KEYCHAIN GIZMO TURNS OFF TELEVISIONS
One of the things I really enjoy about being in my yearly holiday
gift buying mode, is that I can write about items that normally
wouldn't fall within the prevue of my column. That said, I feel
compelled to enlighten you about a nifty little piece of technology
that really grabbed my interest the moment I heard about it.
 Now
I have to tell you that I don't think of myself as a practical
joker. I find no gratification in offering someone pepper flavored
chewing gum, shaking their hands with a buzzer or putting artificial
dog-poop on someone's carpet. In fact, I've never even used a
whoopee-cushion. But the TV-B-Gone ($14.99) from Cornfield
Electronics (www.tvbgone.com) has uncovered the fact that there may
just be a tiny little bit of practical joker hiding inside of me
after all.
The TV-B-Gone is basically a tiny battery-operated remote control
that has just one button on it. When you press the button, the
TV-B-Gone turns off any television set within its range which can be
up to 50 feet. Now why would you want to surreptitiously turn off a
TV set? According to its inventor Mitch Altman who recently appeared
on my radio talk show Computer America, one day he and a group of
friends were constantly being distracted by an overhead set in a
restaurant. And even though the sound wasn't on, they found that the
distraction kept interfering with their conversations. They found it
to be extremely annoying but the proprietor refused to turn the set
off. Altman found himself wishing that he had some way to turn the
set off. It was at that very moment that the idea of the TV-B-Gone
was born.
And evidently thousands of people share in Altman 's original
wish as literally thousands of these little devices have been sold.
In fact, his first batch of over 20,000 sold out in just a couple of
days. Thousands more have been sold since and the demand keeps
growing. So I'd say that Mitch is on to something here.
The TV-B-Gone uses the same kind of infrared LED found on
standard remote controls. Altman has gleaned the Power On/Off codes
for literally hundreds of television sets from a myriad of sources.
As these codes are not readily available, Altman had to be clever.
One interesting source of the codes turned out to be some of those
companies that manufacture universal remote controls. As you know,
universal remotes contain the function codes for numerous television
set models. Altman simply set up a device to read those codes and
thus began building a database of power off codes that he would
eventually transcribe into his TV-B-Gone.
When you press the button on the TV-B-Gone, it can take up to 69
seconds before the TV turns off. That's because the device has to
sequentially fire off the power codes, each separated with a tiny
pause between them. Altman has structured his database to lead off
with the codes from the more popular TVs. The more obscure models
will eventually be powered down. The batteries are the ones usually
found on computer motherboards (why am I not surprised?) and not
really designed for this kind of use. But Altman found a way to make
them work with his little gizmo. The positive result from that
effort is that they last around a year before needing replacement.
Altman says that although the current model continues to sell
very well, he's already coming up with the next version. That unit
will have even more of the power off codes to even more television
makes and models. He was also thinking of adding a little indicator
light to let you know that it was transmitting. But he thought that
anyone wanting to use it in a stealthy manner would object to a
light. I suggested he add a small switch that would let the user
decide to have it on or off. He liked my idea and we may see that in
version 2. The other improvement will be the addition of a restart
feature. Currently you must wait until the entire sequence is over.
Pressing the button at any time will restart the sequence no matter
how far onto its database of codes it may be. This is ideal in case
you pressed the button while you were to far away from the TV and it
missed the code.
But all of that technical stuff aside, the TV-B-Gone is a very
clever idea. And if there is any practical joker in you, you're
going to love this thing. With apologies to Paddy Chayefsky, now
when you're confronted with a blaring TV set, you won't have to get
mad as hell since you won't have to take it anymore.
www.tvbgone.com |
