How a few geeks and a Raspberry Pi took on AV control

In a dimly lit office at Holyoke Community College, cluttered with wires, half-eaten pizza slices and questionable amounts of energy drinks, a group of geeks toiled away trying to figure out how to control their audio visual devices. After getting surprisingly high and disappointing quotes from vendors to simply replace a bunch of remote controls, they decided to strike back. Their mission? To design the ultimate audio-visual media controller.

“Alright, people,” said Dave, “we’re building something revolutionary. A smart media controller that understands user intent better than any human.” And that’s how it began. The Off-the-Shelf Media Controller, or OTSMC as we like to call it nowadays, was born. We worked day and night, fueled by caffeine, hope, and occasionally homemade cookies (which suspiciously disappeared). By 3 AM, on one of those days, we had a prototype using Python and a Raspberry Pi.

So we pushed a button on the screen… and the Raspberry Pi’s LEDs blinked. The TV turned on. The speakers boomed. And then… well, it just worked.

We continued to toil away, creating and envisioning a world without remotes. We found that digital signal processors, projectors, PTZ cameras, matrix switchers and many more devices could all be controlled. And so it began.

Okay, maybe Dave’s vision won’t do all that right away, but with AI and voice commands, who knows where we go next.

Maybe we are exaggerating a bit. But we did make a really cool prototype that could control audio visual devices, at least that’s how I remember the story going. Now our prototype has become reality, controlling AV in rooms all over campus. Join us on this adventure to free your multimedia devices!