Channel-changing “most useful” machine

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Becky Stern is a Content Creator at Autodesk/Instructables, and part time faculty at New York’s School of Visual Arts Products of Design grad program. Making and sharing are her two biggest passions, and she's created hundreds of free online DIY tutorials and videos, mostly about technology and its intersection with crafts. Find her @bekathwia on YouTube/Twitter/Instagram.

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August 13th, 2010 2

Randy Sarafan made this simple automated button pusher, which presses the “channel up” button on a TV remote once every minute.

I bet he has pressed the channel-up button thousands, if not tens-of-thousands, of times. That’s a lot of effort being exerted to change the channel. But what if that effort was not necessary? What if there was a way to change the channel without ever exerting the effort it took to press the button? What if there was a machine that pressed the button for you once per minute? Well then, perhaps, just maybe, that would be The Most Useful Machine… EVER!

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2 thoughts on “Channel-changing “most useful” machine”

MauiMaker says:

August 13th, 2010 at 12:06 pm

take this same idea but use the TV-B-Gone tech to create an IR transmitter that accomplishes the same result without effort to a) find the original remote and b) position the robot properly over the remote.

Now take that ir xmitter and hide it at your ex’s house.