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Universal Air Remote Control

Gone are the days of having several remotes cluttering up your coffee table for all of the electronic devices making up your home entertainment system. A universal remote is capable of simultaneous control over these devices, regardless of whether they're from the same manufacturers or not.

Acting as signal transmitters, universal remotes (as well as traditional remotes) leverage pulses of infrared light to carry a signal with binary code representing instructions or commands to be interpreted by a receiver, which is built into the target electronic device that a user wishes to control. In other words, think of the remote as a parent and your television as the child. The parent must give its child instructions for how to act and what to do, while the child must know how to interpret those instructions properly. Remotes and televisions are a bit different than human parents and children, but the idea resonates.

Instructions from a remote are transmitted using signal modulation, which the receiver interprets as a set of commands to be performed. Different manufacturers use different signal strengths and modulations for transmitting commands to a particular device. What gives the universal remote an edge over more traditional infrared remote controls is in its ability to store programmable memory, which allows it to recognize a variety of command codes for operating many devices.

Universal remotes fall into one of two categories, pre-programmed or learning varieties. A pre-programmed universal remote is designed to work with a set number of device types or brands, each with their own unique device codes. While this may seem like a limitation, keep in mind that major manufacturers don't often change the device codes associated with their products. This means, for example, that a Sony television or audio system purchased in the mid-1990s can still interface with a modern, pre-programmed universal remote because the device code has remained the same. When a user purchases a pre-programmed remote, it comes with a code table that can be used to program the device using its keypad. Learning remotes store signals coming from other teaching remotes.

A teaching remote is simply one with a particular code or function to which the learning device can bind itself. This is accomplished by holding down a programming key on the learning remote while simultaneously pressing the equivalent function key on the teaching remote. This allows the learning remote to recognize functions not supported by default for a particular device, which means that it can control devices that it wasn't originally designed to control in the first place.

The layout of a typical universal remote includes dedicated power, volume, VCR, and DVD keys as well as a numeric keypad and a switch or series of buttons to select a particular device at a given time. Many universal remotes are also compatible with PCs through the use of universal serial bus (USB) cables for online programming. Some remotes even feature built-in LCD touchscreens and are also Wi-Fi enabled, allowing users to access their wireless networks, view channel listings, news, and sports updates directly from the remote itself.