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Your reminder to remove the microphone from your TV remote today (thelemmy.club)
submitted 3 weeks ago by to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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[–] 146 points 3 weeks ago (24 children)

This should be a web site or YT channel. How to remove such bits without bricking the item.

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  • [–] 93 points 3 weeks ago (17 children)

    To be fair, OP didn’t claim that the remote wasn’t bricked…

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  • [–] [S] 90 points 3 weeks ago* (16 children)

    It works! I was fully prepared for it to not work and explain to my wife why we need to order a new one, but no issue at all lmao

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  • [–] 18 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    Could probably have measured its resistance, then put a plain resistor in its place.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 weeks ago* (11 children)

    So if the remote still works then wouldn't that mean there is still a microphone? Or have they gone back to line of sight infrared? Or am I just thinking of the really really old remote tech?

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  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago (8 children)

    ...when have remote signals ever used microphones?

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  • [–] 7 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

    Not fully related, but early TV remotes used sound rather than IR. The buttons made a distinctive "click" noise, from a mechanical mechanism. The different clicks were detected in the TV and used as input.

    Plus side, no batteries to deal with.

    Down side, about as (un)reliable as you would expect.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

    That's wild. How did the TVs identify the distinctive sound? That seems like it would be a pretty interesting engineering trick.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

    I believe it was old school analogue electronics, but I'm speculating there.

    I just looked it up, it was ultrasonic signals. The main one was the Zenith Space Command.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

    Cool, thanks! No problem. I understand it was analog electronics and using an ultrasonic signal makes sense, but what I wondered about was how did the receiving end (the TV) differentiate between the signals for the different buttons and then decide to execute different procedures based on that. Still pretty interesting in any case.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

    Speculating, but I would guess they applied a band pass filter to it. You can then either take a simple threshold value, or look for a rapid change and trigger off that. 4 buttons means 4 sets of filters, each tuned to a different frequency.

    That said, the analogue electronics engineers of yesteryear were insanely competent and making analogue circuits do interesting things to save money or space.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

    Ah, yes, that makes sense, thanks! Totally agreed on those old school engineers being insanely competent and creative.

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  • [–] [S] 31 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

    Looking up which part to nuke took an hour, but anything to calm down my paranoid ass haha

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  • [–] 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Could you share your knowledge here? I clicked this thread expecting to find instructions to help us follow your advice.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    While it’s not always the case, try to look for a 2x4 silver rectangle with a hole in it like the one on my finger. The casing is to isolate it from the nearby radio waves and the hole to let sound through.

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