Two-way Talk-back Remote Control

I have discussed this topic in detail in my blog (Please refer to my Lazy Electronics blog.) on infrared remote controls. One of the problems with remote controls is that they do not get and they cannot receive an acknowledgment from the device that they control. For example, if I use a remote control to power-off my DVD player, the remote control will not maintain any information whether my DVD player is off or on. All it does is that it sends an IR signal to my DVD player to power-off in a fire-and-forget manner. What happens after that is none of the business of the remote control. Therefore, the IR signaling protocols used by remote controls are designed as highly unreliable.

These types of remote controls worked pretty well as long as all the electronic gadgets used to sit in our family room giving our family rooms the look of a shrine dedicated to giant TV, receiver, power amplifier, sub-woofer amplifier, 300-DVD jukebox, couple of DVD players, satellite receiver and electronic gaming devices. However, those days are over. People are beginning to move most of their electronic gadgets excluding the giant TV into hidden shelves, attics, basements and garages giving their family rooms a cleaner and less cluttered look.

The idea behind the current generation of remote controls was that the remote control as well as the electronic equipment were both in our visible range. Therefore, there was no need for the remote control to know, if the equipment was turned off or not. The remote control sent a signal in a visible line of sight and the equipment showed the status of whether it had received the signal and what it was doing on a nice little LCD or LED display. Thus completing the visible line-of-sight feedback loop of request, acknowledgment of receipt of request, compliance with the requested action, confirmation of completion of the requested action.

When our electronic equipment moved out-of-sight into another location, remote control manufacturers quickly resolved this problem by building UHF remote controls and bridging devices that translated UHF signal from the remote control into infrared signals for the electronic devices. They added discrete infrared codes instead of toggle codes, so that a "power-off" signal meant power-off no matter how many times you pressed that button. These discrete controls also helped in macro programming allowing you to control multiple devices by touching a single button. However, the device acknowledgment send and receive issue is still unresolved. You cannot look at the remote control and say, "Oh, I forgot to turn off the power amp last night."

Here is a million dollar idea for those who are interested in programming embedded microchips. You can enhance the remote control to receive the UHF signal broadcast by an electronic device. In addition, you can enhance the electronic devices so that the signal that is sent to the electronic display board on the device is UHF broadcast and received by the remote control on its own electronic display board.

Alternatively, two-way remote controls can be based on Bluetooth or Wi-Fi protocol. Wi-Fi already has the entire infrastructure of reliable communication with full request-acknowledgment-action-confirmation cycle. This could be done by hooking up a computer to control the electronic device through the serial port and displaying the status on a TV connected to the computer.

Some of the electronic device manufacturers have started sending the status text as a TV output signal that can be displayed on a TV. Therefore, when you reduce the volume of your hidden receiver using a remote, you can see the status on your TV, if you have made all the necessary connections. Generally, satellite and cable receivers are pretty good about displaying full status on TV, since they were originally designed to be placed in the garage, roof or attic. This is the reason satellite receivers were the first ones to introduce UHF remote controls.

However, the ideal approach is to have the device status available on the remote control. For a receiver, this includes power on/off, volume status, channel status, sound processors, speakers, et cetera. Looks like two-way talk-back remote controls are just a few years away.