[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] MStan:
Hello everybody. In this article I would like to continue our MAKE YOUR SELF rubric. This time there will be discussed possible ways to increase the strength of the IR signal to use our precious Magician as a remote control over a long distance.

Before purchasing my IMATE JAM I read a lot of posts about this phone. One of the disadvantages was describing low strength of IR port, so the usage of Magician as the remote control was limited to 1.5-2 meters. According to my experience this distance in majority of cases is at least twice less then distance between our favorite TV / Stereo / Video / DVD and sofa / chair / hammock or what so ever… Finally I bought my Magician and I decided to invent at least something to improve the situation with weak IR port.

My story began 8 months before, in the end of November 2004. I had my birthday party on the top of the mountain with my friends. It was damn cold even inside the small house – shale. We were eating hot chicken soup, drinking wine and other spirits, shooting pictures and making films about our funny behavior. I passed my nice camera Nikon to one of my friend and straight after she shoot the picture this camera fell down to 3 litter pot with chicken soup, which was on the table. I guess in this moment somebody really needed to take a picture of our faces watching camera making pictures it self on the bottom of the pot. Party went on till the early morning, every body were already a sleep. On the table there was still the pot with soup, nobody risked to eat it after the accident. My camera was loaded with chicken and was a sleep as well.

Later on I tried to fix it – I even gave it to special shop. But there the man officially confirmed the death of Nikon and gave a kind recommendation to buy a new one in his shop…

As the result I received completely broken digital camera for my experiments. I should say the trough that I always wanted to know what is inside of this little metal box. 6 months later – it means 2 days ago my dream came real. I opened this metal creature with the smell of chicken. It was very quickly petrified and separated in little pieces.

This moment one idea came to my head to use optical leans from the camera to increase power of IR port. After some experimentation and measurements I got this device. I am more then sure that it can be constructed in 1000 different ways using any material you have. The idea is optically increasing the IR signal by its zooming and following combining optical device with the body of your Magician. The same technology is used in modern diode lamps, where the little light beam is zoomed by its plastic cover. Results were impressing as well – from maximum 2 meters distance I was already able to control my TV on the distance over 5 meters. My software recommendation is TV remote controller 5.5. It has very simple interface, in the same time very powerful and stable program.

P.S. Please do not consider this story as the solution of the problem. The same way as you all I am expecting release of windows 2005, Jam 2 … with improvements, new functions and in-build fixes of existing software and hardware problems. Hope you enjoy my story and pictures and I am waiting for some crazy stories from other people.