I just saw Gran Torino.  In honor of Clint Eastwood, this tutorial and review will be laced with horrible Clint Eastwood puns.

Everybody knows I am a fan of gadgetry -- especially useful gadgetry.  Anything with buttons, whirring motors, blinking lights, and speakers, usually gets my attentions.  But sometimes, it's an actually function that makes a project fun and entertaining.  A good example of this is the TV-B-Gone kit.

You've all seen me profess my love for all things Adafruit Industries before, mostly in the Drawdio and Mintyboost tutorials.  I can tell you that they've got their stuff together and that they carry some cool stuff.  The TV-B-Gone is in a league all it's own, though.

So what is the TV-B-Gone, you might ask?  It's pretty simple.

One day, there was this guy.  Let's call him "Mitch".  Mitch cofounded a big company called 3ware and is known for doing some great work in virtual reality.  In 2004, he put together a device that was small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and could turn off a TV.   When interviewed about the gizmo by the BBC, he stated, "I don't want to make anyone's life more difficult. I just don't like TV, and I'd like people to think more about this powerful medium in their lives."

That's awesome.

So where does Adafruit tie into this one?  Partnering with the powers of Mitch, Adafruit released a kit so you can build your own TV-B-Gone.  Now you too can turn off any TV in a 150 foot radius!  Boom!

Want to build one?  Well, you're in luck.  You can get the kit from Adafruit and follow along here, or you can look at their original tutorial.  So let's get crackin' and Paint Your Wagon.

As is customary, you've got to make sure you have all the parts.  Take everything out of the fancy anti-static bag and place it on the desk.

You should have the following parts in the bag:

1. A battery holder with positive and negative leads
2. A microcontroller with a socket.  Both are embedded into a square of sponge.  the microcontroller should be a ATTINY85V-10-PU
3. A 10-pin socket
4. (4) IR LED's.  Two should be blue and two should be plain.
5. A piece of sticky-back foam
6. (4) transistors, NPN.  Mine were PN2222's
7. A small green LED
8. An 8mhz oscillator for oscillatin' stuff (mine was blue)
9. A push-button
10. A ceramic .1uF bypass capacitor to make things super smoove'.
11. A 100uF capacitor (mine was rated to 10v).
12. (4) 47ohm 1/4w (yellow-black-violet-gold) resistors
13. A 1KOhm brown-(black-red-gold) resistor

If you think you are missing something, you can check Ladyada's parts list and make sure everything is there.  If not, shoot them a message.

Have everything?  Great!  Start by strapping the printed circuit board into your helping hands or board vice.

Once you get the board in, the first thing to put on is the push button.  It has four little legs that will push into the board and snap into place.  The switch is symmetrical, so put it in there however it fits.  You don't have to be an Enforcer!

Once you get the switch on the board, you can solder the four legs Every Which Way But Loose.

Next up is a resistor.  This is the brown-black-red-gold one.  Resistors like this are symmetrical, so put it Any Which Way You Can.

Once you get that one soldered in, you can do two components -- the bypass cap and the LED.  The LED is asymmetrical so it needs to go in a particular way.  The long leg is the positive lead and the short is the negative.  Make sure you line them up correctly or else it wont work!  Left turn, Clyde!

Now we do the microcontroller socket.  Put the socket ontot he board, matching the notch on the silkscreening with the notch on the socket itself.  If you put it in upide down, Harry Callahan will be upset.  What I did was use one leg of the helping hands to hold the socket from the bottom while I soldered it.  You can see pictures of that below.  If you were not interested in doing so, you could tape it on there.

Once you get it soldered like above, you can solder the oscillator.  This is symmetrical too, so you don't have to worry soldering it in, blowing it up, and having to spend a Fistful of Dollars to replace it.

Now, attach the leads from the battery compartment to the board.  The red is positive, and the black is negative.  Clip the wires to about an inch or so.  Then tin the wires with a bit of solder, but not too much, as you'll have problems poking the leads through the holes on the motherboard.  After tinning the wires, feed them through and solder them to their proper spots on the board.  Use a bit of City Heat to make sure they're connected properly.

