Hacked TV remote will mute celebrity names you don't want to hear about on TV
39 replies, posted
[b]Source:[/b] [url=http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/09/07/closed.caption.hack.maker/index.html?iref=NS1]Linkage[/url]
[quote]When Matt Richardson works from his home in Brooklyn, New York, he likes to keeps the TV on to stay informed, but some celebrity or another is always taking up airtime and bugging him.
"A while ago it was Charlie Sheen. And then it was Sarah Palin. And then it was Donald Trump," said Richardson, who is a video producer for Make Magazine. "And after a while I realized there's sort of always someone who I don't really want to hear about."
Like any good hacker, Richardson decided to come up with a fix: He developed a do-it-yourself TV remote control that will automatically mute the television when certain celebrity names are mentioned.
[b]He plans to debut and explain the hack at the upcoming Maker Faire event in New York. The name of his talk is "Enough Already: Silencing Celebs with Arduino."[/b]
Unless you're speaking at that do-it-yourself inventors' conference, you may be wondering: "What the heck is Arduino?" It's basically a piece of computer hardware that can be programmed to do anything you want. In this case, Richardson combined a couple of Arduino circuit boards with an infrared LED light -- that little red bubble on the front of your TV remote -- and programmed the whole thing to interact with a TV's closed-captioning system.
The DIY gadget reads the closed-captioning transcript as it's aired and then automatically mutes the television for 30 seconds when it picks up certain words. That list of unspeakables can be re-programmed (so if you really love Sarah Palin, don't worry -- you could mute President Obama or Sen. Harry Reid references instead).
[img]http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2011/TECH/innovation/09/07/closed.caption.hack.maker/t1larg.maker.tv.hack.from.jpg[/img]
As long as that person's name keeps coming up, the remote keeps muting the TV. The first time he got it to work, Richardson said he "was in silent bliss for that 30 seconds I didn't have to hear about Kim Kardashian."
The whole thing cost about $70 to make, he said, and he built and coded it in about a week, working only in his spare time. It's worth noting that this isn't a product Richardson expects to be commercialized -- it's just for fun. He posted the code online so other people can play around with it.
The implementation itself is pretty crude, he said. Closed captioning doesn't always appear in real-time, so sometimes the system will miss a first reference.
If you're interested, he explains the process in detail in a blog post.
In the comments below that post, Make Magazine readers chime in with all kinds of ways this sort of closed-caption-reading tech could be used.
"You could generate the list of key words dynamically. E.g., by monitoring Twitter's trending topics or by parsing Google's zeitgeist lists," one reader suggests.
Another wants to use it to mute all commercials:
"Does the CC (closed captioning) stream contain any kind of marker for indicating commercials? Because I'd tweak this in a heartbeat to mute the deliberately louder commercials that seem all the rage these days."
The Maker Faire, which is dedicated to all kinds of cool and bizarre crafts, machines, computer hacks and mousetraps, will be held September 17 and 18 in New York. You can see a full schedule on their website.
Neither Kardashian nor Snooki is expected to be in attendance.[/quote]
This is amazing. There are so many people I fucking don't want to hear about and this guy actually does something about it. No more Justin Beiber, no more Jersey Shore, no more any useless faggot ever again.
No more Palin!
You jelly of those useless faggots.
Although it's clever, I don't really see the point. If I'm watching something I like, I really doubt they're going to mention Justin Bieber or whatever.
[QUOTE=lulzbocksV2;32197277]You jelly of those useless faggots.[/QUOTE]Not really, no. I am happy I'm not a lesbian or smell like garlic.
And, there's one small fault with it anyway:
The name must be spoken first!
[QUOTE=TheTalon;32197327]And, there's one small fault with it anyway:
The name must be spoken first![/QUOTE]
It uses close-captioning to detect the names...
[QUOTE=ElectricSquid;32197365]It uses close-captioning to detect the names...[/QUOTE]
And it must be spoken first...
[QUOTE=NotoriousSpy;32197427]And it must be spoken first...[/QUOTE]
Close captioning gets sent ahead of time, so it will easily be in time to mute it.
[QUOTE=Crimor;32197450]Close captioning gets sent ahead of time, so it will easily be in time to mute it.[/QUOTE]
Not in my experience.
[QUOTE=NotoriousSpy;32197484]Not in my experience.[/QUOTE]
I don't mean it shows ahead of time, I mean the data gets sent ahead of time, one or two seconds if I remember right.
I'm gonna use this to attempt to mute every politician on the planet.
I'm sick of hearing about politics now.
[QUOTE=CakeMaster7;32197930]I'm gonna use this to attempt to mute every politician on the planet.
I'm sick of hearing about politics now.[/QUOTE]
Too bad politics run your country.
[QUOTE=CakeMaster7;32197930]I'm gonna use this to attempt to mute every politician on the planet.
I'm sick of hearing about politics now.[/QUOTE]
Mute every celeb, then watch a gossip show.
mute all of them should be a command
[QUOTE=Mister Sandman;32198197]mute all of them should be a command[/QUOTE]
Turn the volume off dude.
[QUOTE=Mister Sandman;32198197]mute all of them should be a command[/QUOTE]
We have this, it's called the 'normal mute button'.
well at least we will not be able to hear the word Justin bieber on tv Ever again
Trust some butt hurt bieber fan to vote me dumb
[QUOTE=shadowsX;32199208]well at least we will not be able to hear the word Justin bieber on tv Ever again
Trust some butt hurt bieber fan to vote me dumb[/QUOTE]
That isn't what this does.
It mutes a specific person talking.
Yes mute that person who talks about bieber and it can be programmed to mute words if done right
That's dumb, if I don't want to hear about someone I just change the channel. If you get that angry or annoyed hearing someone's name, something is wrong with you.
why should you change the channel if windows can detect voice waves in speech recognition
it should work for this
Oh cool, can I use this to mute that fat fuck noisy bastard off the go compare adverts?
That is the most annoying advert to be shown how in gods name did they allow to show that
[QUOTE=shadowsX;32199306]why should you change the channel if windows can detect voice waves in speech recognition
it should work for this[/QUOTE]
It might, but remember this is implemented on an Arduino - processing power is [I]extremely[/I] limited, and speech recognition would be really slow. If you wanted to rig your PC to do the job instead I'm sure that would work though.
Watch the History Channel and mute the words "God" and "aliens" and it'll be silent 60% of the time.
Watch the Star Wars prequels.
Mute gungans. Film instantly better.
Unfortunately, this will also mute the TV when Bieber dies and they talk about it.
[QUOTE=Killerelf12;32204542]Unfortunately, this will also mute the TV when Bieber dies and they talk about it.[/QUOTE]
You're so edgy.
Anyways, this is a nifty invention. I can't see myself using it, but it's very clever.
I want one.
Wish it worked with bronies.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.