It’s been a wonderful and amazing journey getting to today. I have grown my knowledge, experience, and depth more than I can possibly describe. The biggest hurdle was not technical, it was not money, it was not time, it was persistence. Never giving up. I would often wondered if this would make any money, if people would like it, and if it’s even worth doing. It was, even if I don’t sell any, it was. Turning an idea into reality is not hard, but the magnitude and difference in turning that idea into a product is indescribable.

I have just placed my first order for production which will be for sale to anyone in the US on February 1st (at the latest).

The internal battle of how to release the application to the world is on-going. As I have strongly benefited from a number of open source projects, I am leaning towards releasing all source code to every application I release that utilizes flirc. The only thing that will remain closed, is the firmware.

A special thanks to my wonderful and beautiful wife, who’s constant support and love has made everything I do possible.

I try to get the most out of my media server which doubles as my webserver. I use it to stream videos, for web mount hard drives, and since it’s always on, for downloading torrents.

Here is a handy Apple Script I created which automatically moves your downloaded torrents to your dropbox folder. Set up your torrent application (I use transmission) to automatically watch the dropbox folder for new torrents.

The end result, I download a torrent on any of my macs, they automatically start downloading on my server.

Here is the apple script code:

Drop this in /Library/Scripts/Folder Actions/

Then on both your Desktop and Downloads folder, right click and select Folder Action Setup…

Then select the apple script you saved this as in /Library/Scripts/Folder Actions/

— UPDATE —

I’ve actually had quite a bit of time getting this working on my latest laptop refresh. I believe the problem was due to permissions, however, I’m including a copy of the script that seems to be working. Please report problems and remember to replace the locations to the ones that pertain to you.

Download

This is a great little article on lifehacker.

Shows how to embed a media center into your furniture while discussing how to minimize the disturbing sound that comes from fans.

So now that you have this awesome remote control companion, there is still one underlying problem. Your application quits, or you want to run a different app, but you don’t want to whip out a mouse or keyboard, yuck!

Solution: Alauncher

Alauncher is a free lightweight app that does one simple thing; enter some keyboard shortcut, a list of applications popup.

Here is how to link it up with flirc.

Install  the application and head over to the settings. You want to configure a keyboard shortcut. I use ctrl+a

Add some applications you would like in your quick launch list

Now head over to the terminal, and type in:

flirc record_api 1 4

Press the button on your remote you’d like to link with ctrl+a and presto. Your remote control will now bring up the application launcher like the following:

Are there any other app launchers out there for OSX or other operating systems?  Let us know in the comments.

I’m going to constantly share ways to improve your media center, give all sorts of tips and tricks, and much much more.

Here is a great article from wired (found on lifehacker) which goes into great detail to improve the sound quality of your media center’s surround sound system.

It’s been an amazing roller coaster of fun. From learning various programming techniques, sitting in on libusb development discussions, designing cases, designing software, designing websites, designing circuit boards, designing firmware, and marketing research, I have gained some invaluable experience and friends along this awesome journey.

I’m finally there. Cases are being finalized, and software is being fine tuned. So since this once hobby has finally blossomed into a product, I’m happy to be showing off what exists, and not some paper sketch of an idea.

Check out the site, almost everything is live other than being able to purchase the product or download software.

Since there is no way I can possibly test the small differences in the many operating systems this runs on, or the millions of remotes that exist, I’m initially limiting sales of flirc to only 100 customers who can give some valuable feedback to help smooth out any remaining rough edges.

You will get a 20% discount, so sign up to our newsletter to partake.

I’m so happy and excited to say that my efforts weren’t in vain. This past sunday morning, at 12:00 AM, I successfully communicated with flirc in windows. I was able to send control transfers down to my device and receive back data. This is actually huge news as I never was able to consistently get these results in windows using libusb 0.13 (legacy). A few hours later, I got flirc fully working in Windows. I had to adjust my firmware but it was a quick and subtle fix and took me a while to catch. If I ever open source my project, I’ll be happy to share the details of this one.

Things have gone exceptionally well in *nix. I haven’t had a problem with libusb’s portability until I tried to get up and running in windows. But since I’m nearing the final stages of completing my product, I have to get windows up and running.

I’m going to get a little technical here in hopes that I can save someone else from pulling out their own hair too. I should also say that since I’m so close to finishing, this will reveal a little bit about the product.

Libusb 0.13 has had it’s limitation in windows, particularly with HID devices (hint hint hint). The problem is that windows basically claims HID devices and keeps users from having read/write access. If you want to do any custom commands, you’re SOL. flirc is dependent on having custom commands as it’s natural existence is the ability to have a special instance of a HID device without crippling the same driver assigned to that device by the OS.

OSX and Linux worked great. But I was unable to send any vendor control requests down to the device so I began my long search of trying to figure out why. I enabled debugging, which wasn’t helpful, and eventually contacted the developers of libusb-legacy.

That thread eventually led me to libusb 1.0 where I asked if what I was trying was even possible. They said it should be, and encouraged me to port my application to libusb 1.0. So I started the process, which wasn’t very hard.

After ensuring my application worked on my Mac without a hitch, I booted up windows, recompiled with the correct libraries, and alas, it didn’t work. I’ll save everyone the details, it’s a very long discussion and opened up a thread of ~50 emails with the developers.

The real solution to my problem was to modify my firmware to be a composite device. Nevertheless, that still didn’t work, until finally, we pin pointed the problem and came up with a solution.

If anyone is interested, here is the thread, which is still ongoing.

A very special thanks to Peter Stuge, Xiaofan Chen, and Pete Batard who made this project possible by being so sincerely nice and helpful. Not to mention the endless amounts of work they do on a free open source project, thank you.

I know that any visitor who find this site at this point in time, doesn’t know what flirc is yet. So although a mystery, the only reason I’m keeping anything a secret is for one simple reason. I don’t want to disappoint anyone.

I’m an Apple fan. From the way they plan their products, their attention to detail, and finally, how they inform the public of their new products. I highly admire that approach because there are (well, shouldn’t be) any expectations at the time of the product’s release. However recently, rumors leak before the announcement and fake features overwhelm the public with excitement. All these rumors and possible features build up hope and expectations in the public.

Take for example the popular CES show in Vegas at the beginning of every year. Companies from all over the world come to show their latest creation. Quite frankly, I never hear of half the show’s popular products again. They failed to make it to the market for any number of reasons. Or, worse, they make it to the market, and the features promised or demonstrated on the prototype, are missing from the final product. I hate that, and I know everyone else does.

Designing a product is extremely hard, and Steve Jobs learned early on that dreaming of a product is completely different from creating a product. Many times, a number of engineering challenges are faced in which you realize that the dream will change or modify dynamically over the course of the design. So why tell everyone about a dream. Dream’s are meaningless ideas. The final finished product holds the value.

I’m nearing the final stages of design, and products will be available to purchase at the very second the site goes live. I don’t believe that my product is going to change the way we live. However, it’s solving my number one frustration with an existing problem, and I’m sincerely hoping to have the same impact on others. So rather than having a page demonstrating the products capabilities, I’m designing the product in hopes to meet my own expectations, before having to reach everyone else’s expectations.