Remotely Control your TV with Your FPGA

Hello FPGA enthusiasts! The FPGA is truly a tool that can stretch the horizon of possibility and in today’s project we will find out how an FPGA can be used as an universal remote control. Ever had the problem of falling asleep while watching TV? Not anymore! The Universal Timed remote with FPGA is a timed remote which can be used to switch off any TV set once the timer ticks down!

The Hardware needed for this project are a FPGA Board, a breadboard, a 300 ohm resistor, male to male connecting wires and an IR LED and Sensor pair besides a TV set to test the device on. The circuit diagram has been given by the author in step 2.

The code has been written using VHDL and the VHDL setup for the FPGA is given in step 3. The code has been subdivided into modules and the whole file has also been attached in step 3 as a zip file. The main modules are the IR control and the Timer, which work in tandem to switch off the TV once the timer counts down.

Future enhancements and possible improvements have also been shared by the author. The timer can be set between 1 hour and 99 hours though it has been designed only to work for your own TV set. But a little bit of tweaking can make this a universal remote too!

By JoeD67