ZigBee based Dynamic Control Scheme for Multiple Legacy IR Controllable Digital Consumer Devices

A universal remote control (URC) unit is an integrated device for controlling many different CE (consumer electronics) home appliances (with a single one). To control these various CE devices based on IR(infra-red) control signal, the URC unit has to have many preprogrammed control codes for controlling them because they are controlled with many different types of IR profile stated with lead code, control code, carrier frequency, duty cycle, duration and so forth. In this paper, we propose a dynamic control scheme for multiple legacy IR controllable digital CE appliances, which is based on IEEE 802.15.4, especially ZigBee protocol. The proposed scheme uses two main components. One is a URC unit using ZigBee based wireless network technology, WPAN (wireless personal area network). Another is a Z2IR (ZigBee to IR) conversion module which converts a control message transferred through the ZigBee network into an IR typed control signal. In this scheme, the list of CE devices to be controlled by the proposed URC, called as Z-URC (ZigBee based user remote control), is dynamically reconfigured. It is based on his location as a consumer with the proposed Z-URC goes from a room to any other place in his house. And, we apply a novel mechanism to minimize power consumption of the Z2IR module, which is based on ZigBee devices' on/off control mechanism using multiple timers. Furthermore, a user may configure its product and vendor identifiers (IDs) of the home appliance to be controlled by the IR control signal from the module. Based on this feature, the module informs Z-URC target appliance's information.