Direction-based Wireless Remote Controller: A Smartphone Application

 

Hsiao-Han Chen1, Yi-Bing Lin1, Yingrong Coral Sung2 and Ren-Huang Liou1

 

1Department of Computer Science

National Chiao Tung University

Hsinchu, Taiwan

{chenhh, liny, rhliou}@cs.nctu.edu.tw

 

2Information & Communications Technology Lab

National Chiao Tung University

Hsinchu, Taiwan

ycsung@nctu.edu.tw

 

 

Abstract

 

Recently, smartphones have been used as remote controllers for home appliances

through connectivity of mobile telecom network or Wi-Fi. To control several home appliances in a room,

a mechanism is required for a smartphone to correctly select the target appliance. Through the built-in

electronic compass function in the smartphone, we propose a scheme called Point-and-Control (PnC)

that allows a user to select a home appliance by pointing the smartphone to that home appliance. In

this paper, we design the PnC and show the performance of this solution. Our study indicates that

the PnC can effectively achieve the remote control function.

 

Keywords: electronic compass, positioning algorithm, remote controller, smartphone application

 

Journal of Wireless Mobile Networks, Ubiquitous Computing, and Dependable Applications (JoWUA),

Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 33-45, June 2011 [pdf]