irRemote Development Challenges !

Two years have passed since irRemote was last seen on S60 2nd edition. Since then irRemote was one of the most awaited applications for S60 3rd edition. The biggest problem in developing the application for the new S60, were the changes in the security architecture of Symbian OS as well as in the handling of the infra-red port. The infra-red port was the main delaying factor in the development and market release of the application. In order to send proper IR codes the psiloc team had to access the hardware driver. Only this enabled them to send IR codes using the infra-red port with acceptable time tolerance and with the signal as verbatim as the original remote control. Another problem they faced, was the poor resolution of the system timer. This in turn stood in the way of sending well calibrated IR signals. That's why we had to manually determine the exact time...

They knew very well that the biggest disadvantage of the previous irRemote was the non-modifiable bundled remotes database that came with the application. they thus decided to take on the popular community approach this time. Now anyone can easily upload remotes to their database using a simple and intuitive wizard. What's more, by rating the remotes all irRemote users can now decide which remotes to make a go for. This proved to be just what the users wanted and the numbers speak for themselves, over 500 different devices were uploaded in the first week of the public tests!

You can read more over here ;)