A Cheap Device to Build When Your TV Remote’s Power Button Fails

I think we can all agree that the humble television remote is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. Before they came around, viewers were expected to actually get up off the couch and walk over to the television set to change the channel or volume. But TV remotes aren’t without their faults. Many TVs today don’t have all of the buttons built-in, which means your TV becomes useless if you lose the remote or a button fails. In the latter case, you can build this cheap device to replicate a single remote button.

The TV-B-On(the box) was designed by Hackaday.io user mcu_nerd for a very specific purpose. They didn’t lose their TV remote, but the power button stopped working. Most people would turn to universal remotes in despair, but mcu_nerd decided to build a simple device that has one function: to turn the TV on or off. It’s made with an ATtiny85 microcontroller and an IR LED, and powered by two AA batteries. Anytime the device is woken up from sleep with a button press, it sends out the TV’s power IR code and then goes back to sleep. The device does require a custom PCB, but could still be worth building if you want to keep using your original remote instead of switching to a universal remote.