Home automation is easy when your house is of a “smart” variety. But even the smartest of homes will refuse to play nice with legacy devices lying around the house whose only wireless technology is infrared, like that old VCR you have lying around somewhere.
iDownloadBlog reader Niles Mitchell made a six-minute video embedded right above to demonstrate his system for controlling legacy IR devices around the house with Siri. “I chose an old VCR to demonstrate,” he informed iDB via email.
Mitchell is no stranger to our loyal fans who frequent the site.
In the past few years, he has documented on video various tricks for connecting retro peripherals to iOS devices, including a 1980 Apple Hard Drive, Sony’s Walkman, Apple’s iPod nano music player, Amazon’s Kindle e-reader and Casio’s graphing calculator.
He was also able to make an Apple Watch work with Iomega’s Zip drive and resorted to some clever trickery to make the watch burn CDs, which is very fascinating.