Hi all,

First post here. I have a remote controlled air conditioning unit which I’d like to be able to power up remotely. Simply giving the unit power won’t start it cooling, the power button needs to be pressed, either on the unit or on the remote.

I was thinking of taking apart the remote and hooking up a relay to the power button. I’d then create a little web app to interface with the relay somehow to power the unit off and on.

The problem is triggering the relay. I can’t see any straightforward way to do it with USB and I don’t have a serial port. I’ve seen some interesting things about using LEDs for caps lock and such on USB keyboards for this purpose, but apparently in Windows this will also activate those functions (e.g. caps lock) which would be undesirable.

A microcontroller seems like an easy enough way to do it but it seems like overkill for such a simple function. Anyone have any other ideas on how to activate the remote?

Thanks!

Jim
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