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How to “transform” your smartphone into a TV remote control: the technology that makes it possible

The smartphones can be “transformed” into TV remote controls using two main technologies: infrared And WiFi. Although the use of infrared to send encoded signals to the TV is less and less common in modern devices, it remains a potentially viable “road” through the use of IR blaster adapters coupled with specific apps with which to issue the actual commands. The simplest way to use your phone as a remote control, however, is to use Wi-Fi: by connecting your smartphone and Smart TV to the same wireless network, the two devices are able to communicate with each other. To ensure security, many Smart TVs require a process pairingby entering a PIN or scanning a QR code. Once the pairing process has been completed, the TV can be perfectly controlled from your smartphone, which is effectively transformed into a touch-screen remote control.

Transform your smartphone into a TV remote control with infrared

The use of the smartphone as a TV remote control can be carried out by using various technologies: some more “traditional”, others decidedly more in step with the times.

The first category certainly includes cell phones equipped with a IR blaster or infrared blaster which, taking advantage of the infrared rays.

To go into more detail, the commands sent via the IR blaster are nothing more than simple pulsations of infrared light (not visible to the naked eye but, using a digital camera, yes) at a specific frequency. When the user presses a button on the control app that he has downloaded onto his device (the ones we referred to in the previous paragraph), the smartphone sends a coded sequence of these infrared signals which represents the command (for example, increase the volume or change channel).

The television, using a sensor that “receives” these signals, decodes them and transforms them into executable commands. Each command (such as power, volume, channel navigation, and so on) is associated with a unique code.

It must be said that this solution has become increasingly less practicable over the last few years, as the IR blaster is a hardware component that has almost completely disappeared from the mobile scene, even if it is potentially possible to transform any smartphone into an infrared remote control by purchasing – online or in the most well-stocked electronics stores – a USB-C to infrared adapter to then be associated with one of the many remote control apps available in the Google and Apple stores.

Turn your smartphone into a TV remote control with Wi-Fi

The alternative to using an IR blaster is the Wi-Fi technology which, thanks to the diffusion of Smart TVsin fact, represents the simplest way to control your television from your phone. In this case, again using an app that acts as a “bridge” between the mobile device and the television, commands are transmitted using the Wi-Fi protocol. In order for the TV to be able to receive commands given by the smartphone, the latter must be connected to the same wireless network to which the mobile device is connected.

In fact, data transmission occurs via the local network or LAN (Local Area Network). When the smartphone and the TV are connected to the same Wi-Fi network, the remote control application sends packets that contain commands given by the user and are transmitted by the network router. Modern Smart TVs are equipped with network modules (Wi-Fi or Ethernet) that make them “addressable” within the local network.

The application on the smartphone, therefore, by sending a command request, ensures that the receiving TV interprets the given command via its operating system, executing it immediately afterwards. To prevent unauthorized devices from controlling the TV, many Smart TVs require an initial pairing process, also called pairingbetween the smartphone and the TV itself. During this process, the TV may ask you to enter a PIN or scan a QR Code displayed on your TV screen directly in your phone app to authenticate your device.

Speaking of apps for controlling the TV via Wi-Fi, the manufacturers themselves often provide a “companion”. This is the case, for example, of Samsung TVs who use the SmartThings app and LG TVs who use the LG ThinQ app.

By the way, below we leave you a video tutorial created by Samsung which explains the use of the SmartThings app (also compatible for the record with many non-Samsung TVs), so that you can have an even clearer understanding of the procedure to follow.