As our population ages, here’s one feature that consumer electronics makers really have to start thinking about: lock-down modes for old people.<\/p>\n
I need a way to set up my Mom’s TV, cable box and DVD player in such a way that she can’t possibly screw it up.<\/p>\n
Walking her through troubleshooting exercises over the phone is getting more and more frustrating.\u00a0 When it comes to electronics, she has the mind of a three-year old.\u00a0 She doesn’t understand anything.\u00a0 Even with her glasses, her eyesight is bad, so she can’t even read the buttons on the remotes.<\/p>\n
I think the thing that really confuses her are modes.\u00a0 TV’s used to have just two modes: on and off.<\/p>\n
There are so many modes now.\u00a0 The TV has four different inputs… the right one must be selected, or I get a phone call.\u00a0 Her cable-box remote is also a universal remote, and can control other devices.\u00a0 It has buttons to select which device to control.\u00a0 If the wrong device is selected, I get a phone call.<\/p>\n
I should record and transcribe one of these calls someday.\u00a0 They usually have bits like this:<\/p>\n
Me: Ok… Press channel up on the cable-box remote.\u00a0 There’s a row of lights on the top of the remote, and one of them should flash when you press channel up.\u00a0 Can you tell me which light is flashing?<\/p>\n
Mom: I don’t see any lights on the top.\u00a0 Wait… there is a light flashing at the bottom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
She’s holding it backwards.\u00a0 Fuck me.\u00a0 What button did she press?<\/p>\n
Mom: Now the screen is all black on the top half, and yellow, green and blue on the bottom half.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
God, please take me now.\u00a0 Make the pain stop.<\/p>\n
The thing that really terrifies me, though: In another 30 years, will my son be getting frustrating calls from his insufferably slow-witted and senile dad, having trouble with his synth-food taste-o-mat again?<\/p>\n
The manufacturers need to start designing electronics with the all the complicated controls locked-down, and hidden away.\u00a0 She needs a single remote, with big fat buttons, and no more than 7 of them: watch TV, play DVD, channel up\/down, volume up\/down, and off.<\/p>\n
The following buttons are hereby banned from old-people remotes:<\/p>\n
\n
- input<\/li>\n
- menu<\/li>\n
- setup<\/li>\n
- tv\/video<\/li>\n
- subtitles<\/li>\n
- buttons to select one particular device to control (TV, Cable, VCR, DVD)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
On-screen program guide: banned.\u00a0 It’s another mode, and it confuses her.<\/p>\n
A partial solution: the Harmony remote<\/h3>\n
In theory, I could get much of what I wish for using something like a Harmony remote, with its activity-based programming, which I love.\u00a0 But those remotes have to track so much state, and sometimes they get out-of-sync.\u00a0 Sometimes an infrared message is lost because the remote was pointing the wrong direction.\u00a0 Sometimes one of the devices gets manipulated using its own remote or front panel, instead of the Harmony remote.<\/p>\n
I have a Harmony remote at my place.\u00a0 When my Mom visits my place and tries to use it, it’s always getting messed up.\u00a0 The cable box is off, when the Harmony thinks it’s on.\u00a0 And I get a phone call… I mean, I get called to the living room.<\/p>\n
One simple thing the manufacturers could do to make the Harmony thing work out better is just to make sure all infrared command codes are idempotent.\u00a0 That’s a math term that means if you do something twice, it has the same effect as if you did it once.\u00a0 In practical terms, it means there have to be separate IR codes for Off and On.\u00a0 That way if the Harmony remote wants the cable-box on, it can just send the On code.\u00a0 It doesn’t matter whether the box was on or off before, it will still be on after.\u00a0 A non-idempotent version would be a single On\/Off command that toggles the state.\u00a0 That’s no good.\u00a0 The Harmony very easily gets out of sync when an On\/Off toggle command is the only thing it has to work with.<\/p>\n
Similarly with other commands like Input select.\u00a0 Having a single command that cycles circularly through the inputs is no good.\u00a0 You need a separate command for each input, you can’t go wrong.\u00a0 That’s the idea of idempotence.<\/p>\n
My Sony TV at home has both idempotent and non-idempotent IR commands.\u00a0 The non-idempotent ones are used by the remote that came with TV, so it has fewer buttons (power on\/off, instead of separate on and off buttons).\u00a0 But it also has idempotent On and Off commands, and separate Video 1, Video 2, etc, commands.\u00a0 These commands aren’t on the Sony remote, but the TV understands them.\u00a0 The Harmony uses them.\u00a0 It works out great.\u00a0 I never have a problem with the Harmony getting out-of-sync with the TV.<\/p>\n
But my Scientific Atlanta cable box has many non-idempotent commands.\u00a0 So does my iPod dock.\u00a0 They’re always getting out of sync with the Harmony.\u00a0 It’s so annoying that I actually changed the Harmony programming so it never shuts off the cable box at all.\u00a0 I just leave it on all the time.\u00a0 I even set it so that it turns itself on automatically after a power-failure.<\/p>\n
If the manufacturers could just commit to supporting idempotent IR commands in all devices, we’d be much farther ahead.\u00a0 Then the activity-based programmable remote would be a very practical solution to the old-people electronics quagmire.\u00a0 We’d just need Harmony to build us a version with just 7 or 8 big-ass buttons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As our population ages, here’s one feature that consumer electronics makers really have to start thinking about: lock-down modes for old people. I need a way to set up my Mom’s TV, cable box and DVD player in such a way that she can’t possibly screw it up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[76,78,79,77],"class_list":["post-522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","tag-consumer-electronics","tag-harmony","tag-harmony-remote","tag-remote-control"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":749,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions\/749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}