Infrared Remote

My first encarnation of my media center was operated with an infrared remote. It used audible ques for menu navigation. I built a small infrared receiver from some cheap Radio-Shack parts and a universal remote from Wal-Mart. I also coded up a small piece of Python code to read the infrared data from the home-brew receiver attached to the serial port. This system worked very well, but the interaction was slightly limited.

Touch-Screen

After the remote control, I decided to by a touch screen monitor. I got the cheapest refurb touch screen that I could find (~$220). It was a CRT, which makes it pretty big and a little bit heavy on power consumption, but it was just right to give the new interface a trial period without being too expensive. It is working out very well. Instead of using some GUI toolkit, I decided to make the program with an HTML Web GUI. This buys me a couple of things: platform independence and the ability to access the GUI from any other computer in the house. So if I'm sitting on the couch surfing the web, I can just pull up the media center GUI in another tab and start controlling the TV or speakers.

The Future

I plan on adding the remote control back into the system, but most likely only to be able to skip songs and control the volume. I may even add multiple remotes: one for each zone. I also plan to buy a better touch screen. This time, I'll probably buy a LCD. It consumes less energy, produces less heat and takes up less space, but it's much more expensive (~$650). I'm also experimenting with some voice control. I've done this before with other things, so I know to keep the scope pretty small. Canned voice commands are about as ambitious as I plan to get. Maybe I could walk by the monitor in the kitchen and say "weather" and have the computer pull up the weather tab. Something simple.