We just put the tape into our VHS, sit on the couch, and ask Siri to start playing. A most interesting situation if we take into account that a 12 year old VHS did not have HomeKit support. A situation that, fortunately, we can get around with a little inventiveness.
Hey Siri, put the game on my 12 year old VHS
The YouTube channel does it work? He recently shared a video with a very curious and interesting start. In the first few seconds, we see how Siri, on a HomePod mini, controls playback of a Sony branded VHS who will be at least 12 years old. An achievement that draws on a very useful resource that we can use ourselves.
The magic behind this useful system lies in an infrared emitter. It is a small device that can output the same signal the official VHS command would output. Thanks to this, we can automate the control of reproduction.
The most important detail is that the infrared emitter has a good app for the iPhone. This particular model has one with which we can register the buttons on the remote control just by pressing them in front of the transmitter. From there we can give a name to this virtual iPhone button which when pressed will cause the infrared emitter to reproduce the signal we just gave you.
The second key to this whole invention is that the app supports system shortcuts. As we can see in the video, each of the buttons can be turned into a scene in the Aquara M2 app, the infrared emitter, and then those scenes can be turned into shortcuts.
At this point, after recording each of the VHS buttons, we just need to invoke the shortcut through Siri, in this case on the HomePod, and our assistant will tell the IR emitter what signal to transfer to the player. And the magic happens. With this simple system, we can control playback from virtually any device with a remote control.
