Changing the TV B Gone code

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Tinman98
 
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Joined: Wed Jun 30, 2021 1:55 pm

Changing the TV B Gone code

Post by Tinman98 »

I am just now getting ready to assemble the kit. As I have been mentally contemplating the TV B Gone and its uses particularly in public as has been suggested, it occurred to me that perhaps turning the TV OFF might not be the most desirable. It would immediately garner attention. Perhaps better would be to MUTE the TV instead. I am an experienced builder, and I coded business mainframe computers for 25 years. However, I never got into the micro or PIC or whatever kind of programming. I have looked at some other sketches, that is about all. And I have not yet looked at the sketch for the TVBGONE. I'm guessing it is pretty involved. As far as the basic concept, it would seem pretty simple to change the codes from ON/OFF, to MUTE, if the codes were available. There is a huge number of codes for the brands, but the truth is, MOST of those would be unnecessary as realistically, there are only a handful of TV brands common in America. And I would also have to have a programmer board and loader program to upload to the chip. I'm guessing I could probably handle that too. IDEALLY, it would be nice to retain the ON/OFF and just add the MUTE and use a switch or pin jumper. But there may not be enough memory to do that.

I probably should have asked this in the beginning, but has anyone tried to change the code? or even know what the MUTE codes would be? Is it more trouble than it's worth? At a minimum, what kind of programmer would I need? I have loaded a modified simple sketch for a real time module for the Bulb Dial Clock, but that's about all, and it had the USB built in so I didn't need a programmer. Maybe the sketch was for the clock itself, I don't remember now. Any thoughts? Is this even feasible, or just wishful thinking?

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Franklin97355
 
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Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2008 2:33 pm

Re: Changing the TV B Gone code

Post by Franklin97355 »

It might be interesting to follow viewtopic.php?uid=7626&f=23&t=181187&start=0

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WindyDay
 
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Joined: Sun Dec 22, 2019 10:20 pm

Re: Changing the TV B Gone code

Post by WindyDay »

I can't answer all of your questions, but I can address a few of them...

• I was able to reprogram the chip using the Sparkfun Tiny AVR Programmer PGM-11801 and carefully following the instructions provided with that product (particularly the "Tiny AVR Programmer Hookup Guide"). (Actually, in order to avoid messing up the pre-programmed chip, I bought an unprogrammed ATTINY85V-10-PU and loaded the code onto that.)

• One issue that I ran into was that the timing of the signals seems to be somewhat dependent on the compiler used to compile the code Thus, in my very first test--which was just to load the standard TV-B-GONE code onto the new chip and see if the kit functioned properly--failed, in that the code ran but wouldn't turn any TVs on or off. This post (viewtopic.php?f=23&t=130881) was really helpful for me to understand what the problem was, and I was able to modify a constant in the code to tweak the timing of the signals so that kit would work correctly. I documented what I did in this post: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=166757

• From what I recall of reading the design notes for the TV-B-Gone kit, it seems that identifying the mute codes and then compressing them into the format used in the firmware would be a non-trivial task. If you do come up a modified version of the code including mute codes, please post it...I for one would be interested.

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