Raspberry pi as a universal remote

Question

I would like to know if I could use the raspberry pi phone as a universal remote. I am new to the raspberry pi. Would you recommend any parts for the device. If you are familiar with the pi phone them could you recommend any if blasters or batteries.

Answer 1

This is some hardcore serious overkill for a homebrew remote project. you should be able to simply drive a normal IR-LED directly from one of the Digital Out lines on a raspberry pi board ( assuming that the PI phone leaves at-least one spare. ) The power consumption from something like that is a bit larger than what you would expect (therefore you would only get a few hours out of it. ) something like a ardunio would have a significantly longer battery life (and if you get creative and drop a capacitance sensor onto it to turn on and off the Touchscreen if you are holding it or not then you can have it live even longer. )

It is less than ideal due to the current draw from a IR LED, so a more suitable answer would be to run a transistor from the GPIO port and a secondary regulated power source for the LED.