Four-Button Wall-Mounted Arduino Uno Remote Makes Switching TV Channels More Accessible
Designed for elderly relatives, this four-button remote makes it easy to flip between three favorite channels.
Pseudonymous maker "edes26" has turned to a Arduino Uno to power a wall-mounted heavily-simplified remote control for elderly grandparents — offering an easy way to switch between their three favorite TV channels.
"I proudly present a simplified TV remote I made for my grandparents more than a year ago. It was quite simple and it has been very useful for them," edes26 explains of the project. "It has the following features: Big button to turn the TV on and off; three smaller buttons to choose three different channels: news, movies or the church channel."
The explosive growth of TV, both on the technology front as well as the sheer number of channels, means that "don't touch that dial" has become "don't press any one of the hundred or so tiny buttons on your pocket-sized remote." The wall-mounted version is a lot simpler — and offers easy-to-see buttons that push with a satisfying tactility.
"It has been helpful for them since they struggle to remember the channels numbers they like," edes26 notes. "Now they just push one button instead of three buttons (e.g. '3', '1', and 'enter'). It was also difficult for them to do it fast enough so the TV did not switch to channel three before they pressed the '1' to go to channel 31."
The full source code for the project, which uses an Arduino Uno, four push-button switches, and an infrared LED, is available in edes26's Reddit thread.