My instructables project got to the front page!

Hi all

I have only recently got into the world of Arduino after looking enviously at them for some time now.

My first "proper" arduino creation is a browser based remote control which I submitted to instructables (mainly so I could get some feedback from people so I can present better projects).

This morning I woke up and I had 2 emails from instructables - one saying the project had been featured in the Technology section, and a second one telling me I had made the home page and giving me a one year instructables pro membership!

Without an Arduino I would never have got the massive buzz from knowing that people interested in technology like my idea.

Thank you all , I have gone through quite a number of threads on this forum looking for inspiration and simple ideas I can do with my couple of bits of wire and a few bits of scrap electronic components.

My instructable, should you care to visit it (and make comments!) is at http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-browser-based-remote-control-linux/

I saw that yesterday, it's a good article.

I've got a HDMI matrix box which also does IR extension, only the IR part has stopped working. I've been contemplating building an IR extender with web interface so I can set it to do time based complex events (turn the cable box off, turn the blu-ray player on, change the hdmi input, etc). Your article inspired me to start work on it.

I discovered I've got an IR receiver rather than a decoder and I couldn't get it to relay an input to an IR output so work has stopped until I get a proper ir decoding receiver thing.

<?php
if(isset($_GET['command']))
{
  $p = $_GET['command'];
  $device = "/dev/ttyACM0";
  exec("echo $p > $device");
}

Imagine what the request "http://remote/remote.php?command=;chmod%20a+s%20/bin/bash" would do; your poor box would get rooted in a hurry. You need to ensure that 'command' contains only legitimate IR commands. Preferably you should be doing an fopen("/dev/ttyACM0", 'w'), fwrite, and fclose instead of an exec(). See also: escapeshellarg, escapeshellcmd, and xkcd: Exploits of a Mom

The web page in step 6 also says "Arduino LED control".

In step 9 it would be cleaner to use the loopback address (127.0.0.1) instead of 192.168.0.6.

Other than that, yes, it's a good, basic tutorial :slight_smile: