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0 pointsZigurd4d ago0 comments

My father was an engineer at Zenith when they were developing the Space Command TV remote control. This was a couple years before I was born, so by the time I got interested in hacking, Zenith TVs with this remote were commonplace. When visiting my friends homes I would prank them by jangling my keys and making the TV louder or quieter and randomly change channels. This presents new opportunities.

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mmooss4d ago

Wow, I never heard of these. They operated on sound. Here's an article with photos, including some internals and the history of its engineering:

https://www.theverge.com/23810061/zenith-space-command-remot...

I wonder how reliable they were?

MrEricSir4d ago

Not very reliable. The remote only had four buttons (volume up/down, channel up/down) and various sounds like kitchen appliances, flushing toilets, and jingling keys would be interpreted as remote control actions by the TV.

My grandfather had one; he seemed to find it more entertaining to talk to people about it than to actual use it.

jacquesm4d ago

Blaupunkt (in the early 80s) had a similar system which was a lot more reliable also based on ultrasound, they used an encoding that was a bit less likely to show up in normal environmental sounds.

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