Thank you very much.

Chris.

Reading the Kymera User Forum, I note that at least one other user cannot switch his Panasonic Plasma TV On or Off.
I note your earlier comments that you use the same chip as the most popular universal control. That may be so, but on a normal remote, it is possible to hold the ON/OFF button down for as long as it takes for the TV to respond.

So I thought about sending rapid repeat signals to the TV and decide to try the rotation movement which obviously sends repeat signals to the volume control circuits.
Eureka!, it works but it is necessary to twirl the wand fairly fast to obtain the fast frequency required.

I then tried raising and lowering the volume by using the up & down movements of the wand, and repeating until the desired volume is reached. This also works.

These experiments may be one way of satisfying customer queries, and could be added as an appendix to your user manual.

I would appreciate your response please
Regards
Peter

Chris Barnardo’s answer to that suggestion:

Peter

Thanks for this brilliant investigation and interesting solution. I definitely think it is worth mentioning in the blog and in our next release of the manual. It also makes me think that for the next release of the wand software we should have a special gesture of gesture combo that enables the wand to learn a code and repeatedly send it. Thus is definitely possible with some simple changes. It could be a triple tap on top for example that sets off the repeating code.

The wand is not sold as a device that must work on every possible piece of home audio visual equipment, but I realise that if this is an issue we should consider how to address it.

Thx for your great ideas and hard work finding this solution.

Thanks

Chris

Btw. I got to the same solution when trying to control an IR-controlled Silverlit Micro-Helicopter. There you also need a continuous signal for the the helicopter to stay airborne. So I put the signal on the rotation gesture too, but the twirling is quite tiring

Dear Mr. NeeNaw, we’ve seen your videos –
the Harry Potter one appealed to us greatly,
and we figured you’d enjoy one of these

to the crazy Mr. NeeNaw aka Neelesh.
After some problems opening the package (like a man) he lifts the lid of the black box with sound effects he finds the “big piece of paper” then he figures out that it is a wand but very unlike the HP ones.

His electronic knowhow helps him to find the little piece of plastics that keeps the batteries from conducting and to remove it. “I didn’t read that, I don’t know what it is. It does make magical noises.” Then he reads the instructions aloud anyway – you all know that about the universal infrared remote control that can recognize up to 13 gestures.

We follow him to his “lounge”. He presents the wand again but talks about fake leather of the box and saving cows. But acutally it is Faux Dragon Skin (important difference). After presenting the “nicely themed mass of instructions”, he switches on his TV which is slowly waking up (as all TV’s seem to do nowadays), pulls back to leave the tv guide, double tap to enter it again, changes channels and the like.

“They take a small while to get used to but then they can replace TV, Sky, Apple remotes.”

“The way you program it is pretty awesome, it gives you feedback because you can feel beating it your hand. Which is a very very creepy feeling.”

“I’m very grateful that TheWandCompany sent me one of these, because I love them now. I think it will make a great gift. ”

If you’re in England you’ll receive it within one day.

When my sister is watching crappy music on MTV I can switch it off.

And now I’m going to program it to everything thats in my skull. So I can get up to mischief.

He’s blown away:

It is pretty damn awesome (6 times or so) … I love it.

Coolest thing about the video are the bloopers Like the planes and the wand biting.

I should ask the people that received a free wand from me to do a similar cool video or blog post.

I’m guessing that not too many people are yet aware of the newest generation of life-like flickering LED candles that can be controlled by an IR remote. For the utmost in Harry Potter-esque control, this is the bees knees, as they say.

This is just two such examples, but if you google on “remote led candle” you’ll get a ton of hits from various manufacturers and distributors:

http://www.batteryoperatedcandles.net/G … ducts.html
http://www.batteryoperatedcandles.net/r … ducts.html

I still get an almost perverse blast out of controlling my triple candle set this way. It really looks like magic, folks. Anyone remember Dumbledore’s year opening speech in the Great Hall in “Prisoner of Azkaban”, where he waves his hand over the candles, and they extinguish, and waves his hand back, and they relight? Okay, so he didn’t use his wand there, but you get the idea. Thus I’ve set my wand’s right flick to turn the candles off, and the left flick to turn them on.

- -
Incidentally, There’s also a new generation of LED candles that can be operated simply by blowing on them, (actually, I can get mine to go on or off by simply snapping my fingers a few inches above it, which is also magical looking) but that’s another story.

_________________
Accio Kymera!

The Kymera Wand from Marc LaFountain on Vimeo.

In the meantime he published a review of his own:

The pictures on the internet might show how the wand looks, but nothing can tell you how it truly is to hold and look at, before you hold it yourself! Honestly, I actually thought the plastic would be a bit… cheap. But it isn’t! It isn’t wood, but I think it’s nearly as good.

I quickly learned it a signal, and I made a big smile the first time when I turned our TV on. It didn’t just control the TV, it also gave me a feeling of… real magic, as if I was holding a real wand in my hand.

