LG Magic Remote
Marantz AVR Remote
Verizon Fios Remote
PS3/Apple TV Universal Remote
For various reasons that I won't go in to now, only one of the remotes are capable of eliminating the need for the other remotes. It sucks that we haven't moved forward enough to create an open standard for wifi control of consumer electronics. It seems like something like this would only benefit the market.
This problem is not new and if you have enough money and time, you can have a very nice control system. You could use Crestron, AMX, Control4, or any other number of vendors that offer iPhone/iPad integration or fancy touch panels.
Not me, I like to do things the hard way. Not to mention I already have all the components lying around.
My initial plan is to just use a simple push button to fire off a macro of IR commands to turn on and change inputs/modes to watch a movie.
That means:
Turning on the TV
Change the TV to the proper HDMI input
Turn on the AVR
Change the AVR to the proper HDMI input (more on this later)
Change the AVR to the proper surround sound mode
At that point I will have to use the AppleTV remote to pick a movie and so on.
It's not much of an advancement but should be a good place to start.
I've found several resources for Arduino code/libraries for this sort of project. I don't have much skill in the realm of coding so I will rely heavily on the web and a buddy of mine that has experience writing code for Arduino.
Here are two really good examples that got me started:
http://www.gamemaker.se/electronics/remote.php
http://www.righto.com/2009/08/multi-protocol-infrared-remote-library.html
So far, with this simple set up, I've been able to send basic IR commands to my LG TV. Off, On , Mute, Volume Up/Down, Input control.