The next step is to put the microcontroller in its socket.  Take it out of the foam block and examine its pins to make sure they're all present and accounted for.  If everything looks good, line the pins up with the holes on the socket and insert them.  Make sure the dot on top of the microcontroller matches the notch on the socket.  If not, you may be spending a Few Dollars More to replace a fried microcontroller.

After you do this, get some batteries and put them in the holder.  Push the button.  until you feel a small click and look at the green LED.  It should blink for about a minute.  This blinking action is actually the work of the oscillator and the microcontroller and signifies that everything is working well.  If you don't have a blinking LED, you should check to make sure the LED's polarity was correct, that the microcontroller socket was soldered on correctly, and that the microcontroller itself is in the correct way.  This portion of my Youtube video is around part 1.

As long as everything looks good, you can continue forth.  Start by grabbing the remaning resistors (4 of them) which go to the left and right of the microcontroller.  Take the batteries out of the battery holder and push the small tactile button one time.  Now, put the resistors in their places on the board.  these resistors are symmetrical, so go ahead and Hang 'Em High.

Next up, put the 100uf can capacitor in place.  The capacitor is asymmetrical, and as usual, the long leg is positive.  The white stripe on the side is negative.  If you put the capacitor in backward, your TV-B-Gone, might be joining The Deadpool.

Once you get the capacitor in place, the four NPN transistors are next.  Match the flat side of the transistor with the flat side silkscreened on the board and put them in their socket.  Bend the middle leg back and place it in the middle third hole on the board.  This should help keep them in place easily, allowing you to stick them to the board with relative ease

Solder all of them in place.  At the same time, I grabbed the 10-pin connector and placed it on the board too.  Match the little notch silkscreened on the board with the one that's missing from the platic lip of the connector.

Solder all of this stuff in one big swoop, Pale Rider!

Once your soldering is complete, there's only one more step.  We've been through The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and now we're in the home stretch.  The LEDs...

Solder the LED's into place, taking care to get their polarity right.  Being LED's, they do have a positive and negative side, with the longer post being the positive.  When you put them into their sockets, make sure you put them in the correct way.  The LED's wont light up and you'll be known as The Rookie to Nick Pulovski.  So, look on the board for the small positive marks which are silkscreened to help you on your way.

The clear LED's go on the outside, while the bluish ones go on the inside.

If you have your LED's in place, it's now time to test the whole outfit.  Put some batteries in the battery holder and grab a cheapie digital camera or turn on your webcam.  Push the small button on the TV-B-Gone and look at the unit through the viewfinder.  You should see this:

As the green LED on the unit flickers, the four lights on the front of the TV-B-Gone will do the same as the lights pulse their turn-off codes.  Your eyes can't see the light emitted by the remote control because it's outside of the viewable spectrum for humans.  The camera can see it though, and shows the light as a brilliant purple color.  Now you're a Space Cowboy!  You can use the sticky foam tape to secure the circuit board to the battery holder and turn the whole thing into one unit.  Then you can turn stuff off.

And that's all there is to it!  Now, when you're in a waiting room or a bar and you just want some quiet time to yourself, you can pull out this little beauty.  With a grimace on your face and with the TV-B-Gone held high, you can squint into the glare of the screen and growl...

"I know what you're thinking. "Did she bring one battery or only two?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a Super TV-B-Gone, the most powerful controller in the world, and would turn your tube clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?"

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Comments (2)

• |128.237.232.xxx |2009-12-17 06:24:16 simon
  how much does tv b gone cost,and where do i order it from? can i get it shipped
  to canada?
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  ReplyQuote

• |128.237.232.xxx |2009-12-17 06:29:07 Anna  - TV-B-Gone
  Hi Simon,
  
  
  
  The keychain version can be bought here for about $21.40 Canadian:
  
  
  
  http://www.tvbgone.com
  
  
  
  For the kit, adafruit industries sells them for about the same amount, but you
  have to put them together yourself.
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  ReplyQuote

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