Source: https://bsky.app/profile/funnysnarkyjoke.bsky.social/post/3lmkfwebeuc27
In fact you can use your smartphone to change the channel on nearly any TV. In the comments on that post some people talk about how to do it. Basically you need a smartphone with either builtin IR or use a USB-C IR blaster or if your phone has a 3.5mm headphone jack you can also try one of those but I’m not sure if the 3.5mm ones are as commonly supported.
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In the early 2010s some flagship Android phones came with IR blasters built-in. You could turn off any TV anywhere, simply by pulling out your phone.
I miss the days when smartphones were fun.
You can still get Androids with them. My phone has one. Only a year or two old.
I would but I made the mistake of giving a foldable a try (got myself a used Samsung Fold 4 for $400). I got too used to having a tablet in my pocket and now I can’t go back.
Problem is that foldables are still niche and a fold with an IR blaster is even more niche. Doubt that any exist but I’d love to be proven wrong.
Apparently my honour V3 fold has one. Have yet to try it though
Nice, which one is it?
Poco F5
OnePlus 13 came with an IR remote app, but I haven’t tested it.
There’s no reason we can’t make IR stuff a phone accessory. Let’s make a flipper zero phone accessory. Control it with a webUI so that Apple and Google can’t block companion apps by claiming “oh noes, teh Hakurz”
I pissed off so many people with this. 14 year old me had a lot of fun.
my xiaomi has one
My Jelly Star (tiny cellphone) had an ir blaster. I had a lot of fun with it until the screen on it stopped working. It still is a decent phone, and I would consider getting another except the warranty process was kinda crap.
It was really handy.
I had power, source selection, and volume controls for my TV as a widget on my homescreen.
I have a 2024 OnePlus 12 that had an IR blaster, just FYI
Flipper Zero ftw
Really expensive for the use case.
I considered it recently but then the flipper zero community was like “Spend $15 bucks for a universal remote man.”
haha im in the middle of switching careers into IT/CS and I figured it would be a good investment for the future or at least to tinker with. I’ve just had to focus on other things for certs I need, so no time to really dive into it.
I have one, for a year now or so. But haven’t use dit much really. And now the flipper one is announced. So I wished I waited and bought that one instead.
I really need to get one.
I’d wait a bit. The flipper one is announced.
Citation needed. All I can find are YouTube videos from random accounts that aren’t Flipper Devices. Nothing in writing and especially not from the company.
Apparently it was announced but later removed from their website. See this article
And I need to learn to use mine better. All I got is a couple of neat magic tricks like turning off TVs or scanning people’s cats lol
Just been too busy learning other things lately I guess
scanning people’s cats
… Pardon?
haha some people have their pets microchipped so they can be scanned and returned to the owner if lost. If you run the flipper over the right spot (and in the right mode), generally between the shoulder blades, it’ll tell you if they’re chipped and read out some of the data.
if chip == True: print("is cat") else: print("might not be cat")
Yeah same here. Not really using it for anything other than that. Oh and opening tesla charge ports.
I was at a hospital waiting room one night for an ex’s mother’s injury. I’m not family so I had to wait in the waiting room, which had Fox News blaring. They wouldn’t change it. I couldn’t change it. But I could unplug all the TVs.
Nurse ratchet did not like that one bit.
I sometimes (jokingly) wonder if Hospitals show Fox News to try to get repeat business, and I don’t mean repeat business due to people who enjoy Fox coming back, I mean due to health complications caused by the stress of watching it.
Watching fox news does not cause you stress. It causes stress for all the people around you.
My grandpa got a dose of fox news for a while, and it took a long conversation to convince him that there is not a county in Michigan that is more that 50% Somali immigrants.
I think it depends on the person how they react.
These are some interesting articles: https://mhanational.org/resources/negative-news-coverage-and-mental-health/
In fact you can use your smartphone to change the channel on nearly any TV. In the comments on that post some people talk about how to do it. Basically you need a smartphone with either builtin IR or use a USB
I don’t think have seen phone with built in IR in a decade.
Oppo is still including them
And Xiaomi, Oneplus R series.
I saw a video on a new budget phone recently that had IR. I think only the Chinese brands like Xiaomi, Vivo, and OnePlus are the ones carrying the torch at this point… But not even on all phones they release.
I carried around my old HTC One M7 in my laptop bag for YEARS after I had upgraded explicitly for the IR blaster. It’s probably in there still right now in fact.
Yeah, since it was mostly used for data connections between phones. It was replaced once bluetooth got a little bit better.
The last one with IR I had was a Siemens mobile. Not even a smart phone. That was about 25ish years ago.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Android+usbc+ir+blaster
Me either, but the phone will commonly have a USV-C port
The middle school that I went to had a ~14" crt tv hanging from a sturdy ceiling mount in every classroom.
Displayed things like school bulletins and daily morning announcements, there was a couple educational channels, and a vcr input. Every now and again there’d be some sort of presentation instead of hauling everyone into the gym for a school assembly.
