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I have this old Hi-Fi speaker system (Philips DC146) that I'm using with my RPi to stream my music with airplay from my phone and I've set up this motor to switch it on/off because it makes some noise when on without playback.

The motor has worked for a while but I do feel the torque getting weaker because of the tension it goes through everytime it acts on the button.

There is an IR remote that controls it but I would like to be able to send those commands from my pi because I've set up speech recognition in my room.

I've looked inside the remote and i wonder if it's possible to use the circuit to control the IR transmitter.

Otherwise, what parts would I need to buy to be able to, say, stick a transmitter to the reciever on the speaker and have it act as the remote??

(If possible, I'd like something simple to install like USB if that exists. Otherwise, a bit of challenge isn't too bad either.) I have found this but I'm not sure whether it's right and if it's possible to extend the distance between it and the pi.

I hope this is the right place to ask my question, there is a lot of information out there and I'm kind of overwhelmed.

Thanks!

(Here are some pictures of the system:) This is the speaker system I'm using (ignore the tape and motor) The remote opened This is what there is under the buttons This is what the circuit board looks like from the bottom

Marcus Hamelink
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    You can 'sniff' all IR code from your original controller and build a circuit on the Pi with an IR LED and transistor on the GPIO for sending your 'sniffed' code. You can do that with audio file also. LIRC is probably the most popular library for do that. – Ephemeral May 10 '20 at 20:16
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    If you look through raspberrypi.org/forums you will find this sort of question asked and answered several time. They have a different criteria for on and off topic questions. – joan May 10 '20 at 20:17
  • Hi @Marcus Hamelink, Welcome and nice to meet you. Ah, let me see. A long while ago I did some IR experiments on an UART IR trasnceiver like yours. You might like to search this forum "IR UART LIRC Transceiver tlfong01" to find my answer. The transceiver I messed around is similar to yours, except it is not a HAT. You IR transceiver HAT seems newbie friend, so I have just now updated my references list with it. Please feel free to ask me any newbie questions, in case your head gets stuck with your HAT and cannot take it off. Cheers. – tlfong01 May 11 '20 at 00:57
  • You might also find the following Q&A helpful: "How can Rpi UART control an IR Remote HDMI switcher?": https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/99823/using-pi-to-control-a-button-on-a-hdmi-switcher. Cheers. – tlfong01 May 11 '20 at 01:13
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    @tlfong01 Hi! Thank you so much for your response! I've looked into it and I was set on getting a tranciever for my pi. However, I did something that wasn't very smart and I started playing with the board of the remote and connecting it directly to my pi... Simulating pressing a button worked at first but now I'm pretty sure I've short circuited my pi :'( So I'm getting a pi 4 and will look into your comment again when I can. This is a lesson for me to be more careful and not stupidly destroy my pi. I'll tell you when I try again and would greatly appreciate having my questions answered!Thanks – Marcus Hamelink May 12 '20 at 15:48
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    Hi, @Marcus Hamelink, sorry to hear the bad news. You remind me that when I started messing around with the TV remote, I only use a multi-meter and external 5V power supply, often 3 ~ 4.5V batteries to do experiments. I also use a cheapy US$1 NE555 timer to simulate the Rpi GPIO signals, to do the fake/off line tests, before connecting it to the Rpi python programs. (Yes, in last couple of years, I did fry a couple of Rpi's and PSU's. Hope to see you again soon. Good luck, take care, and Cheers – tlfong01 May 13 '20 at 01:38
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    Hi again @tlfong01, I finally have a new pi and the receiver + transmitter. I have this set I tried it out with lirc using this tutorial and it was working well with the receiver only. I used 5V because that was indicated on the product page, the ground pin and gpio 17. I was able to create a config file and it recognized the commands. I encountered a problem when I tried to connect the transmitter to gpio 22 and(...) – Marcus Hamelink Jul 29 '20 at 12:29
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    (...) I couldn't get it to work. I put the pins on a breadboard in parallel (I was careful and checked online on how to do it) but after lots of testing and looking at different sources online I'm completely lost. I don't know if some of the information is outdated or maybe the modules actually require 3.3V or I wired the whole thing wrongly. You seem to know the stuff and it would be great if you could help me or at least guide me because I've tried for over a day and a half and even though the receiver is working I'm back to where I started... Thanks @tlfong01! – Marcus Hamelink Jul 29 '20 at 12:33
  • @Marcus Hamelink, Ah, let me see. I need to refresh my memory by reading my old LIRC posts. I only remember that I found UART controlled IR transceivers are very easy to play with, as detailed in my answer above, while LIRC tutorials are not very up to date and might not work with my Rpi4B buster. In other words, for now I can only help with Rpi4B UART controlled IR transceivers. It is unlikely that I will go back to LIRC which is no longer supported by the original developers. For now I am able to entertain only UART IR transceivers. Sorry about that. – tlfong01 Jul 31 '20 at 05:08

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