Arduino Home Automation: Control Your TV, Air Conditioner, Fan, etc. with an Infrared Transmitter

In this video I show an easy and low-cost way to do some home automation. I setup an Arduino with an infrared receiver and transmitter, then use it to control my television and a tower fan. This setup can be used to control pretty much anything that has an infrared remote, even air conditioners. I start by showing three different ways to wire up the circuit: breadboarding with a decoder and low-power LED, breadboarding with a decoder and high-power LED, and finally soldering together an Arduino shield for more permanent use. Then I show how to code the Arduino sketch and test it out. After ensuring things are working correctly, I show how to keep the Arduino from resetting when you connect to its serial port, and then cover how to make batch files that send infrared commands to the microcontroller. Finally I show how to use AutoHotKey to have your computer send those commands whenever you press a certain key on your keyboard. The source code for the Arduino sketch is available here: http://farrellf.com/arduino/infrared.ino This is the infrared LED and receiver that I used in the first part: http://amzn.to/2lZ7pTy For a higher-power LED: http://amzn.to/2lZ6oLk I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.