Anyway; it didn’t take me very long to figure out the universal remote that came with the satellite receiver at home could be programmed to the school TVs. I’d mess with the one in class, or skip classes and mess with the ones in my friends classrooms through the windows; cranking up the volume and blasting Bill Nye or the announcement channels awful elevator music. Weekends, I’d do a lap of the school turning on all the TVs I could reach from outside and maxing the volume for whoever opens on Monday, or just turning them off again so it blares at whoever turns it on next.
You fucking menace. I love the chaotic energy lol. You pull any more stunts like that one?
Stick a piece of tape on the bottom of laser mice. It stops them from being able to detect motion.
Screenshot your buddies desktop, then save that image to the desktop. Set it as the desktop background. Now right click, select “view” i think, and click “show desktop icons”. In theory, nothing should noticably change. But now you can no longer actually click on the icons on the desktop. To take it further, open task manager. Find “explorer.exe” and kill it. Now, you cant even right click to reshow desktop icons.
Easy fix to that is to reboot the computer, but you can also just reopen task manager, start a new process “explorer.exe”, and then reshow desktop icons.
You can find a website that has fake versions of windows update screens. Load one of those, hit f11 to fullscreen your page, and enjoy as your friend waits for three hours at a bar that has only gone up 2%.
Open task scheduler. Add a new task. Set it to run every day at like 2 pm. Have it set volume to 3/4, then open firefox with the extra command “https://www.youtube.com/watch/dQw…” and you will have a great time.
For a more malicious prank, get a syringe. Fill it with raw egg. Inject this into the seats of some assholes car. Within two days, their car is not able to be sat in without the windows down, and even then it is horrible. They cannot figure out where the smell is coming from, and even if they do, they have to replace the seat. Optionally you can just throw a dead fish into their gutter, they wont find it for a couple days at least, and it will permanantly make their entire yard smell.
Now rotate the screenshot of the desktop 180 degrees before setting as thd desktop, then rotate the display output 180 degrees. Now the mouse also appears to go backwards. If they step away after having a go, add a screenshot of display settings to the background image so they click all over that when they get back.
The egg one… My god… Remind me not to piss you off
Pull the tab off of a pop can. Turn off the switch on the power bar that the teachers computer is plugged into. Unplug the computer, slip the pop can tab over the live+neutral prongs, plug it back into the still off power bar and wait.
The teacher goes to use their computer, finds it’s not turning on and looks at the power bar.
Switch flips, ‘BANG’, scream, lights go out (breaker popped).
That escalated quickly.
“Hey, any more fun pranks?”
“Well here’s how I got into arson”
Na, the aluminum acts as a fuse and breaks the circuit almost immediately. It makes a bright flash and a loud sound, but it’s over in a second with no real harm.
That’s not to say I’m recommending this at all, it’s definitely a pretty stupid prank; just that it doesn’t cause nearly as much damage as you might think.
Kids have lots of stupid ideas and saftey isn’t exactly the first thing they consider…
At least I never heated the handles of the tool cabinets with the blow torch in shop class. Had two separate classmates pull that ‘prank’.
Did you go to school in a mad max film?
Just a small Canadian town with very little else to do…
This school used to put students on detention in the office where the secretary + principal could keep an eye on them (so the teachers actually got a break instead of classes then detention supervision). For some reason the room they’d put you in also had a display for all the cameras in the school, just slowly flipping between each one.
Just meant all the school bullies, pranksters, and general troublemakers knew exactly where to stand so they weren’t caught on camera XD
it doesn’t cause nearly as much damage as you might think
That is horrible advice and could start a fire. Remember that children and idiots are reading.
To act as a fuse, the tab needs to reach 660 degrees celsius, and if the breaker pops, that means the breaker acted as the fuse.
To act as a fuse, the tab needs to reach 660 degrees celsius, and if the breaker pops, that means the breaker acted as the fuse.
I can tell you from experience; both occur.
Such a thin piece of aluminum across 120vac super heats so quickly that it basically vaporizes, faster than the breaker can react. That metal vapor allows an arch to form still passing excess current which is what finally trips the breaker. (standard breakers take time to trip, longer than fuses in many cases; this is intentional design. GFCI breakers are a different story.) Sometimes this arc doesn’t form and the breaker doesn’t trip; but it usually does.
Once tripped, the vapor has time to dissipate so the short clears and the breaker can be turned back on.
None of this is advice. Someone asked about dumb pranks I’ve pulled in school. I’m just discussing the past; not making recommendations for the future.
No it would make contact before the computer is even switched on. Edgelord over here is making shit up. I bet he’s wearing a fedora too.
…isn’t there a 3.5mm jack silencer you can buy? Searching now and I can’t find it, but I could have sworn when I was in highschool (y’know, like 25 thousand years ago) you could order a bag of like 50 of them for like $10.
