While young children have the tiny hands and fingers that most hackers/tinkerers wish they possessed from time to time, their fine motor skills aren’t always up to par when it comes to operating complicated electronics. People are always looking for ways to make their home entertainment systems accessible to their kids, and [Humpadilly] is no exception. Much like some of the other hacks we’ve seen this week, he has devised a way for his little ones (1 and 2 years old) to control his Dreambox Media Player using RFID, which seems to be the go-to technology for this sort of thing.
His RFID remote consists of three major components aside from the media player itself. An Arduino runs the show, and is connected to both an Ethernet shield and a breakout board fitted with an ID-20 RFID reader module. The Ethernet shield allows the Arduino to talk to his Dreambox over a telnet connection, while the RFID reader does what you would expect.
The device is in its infancy at the moment, and while [Humpadilly] hasn’t published a ton of details about the actual RFID devices he is using to control the system, he says that more details and improvements are forthcoming. In the meantime, you can check out his code here.
More (and more and more) serious studies show that it’s in everyone’s best interest to keep the little ones (i.e. under 5 years old) AWAY from all TV’s, Computer’s, etc. Their developing brains can’t deal with the endless flow of non-structured non-relevant information. Too much when too young and you end up with a asocial, unteachable, under achieving kid. Something no parent (and society as a whole) doesn’t need or want.
When I was a kid, my parents had the opposite problem…
Add a Rasberry Pi to this running XBMC as well as a circuit with an IR led to switch components and your kids can watch whatever shows they want whenever they want.
I plan to make a standalone media center out of a RP and have RFID to control it… But I am still waiting to order one from the UK