear me out :p In the many years I've had a surround sound system set up in this house I have had an on going battle with getting everything to work with a single remote. And not just a single remote, on no! A single remote that allows a user to sit down and with a single click of a button watch some television. There is no desire in this house to have to push 5 buttons to get everything turned on and set correctly.

For a while I've been exploring the universal remotes with the nice little LCD screen that lets you choose with electronic device you want on, but all of those cost in the $100 minimum range making them assuredly a non-option. Other options I researched were turning a PDA into a remote, a plan that was scrubbed because any PDA of sufficient capabilities would end up costing as much as a universal remote, and using an iPod, which turned out to be extremely limited and rather useless.

Thus it was, as I researched various solutions, that I happened upon a remote that advertised macro buttons. Turns out that there are a large selection of very modest remotes that have the very feature that all the fancy remotes advertise so well. (A macro button sends multiple commands with the push of a single button). And while that is cool enough on its own, the really interesting part started after I found this remote. (for those interested it is the URC-8910 and I've found it for as little as $16 + a few dollars for shipping and handling)

As I read user reviews on this remote I kept seeing people mention this mysterious JP1. Now, to me JP1 means Jumper 1. I see this on every motherboard for every computer I've every dealt with, but no where could I find what JP1 meant to these people. All that anyone ever said was, "but using JP1 quickly fixed that problem!" After several searches I finally found the right combination of phrases that lead me to a forum that had a link to what JP1 was.

Here is what JP1 is. On certain remotes (especially those of radio shack and One for All) there is a 6 pin connector located in the battery compartment with a small JP1 printed on the circuit board next to it. Someone discovered that you could create a custom cable to connect your computer to your remote using this so-called JP1 connector. Then other people realized that you could download the contents of your remote and replace it with custom signals to make your universal remote TRULY universal. Check out the cable that connects the remote to the computer via the serial port (a more expensive usb cable was offered as was a parallel cable)



No more will people have to settle for a remote that mostly works their equipment. These people have THOROUGHLY documented every piece of remote controlled equipment they can get their hands on and relish finding the right signals to get new equipment to work. I'm excited to get my cable in the mail so I can start programming the remote to make it the ultimate universal remote! I actually encourage anyone who reads this to make sure the next remote they get is JP1 capable and learn how to modify the remote to stream line it (or ask me to come do it for you :P ).

Now here's some linkage for you!
Buy the URC-8910 remote at home depot (out of stock last I checked, but maybe you'll get lucky)
Google listings of URC-8910 remote sellers(I just typed URC-8910 into Google search)
Good place to get the JP1 cables
Learn more about JP1 over at this sub-culture's forum!
Good list of current and past JP1 remotes (It's a forum post, click on the download button under the post)

Did I mention I was a geek?