It was just a 3.5mm audio plug with matte black plastic cap on the end, so you’d plug it into a TV’s headphone jack and some models of TVs would be permanently silenced until someone unplugged the cap, because it was sending its audio to the ‘speakers’ that were just plugged in. And once plugged in, it just looked like a screw cover cap - nothing protruding. But also didn’t damage anything, so you couldn’t get in any real trouble for doing it.
…am I just imagining shit? If anyone knows what I’m talking about and figure out the magic search terms to actually pull it up, please drop a link to a product that can be ordered.
Edit - for visibility, I posted this comment as its own thread over on Ask.
That’s so evil I love it
So you could make your own by buying 3.5mm jacks and wiring a 2-4 ohm resistor (whatever standard headphone resistance is) in it to simulate the headphone, then just plug it in. Kindof a bother I guess to make, carry, and then obviously hunt around the back of a tv to install one, but it certainly could be done.
Instead of the TV-B-Gone, there should be a TV-1-Channel-Up device that just changes the channel. If the TV in the doctor’s office turns off, it will get noticed by the reception desk and probably be turned back on in a few minutes. If the TV is on a different channel, the desk is much less likely to notice any time soon (at least not before you’ve been called back into the exam room).
TVs at my local doctors office took the prescription commercials to a new level and now just run an ad feed all day.
There is this place I unfortunately have to go to a lot that always has Fox News on really loud and a bunch of white dude boomers watching it. April was glorious. They had the weather channel on lmao but it’s back now
If you work someplace with public-facing tv’s, the weather channel is a fucking godsend. If it’s on a news station, entitled boomers will want it on their news station. If it’s on weather, well, it’s just the weather.
Oh you mean the woke channel that keeps insisting that this year is hotter than it was when I was growing up‽ Global warming is a socialist conspiracy and the weather channel is in on it! /s
From experience, that channel stays where you put it more reliably than any other. It’s not merely inoffensive, it’s bland. It draws attention away from itself.
When entitled people change the channel, they first have to register that there’s even a tv present. The weather channel camouflages public televisions as bland information kiosks that dispense information you already have on your phone. Not only that, since no one would intentionally put on the weather channel, it has the air of being required by policy, so some of the karens who are capable of shame will leave it alone.
Wait, what happened in April and has changed again since?
Stock market looked like complete shit and no amount of spin control could hide it, to the point where one day Fox literally removed their stock ticker for the first time in decades
That’s really annoying. Do you think they’d notice you using your phone to change the station and possible remove Fox from the channel list? Is there windows in the building with the TVs? There are some high power IR blasters that might let you change it from outside.
It would be funny to block the channel ngl but I don’t know what they’re using to get fox specifically. A lot of cable news is now part of a digital tv package, so TV access isn’t enough. I’d need to get to their verizon/AT&T/etc. box which usually operates independently through the HDMI.
That’s right but it doesn’t necessarily mean that access is impossible, just need the codes for the box instead of the TV assuming it has an infrared sensor on the box.
True true
my universal remote ✂️
This is the second best thing I do with my Flipper Zero after reading pet RFID chips
I read about the Flipper Zero and it seems really awesome! I even saw some high power LEDs for it that could in theory change the channel from a long distance.
Yep I keep it in my pocket with just the IR sensor sticking out and use the app on your phone to control it and it keeps people from ever suspecting me as the one who just turned off that annoying noise.
Samsung Android phones use to include an IR blaster. I use to install a universal remote app on my phone and change the channels anywhere Fox News was on and nobody could tell because nobody suspected the smart phone.
Me too, I call it a flipper 0. I can also skip songs on the jukebox at the bar, fear me.
I use the kit-built one of these: https://www.tvbgone.com/shop/ – They gave a bunch of them away at the end of a makefaire I was a part of years ago.
These are amazing. I regularly use mine to shut off the “CP24” channel (news +ads +weather +ads +traffic +more ads, in the Toronto area) anywhere I go. I think nobody actually likes that shit but we all tolerate it because we think other people do.
The TV-B-Gone is really cool especially because it’s so small but of course it just shuts off the TV. I’ve seen a few keychain sized universal remotes that have buttons.
I just wrote a comment in reply to someone suggesting unplugging the TV: https://lemm.ee/post/65246982/20771041
Basically it’s nice that you get peace and quiet but turning it off is more noticeable.
the tv-b-gone is more universal than a universal remote….
my favorite trick is going to one of those bars with 30 tv sets everywhere… although that’s just kind of neutral-evil
How do you know if your phone has built in IR?
GSMarena has specs for most smartphones including infrared (listed under connectivity).
Here’s a link to a search showing all phones in their database with IR: https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?chkInfrared=selected note I haven’t checked accuracy or completeness, it might be best to check the specs for your phone or search if your phone supports it.
If you got an old phone or an old PDA it might have IR if your current one doesn’t.
Check the specs or look for the blaster with another phone
edit: forgot that it’s only visible when on, so just check the specs/apps
