This is my second program to use a tablet as a remote control. The first one (read here for additional infos) was based on a simple IR-Led plus resistor, placed on the “hidden” serial port present on the tablet’s dongle. Such solution was very cheap, but needed for some firmware modding and and for dongle opening, to solder wires on (sometimes) difficult points. So, I modified the software (and the hardware) to make it easier to install on every “original” Android tablet. The only mandatory request is that the tablet must have a “driver” for USB to RS232 interfaces. I tried with units based on popular PL2303 chip (from Prolific) or CP210x chips (from Silicon Labs) and both were detected (as ttyUSB5). The whole system is shown in the picture below :

Note that the “dongle” is open, but it’s only ‘cause all my devices are always “under testing” 🙂 . You don’t need to “look inside”, just plug the USB to RS232 interface in the USB socket and go. Note that the interface shown in the picture is based on PL2303 chip. Obviously, the USB to RS232 isn’t enough to send SIRC commands to your TV. You must build (or ask to a friend to build for you) this VERY SIMPLE interface :

As you can see, there is one DB9-F connector (for RS232), one resistor, one IR-Led and one diode. With such components, I can control my Sony Bravia TV from up to 1.5 meters distance (aiming the receiver spot). If you add some active components (transistors), that distance can be widely enlarged.

Well, now let’s look at the software. When you install the apk on your tablet and start the program, you will receive a screen like this :

The program was written for 800×480 screen tablets, landscape orientation. For my tests I used a LAVA 7″ (original firmware) tablet. This tablet recognized the USB to RS232 interface and assigned the /dev/ttyUSB5 name to it. My program, actually, uses this name as fixed setting. It will NOT work if the interface is recognized with another name (you will receive an error). Obviously, this can be modified, but I will do it in a next release.

In the “display” box, you can see “cmd: 21” ; this is the default command the device will send to your TV when you touch the button “Send”. This command is the TV-On or TV-Off. If you want modify the command, for example to send a Channel+, type on the numeric keys “16” then touch “Set” and your display will show “cmd:16”. Now, touching “Send” will send the command to your TV that will ( if powered-on ! ) skip on next channel. The “Can” key will erase a bad typed number. Note that this behaviour isn’t particular “user friendly”, just ‘cause I developed the program as a “tool” for my experiments. Not a problem to write some “fixed” keys, more user friendly  🙂

For a list of available commands, you can take a look at the following picture (the red rectangle at the right) :

Note that all the images in this article can be enlarged clicking on the miniatures.

Finally, the apk to be installed can be download directly from this link. It doesn’t exists on “the market”, ‘cause I don’t like that way to distribute software. I think it’s too monopolistic way and I don’t agree with such terms. So, the disclaimer is : TRY THIS PROGRAM AT YOUR OWN RISK… it’s my original work, and is not certified or approved by others than me 🙂

Hello, I purchased an old, used, working tablet based on obsolete processor WM8505. Why an obsolete model ? The reason is very simple : there is, on the internet, a full datasheet of the processor and good documentation, in general. When new products reach the market, they are still very technical, so well documented and simple to use. When it goes to be a business, the “commercials” come in and say to technicians : “you must hide all the infos and introduce some strange key to make impossible for anyone to look inside”. This is ‘cause the “commercials” are not able to produce ideas, they are able just to speak about things they can’t understand, and always have blinded vision of the future. Someone, any time, breaks the locks and looks inside,  ‘cause the “perfect lock” doesn’t exists. The result of this stupid behaviour is that the mankind is slowered and uses 20 years to reach the results that can be achieved in two. But the “commercials” are so happy, they sell and make big business. Absolutely haven’t a long view into the future.

Ok, I opened my tablet, just for look what’s inside. Here is a picture :

Just in the middle, you can see the “coreboard”, the hearth of the system, with the processor, the SPI flash with boot program, the ram, the oscillators and … the NAND FLASH ?  I can’t see the NAND flash, the “hard disk” of my tablet. Where is the NAND flash ?

ooooh, I found it, Is on a small board, hidden under the main board. But… there are only four wires ! Naaah, the NAND flash is a very common USB memory key ! That’s incredible, so the boot program in SPI flash is able to launch the system from an USB memory… VERY interesting !

I decided to disconnect the module from the tablet and wire it to a standard USB plug, in order to analyze it with my PC.

So, now I have an USB memory key with the hard disk of my tablet… Immediatly put in my PC and use the program Win32 Disk Imager, it’s open source, it’s simple, it works very well. I create a copy (img) of full pendrive and saved to disk for cloning on another USB memory key. Obviously, for using a standard usb memory key, I mounted a female usb plug in the tablet, using the 4 wires where was attached the original board. I used a 4GB memory key as destination of image file and tried to restart my tablet with such pendrive…

Ok, wires are connected, try to boot the tablet :

Uhmmm, animation starts, but continues “ad libitum” without starting the Android OS. There must be something wrong. Now, I extracted my pendrive and put it in another PC, running Puppy Linux. This is for a simple reason, Puppy Linux is my favourite “distro” and has the great GParted program, a powerful application to “look” inside disks and partitions. Inserting the pendrive, I discovered that has MANY partitions inside !

I see the main partition (the start) hasn’t the ‘boot’ flag. May be that’s the reason for tablet not starting ? Mmhh, let’s try to check. Modified the flags adding the ‘bootable’ to the first partition, then extracted the pendrive and tried again on the tablet…

WOW, now it works ! Ok, now, coming back to the Puppy Linux, I looked at all the partitions and the contents. First, the partitions list:

and now, the contents of each one : first SDB1

then, SDB5

then, SDB6

then, SDB7

and, finally, the SDB8

This is our “localDisk” ! Now, the original NAND flash was 2 GB and I have the new one that is 4GB, so i will resize the partition, using the GParted going from this situation :

to this new organization, filling all available space :

OK, all done. Now back again to the tablet and reboot. The led lights, the system starts…

And now, let’s go to measure how big is our LocalDisk 🙂

Wow… very good. Now, I can’t have an USB memory key attached to my tablet, so I opened the pendrive’s case and discovered that the small board inside is VERY similar to the original one…

So, I desoldered the USB plug and soldered the new circuit in place of the old one. All worked perfectly, tablet closed, disk space doubled.