He also translated the danish blog post by David Guldager:

A review by TV2 beep:

This is how a real wand works

It’s not just bearded men with tall pointy hats, who are allowed to swing with wands. You have the opportunity youself, and we’ve tried the most strange gadget we’ve ever seen.

There are products you really can’t see the idea beind, and then gadgets that are so strange and different, that you would never imagine they would be for sale.

For two weeks ago, we wrote about a very real wand, called Kymera, and to be honest, I though it was a joke, but when a Danish contact person wrote to us, to hear if we wanted to test the wand, we wouldn’t say no.

Many have been running around as little with a stick, trying to make bushes to enemies or make mess in a room disappear. But yet, those “magic wands” haven’t quite worked for me.

Considerable skepticism

Therefore, my skepticism was indeed more than apparent, when I received the wand in a black oblong box. But when I saw the wand Kymera down in the box presented in red, I had to give me a bit.

Suddenly I was aware of the magic moments.

I don’t know what I had expected, but wands today still can’t make the mess disappear, make my wife into a bush or do anything else, than act as a good old-fashioned remote control. But it also does that fine.

Magic on your tv

Kymera itself is made by a company, who of course have the firm name, The Wand Company Ltd. Their somewhat different remote control can control a TV from movement, and it’s more techable than one might think.

By turning the wand vertically and tap two times on the middle, you get the opportunity to learn your wand some tricks from your remote. It’s shakes gently when it has understood, and when you’re then sitting in front of your TV, flicking your wand to shift channel, it shakes gently to confirm as well.
It works surpringly well, even though it can be a bit hard to learn the difference between the many movements your hand can perform. But if you just learn your wand tricks with widely different gestures, then you’re one step further.

Of course, this wand is also meant more as a smile, than a replacement of your remote control. It can only learn up to 13 different tricks, and the gestures can be somewhat cumbersome in length unlike what you’re used to – by pushing the button. And as one colleague pointed out, it’s much more fun to have on your table, than an ordinary remote control.

Kymera Specifications:

• Uses 2 AAA-batteries, can learn 13 “tricks”
• Costs about 100 dollars
• Is out from October 1st (2009)

We LOVE: Always interesting with magic wands, pretty techable, looks more fun than a remote control.

We HATE: Can’t make things disappear, actually it can’t do magic! Only 13 gestures, it’s difficult to distinguish between the different movements.

Written by David Guldager (Original danish review here
Translated from danish to english by Jan Nikolajsen

Had some free time, so decided I would try and figure out what functions I really needed to program into the wand and which I could leave out. It took a lot of tries to figure what wand gesture I should pair with what function so I made a little Jpg that lists all the gestures so I could print it out and keep the pairings straight. Thought it might be useful to others too so I decided to post it. Listed are the wand gestures, and next to it in parentheses is the number of pulses that correlates to the gesture, and space to write down what you’ve programmed.

Happy Casting!

Gautam

Thanks a lot

Michael

Harry Potteresque commands – latin

Has anyone else worked on some basic IR Remote/consumer electronics device command based latin spell incantations, so you can totally geek out ala Harry Potter while using your wand?
I’ve worked out about 15 so far, some were easy, some were not. This was actually kind of fun. I’m not a Latin major by any stretch, and some of the command concepts (like “ON” or “OFF”) don’t easily translate to a culture that ceased to exist roughly 1600 years ago, long before the advent of electronics.

Here’s my list so far though, feel free to add or recommend others!
(A good many of these should be fairly obvious as to their modern meaning or correlation, and some, like Vol Up/Down were lifted directly from Harry Potter)

On – Vivo or Possum (pronounced “Poss’-oom”)
Off – Dormito or Quiesco
Volume Up – Sonorus
Volume Down – Quietus
Channel Up – Ascendo or Supero
Channel Down – Descendo or Cado
Mute – Mutus or Sileo
Menu – Tabula or Codex
Play – Specto
Pause – Suspendo
Stop – Cesso or Finis
Record – Scribo
Rewind – Reciproco or Verto
Fast Forward – Rapio
Slow Search – Serpo

(special thanks to the latinlexicon.org site for most of these)

and the second post:

Laser tag, Kymera style

Here’s a thought – IR based tag systems, where kids armed with Kymera wands can duke it out wizard style.

They’d wear a special receiver plate on their chest and back, just as in laser tag, and the various gestures would register as sundry hexes/jinxes/curses- Avada Kedavra, Stupefy, Expelliarmus, Rictusempra, Tarantallegra, Petrificus, Sectum-Sempra, etc..

Have you guys talked at all with Warner Bros? I’m sure they’d go for this, (and other ideas) as official Harry Potter licensed merchandise. Otherwise, you’d probably have to rename the curses to something more generic.

_________________
Accio Kymera!

Grymmditch

Thanks alot for those great posts

Michael