It will be unfathomable to launch a brand new online game console with out community connectivity at present. However in 1998, when Nintendo launched the Recreation Boy Colour (GBC), Wi-Fi was nonetheless experimental cutting-edge know-how. It will have been extremely costly to incorporate, would have destroyed battery life, and would have made the GBC large. However Nintendo nonetheless needed to incorporate some {hardware} to allow communication between GBC consoles and JinGen Lim took benefit of that {hardware} to repurpose his GBC as a distant management for his air conditioner.
Lim obtained an attractive purple GBC as a present and needed a goal for it past simply gaming. He determined he might use a brand new distant management for his mini-split air conditioner unit. Like most distant controls, that relied on infrared communication and Nintendo simply occurred to incorporate an infrared emitter and receiver on the GBC for communication.
Earlier than continuing, Lim first wanted to find out if this concept was potential. Nintendo designed the GBC’s IR emitter to switch small quantities of information to different consoles, comparable to when buying and selling Pokémon with a pal, however might it modulate that emitter in any arbitrary sequence?
Lim discovered the proof he wanted within the Mission: Unimaginable (2000) recreation for the GBC. Evaluations for that recreation weren’t nice, but it surely consists of a number of spying-adjacent utilities that gamers can use. A few of these, like a “secret” handle ebook, are just like what you’d discover on a PDA (Private Digital Assistant) from the period. However others are extra distinctive and that features IR packages. There may be even a operate for recording and enjoying again infrared sequences, similar to a common distant. Studying that was sufficient for Lim to confirm that his thought would work.
With that data, Lim proceeded with programming his personal customized “recreation” and making a customized GBC cartridge for it. Unique GBC cartridges nearly by no means had rewritable ROM chips, however trendy bootleg normally cartridges do. Lim was capable of seize a kind of bootleg cartridges for a couple of dollars and will then flash his personal ROM utilizing a GBxCart RW. The “recreation” is an easy interface that transmits a particular infrared code, just like the one for “flip the temperature up,” when the person presses the corresponding GBC button.
The ultimate problem was studying the infrared codes. Lim’s air conditioner is a mannequin from Nationwide (a Panasonic model frequent in Asia for many years), however code info wasn’t obtainable on-line. So, Lim soldered a small wire to the unique distant’s infrared transmitter and related that to an oscilloscope. That permit him document the pulses despatched after every button press. He might then plug these codes into his customized GBC recreation.
Now Lim has what is probably going the good air conditioner distant management on the planet.