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Wireless, battery powered control panel?
Danny R:
I have a PC hooked to my home entertainment system. Until now I've just used it to play MP3's and watch the occassional movie.
However sitting on my cushy couch with a control panel in my lap and playing my favorite arcade game would also be nice. The problem is that my seat is about 15' away from the computer. And if I wanted to play multiplayer games, it would be nice to have folks not all crowded on the same couch, which means separate remote control panels, all also pretty distant from the PC.
Thus I was wondering if there was a way to have a control panel run wirelessly? I'm pretty sure I can figure out how to use batteries for the power for each station and even have it so I can plug it in an automatically recharge when not in use. What I don't know how to do is getting the other signals broadcast over. Thus I'm hoping for ideas.
The first idea that came to mind is to do the old keyboard/mouse hacks that were available before the i-pac... but use a wireless keyboard or mouse. However I've yet to find a good one of these that operate reliably at 15 feet.
One possible solution is to have each remote control panel have its own i-pac, etc and this is all plugged into some sort of USB extender that runs wirelessly (if such even exists). Thus the PC thinks I'm plugging in a standard USB device and no real configuration is needed.
Another solution is to have a single i-pac plugged into the PC, but the signals from all the remote switches are wirelessly broadcast to some sort of adaptor plugged into the i-pac itself. Again I don't know if such exists of if its easy to implement.
Any other solutions come to mind?
Goz:
You should be able to use a wireless bluetooth keyboard. They are good for about 30ft and do not require line of sight. It works through walls.. it should work fine.
Microsoft makes a decent one:
http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/productdetails.aspx?pid=013#
Hope this helps,
-Goz
Tiger-Heli:
USB keyboard hacks will not work and are a bad idea, I've never heard of a wireless keyboard hack, but since it's newer technology than the USB keyboards, I am somewhat skeptical of the likelihood of success.
Danny R:
USB keyboard hacks will not work and are a bad idea
I did a search for "USB keyboard hack" but didn't find anything about the problem of using such. Can you elaborate on why it won't work?
NoOne=NBA=:
Another option would be to just use a 25' USB cable, and strategically place a rug over it for the traffic area.
That's what I used to do when I'd play on my big screen.
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