IR Dongle Turns iPhone into Universal Remote

IR Dongle Turns iPhone into Universal Remote

IR Dongle Turns iPhone into Universal Remote


There are a gazillion apps to turn your iPhone into a remote control, and let you operate your computer, your Sonos home music system or even your DirecTV DVR. The problem is, they work over Wi-Fi, whereas your TV, stereo and DVD-players all swallow up infra-red light in order to follow your distant commands.

That changes with the little $50 L5 iPhone Remote, a dongle that plugs into the dock connector and allows you iPhone to become a proper universal remote, spitting invisible light at all manner of home electronics. It comes with a free companion application that lets you program and assign the frequencies, and you can drag and drop the button icons around the screen until you're happy with them.

The first version, which should be shipping soon, has a significant drawback in that you need to teach it the correct signals by pointing your remote, but downloadable, pre-programmed codes will be coming in the future. On this point, the FAQ entry is pretty funny:

In testing, users designed their UI and learned the signals in about 3.5 minutes. In the same amount of time, database users were still trying to read the model numbers off the backs of their A/V devices.

The other problem is cosmetic. The remote app is ugly. That may not worry you, as this will cheaply replace all your remotes with one single device, and it will apparently also work with the iPad. And the iPhone is much less likely to be lost down the back of the sofa.

L5 iPhone Remote [L5 via Uncrate]